Bärenreiter is one of the largest publishers of classical music worldwide. Its extensive publication programme encompasses not only standard concert repertoire, but also educational music, contemporary music as well as music books.

From the beginning Bärenreiter has been working towards clear goals: to make a significant contribution to musical culture and to preserve the heritage of European music. So how did Bärenreiter set about to achieve these goals? It was Karl Vötterle's ingenious idea to create the concept of the New Complete Editions. He embarked upon an ambitious project to collect and publish the entire output of numerous composers, keeping to their original intentions.

Bärenreiter has been a pioneer in the publication of new scholarly Editions. Through the New Complete Editions Bärenreiter sets the musical standards for others to follow. In order to make these standards accessible to all practising musicians, without compromising the high quality musicological content, Bärenreiter publishes a comprehensive range of Practical Urtext Editions, as reduced editions.