For decades, the two-volume Henle Urtext edition of Beethoven’s piano sonatas has maintained its status across the globe as the standard edition of reference among pianists. After its publication at the beginning of the 1950s, edited by the Munich musicologist Bertha Antonia Wallner – with the support of the Beethoven Archive in Bonn – this outstanding editorial achievement was quickly recognised by the world of pianists as a new benchmark.

Its decades-long, rigorous field testing led to impr...