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I have just found out that this exists, and I absolutely must have it! From what I can tell, all Beethoven did was re-write different fugues from Bach's WTC for practice. I would like to take this same approach for all of the WTC, but if Beethoven started it for us, we can go from there.

BEST- If you have it
GOOD- If you know where I can get it fast

Thank You

Hi ! There is an edition of the WTC by Carl Czerny (Beethoven's student). This is maybe what you're talking about. You can find some parts of it on the website. I have never use it, so I can't claim about it.

But here's what a friend told me about it on another forum :

"He was just a good editor of the way Beethoven played the WTC. And as such, his editions of Bach have great academic and historical interest since they inform us on romantic (and usually misguided) conceptions of Bach´s performance.

Most (if not all) heavily fingered and added non-urtext editions represent the editor´s way of playing. The astute reader can intuit much about the technique and way of playing of famous pianists by examining their editions (e.g. Mikuli´s Chopin, Arrau´s Beethoven Sonatas, Czerny´s WTC, Tureck´s Italian Concerto). If that is your interest (and there is no reason why it should not be), then Czerny´s editions are a must. However, make no mistake here. Although these editions do reveal ways of the hand, they will rarely be useful because technique is ultimately personal You may be amazed at Arrau´s fingerings for the Beethoven Sonatas, but it will be very unlikely they will be useful to you except in informing you how personal technique actually is.

Besides, pianos of Czerny´s (and Beethoven´s) times had very different properties of sustaining poser and volume, so most of Czerny´s performance directions (e.g. pedal and dynamics) might have been appropriate for his piano, but would be a disaster in a modern piano (e.g. Beethoven´s own direction on the first movement of the Moonlight sonata to play the whole movement with the damper pedal depressed – a very necessary direction on a fortepiano of the 1790s, but a total absurdity in a modern piano).

Ultimately one should work from Urtext editions (where things like fingering are omitted for the very good reason that what matters is not the finger you use, but the sound you produce, and different people will need to investigate their own best fingering in order to bring the appropriate sound), and even so, composer´s directions should be informed by further research (e.g. like the example of the moonlight above).

Here is Ralph Kirkpatrick´s opinion (“Interpreting Bach´s WTC” – Yale) to get you started in your research:

In his original preface of 1837 Czerny claims to transmit what he remembers of Beethoven´s performances of the preludes and fugues. This sort of recollection is always to be taken with a large pinch of salt. From the perspective of today I must say that I find it utterly impossible to take the Czerny edition seriously”.


In conclusion, I think it might be an interesting edition to have in your library. But you should definitely have an Urtext edtion also.
I use Henle edition, by Ernst-Günter Heinemann, and fingering András Schiff for the first book, and Henle edition, by Yo Tomita, and fingering by András Schiff for the second book. I like it a lot.

Hope this helps.