The greater part of my working life has been devoted to a series of Urtext editions for the publisher Bärenreiter, starting with the Beethoven symphonies and continuing with most of the other principal works of Beethoven – except Fidelio which (I always maintained) would require an entire lifetime on its own. For certain specific reasons we also delved occasionally into the byways of Elgar and Dvořák.

But what about all the other composers? There is hardly a work in the orchestral repertoire that can truly be said to be free of misprints, inconsistencies between score and parts, or other textual problems. Like my father, conductor Norman Del Mar, before me, I made notes in my score of whatever work I was conducting, of apparent contradictions, errors and puzzles of all descriptions. Hence these textual reports, which range from (at their most primitive) merely a list of known misprints, to (at the other end of the scale) almost Urtext editions in their own right. Many composers’ autographs have been published in facsimile, and first editions are often available to view online in both score and parts, so the relevant sources may be openly available to consult and compare.

Beethoven has been an especially rewarding composer to work with. Painstakingly he worked at his canvas, honing and perfecting it down to the last minute detail, and once he had reached the result he was seeking he had it published and then left it alone. Further revisions post-publication are rare; a notorious example is the Fifth Symphony, where he added a bar in no fewer than five places in the first movement, causing the poor publishers to spoil their beautiful plates by having to roughly insert the bar in every part wherever it was required. But at least the decision is clear; this extra bar is, without doubt (even though it nowhere survives in Beethoven's hand), the last will of the composer.

Other composers were neither so decisive, nor so exact, nor so reverent towards their earlier works. Mendelssohn agonised about his ‘Italian’ Symphony to the extent that he completely revised the second, third and fourth movements, yet the verdict on this revision can only be one of regret, for there is not a bar that is improved, only weakened – as his sister Fanny was quick to chide him.