3 Etudes

Wilhelm Posse’s compositions for harp are rich and varied, and range from the easy pieces dedicated to his students to the virtuoso concert pieces; we must also remember his didactic works, in particular the Six Small Studies and the universally known Eight Great Concert Studies.

It is not easy to draw a balance of his legacy in the harp world. On one hand his technical vision of virtuosity combined with a great stability of the hand and rigor of the fingerings certainly contributed to the development of the 20th Century harp technique; on the other hand, his use of the pedals, often driven by two together with the same foot (a very old French technique), has gradually become more and more difficult on modern harps.

From the point of view of his contribution to the harp repertoire, the constant run-up to the piano has heavily influenced his compositional production, making him often completely miss the idiomatic effects of 19th Century harp music (except for the use of harmonic sounds), which were so loved by his friend Liszt in the compositions of Parish Alvars.

This edition is based on the first print, published in Leipzig and Berlin by Zimmerman in 1919, in three separate volumes.