Since Urtext editions have become readily available, performers can directly engage with Bach’s texts. However, as Walter Blankenheim wrote in his preface to the Bach Days: “…the interpreter must understand what he or she plays, that is, in order to play a work meaningfully, the interpreter first needs to process the almost completely neutral text, identifying the “Problems and Opportunities” presented by the work”…
A number of interpretive editions of Bach’s keyboard works exist, with most of them dating from the nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries. It must be said that after numerous relatively recent discoveries in the fields of musicology and historical performance practice, these early interpretive editions (such as those by Czerny, Busoni or Mugellini) can no longer be recommended for practical use.
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