This book will guide students through everything they need to know to become a confident sight reader, working up towards exam-standard practice tests. The accompanying CD demonstrates every piece in the book, offering spoken hints and encouragement along the way. It is designed to help students check and improve their own playing when they are working away from their teacher,and has been written and composed by two experienced teachers and examiners.

Film Themes: The Piano Collection brings together 30 favourite themes and songs from such films as Star Wars, Frozen, Hunger Games, How To Train Your Dragon and Twilight, plus several pieces from the Harry Potter film series and "Mia and Sebastian's Theme" from the acclaimed new movie La La Land. All pieces have been arranged for the intermediate pianist.

(Faber Piano Adventures ). Playing 5-finger scales has significant value for early-level pianists. This innovative book helps students chart progress through all major and minor 5-finger scales, cross-hand arpeggios, and primary chords. Engaging teacher duets for each key are used for scale exercises. Students also enjoy improvisation activities for each key with creative prompts to inspire imagery, character, and tempo.

Winner of the Royal Philharmonic Award for Storytelling 2020 'A rich, endlessly fascinating book.' Philip Pullman 'One pleasure after another.' Gramophone 'The delightful musings of a wise and worldly polymath.' Financial Times, Books of the Year Stephen Hough is indisputably one of the world's leading pianists, winning global acclaim and numerous awards for his concerts and recordings, as well as being a writer and composer. In Rough Ideas, Hough writes about music and the life of a musician, from exploring the broader aspects of what it is to walk out onto a stage or to make a recording, to specialist tips from deep inside the practice room. He also writes vividly about people, places, literature and art, and touches on more controversial subjects, such as the possibility of the existence of God, and the challenge involved in being a gay Catholic. Rough Ideas is an illuminating and absorbing introduction into the life and mind of one of our great cultural figures.

The popular beginner instruction books for kids with fun exercises, theory and easy songs to play. This book contains over 30 carols for the beginner pianist, featuring a range of techniques and quizzes to support musical development from the very first lessons to Grade 2. Full of festive favourites such as Jingle bells, Silent night and Deck the halls, with a few lesser known carols included for good measure, many of the pieces have simple but effective teacher duet parts to encourage ensemble playing from the start. The book is illustrated throughout in the charming Get Set! style, and students are encouraged to decorate and colour in the drawings to reflect their progress. Packed with fantastic, tried-and-tested arrangements and a variety of fun activities to reinforce learning, this is the ultimate beginner piano Christmas book! Expertly put together by award-winning authors, pieces include: * Good King Wenceslas * Jolly old Saint Nicholas * O come, all ye faithful * Up on the housetop * Jingle, bells * Away in a manger * Infant holy, Infant lowly * Under Bethl'hem's star so bright * The holly and the ivy * The first Nowell * O little town of Bethlehem * We wish you a Merry Christmas * Once in royal David's city * Hark! the herald angels sing * Silent night * Deck the hall * The Virgin Mary had a baby boy * Ding dong! merrily on high * God rest you merry, gentlemen * Huron carol * Patapan * Gabriel's message * Cantemos a Maria * While shepherds watched their flocks * Mary rocked her baby! * I saw three ships * Y Gelynnen (The holly) * We three kings of Orient are * Go, tell it on the mountain

SIX the musical by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss has been hailed as, 'the most uplifting piece of new British musical theatre' (The Evening Standard) and is the phenomenon everyone is losing their head over! Critically acclaimed across the UK with a soundtrack storming up the UK pop charts, the sell-out intoxicating musical tells the story of the six wives of Henry VIII. This official Easy Piano songbook remixes five hundred years of historical heartbreak into a celebration of 21st century girl power, with easy arrangements of all nine songs from the show specially arranged by the SIX Musical Supervisor, Joe Beighton. Special content includes an introduction about the songs and costume illustrations.

This book may be used by students in Level 1A or the Complete Level 1 of Alfred's Basic Piano Library or in the first or second book of any method. Titles: The Christmas Song * Frosty the Snowman * Happy Holiday * (There's No Place Like) Home for the Holidays * I'll Be Home for Christmas * Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! * Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer * We Need a Little Christmas.

This book contains nine pieces from ABRSM's Grade 2 Piano syllabus for 2023 & 2024, three pieces chosen from each of Lists A, B and C - ideal for both Practical and Performance Grade exams. The pieces have been carefully selected to offer an attractive and varied range of styles, creating a collection that provides an excellent source of repertoire to suit every performer. The book also contains helpful footnotes and, for those preparing for exams, useful syllabus information.Audio recordings of all 39 pieces on the Grade 2 syllabus, performed by expert musicians, are included (via the download code in the book). A version of this book without audio download is also available.

This volume explores twentieth-century organ music through in-depth studies of the principal centers of composition, the most significant composers and their works, and the evolving role of the instrument and its music. The twentieth-century was a time of unprecedented change for organ music, not only in its composition and performance but also in the standards of instrument design and building. Organ music was anything but immune to the complex musical, intellectual, and socio-political climate of the time. Twentieth-Century Organ Music examines the organ's repertory from the entire period, contextualizing it against the background of important social and cultural trends. In a collection of twelve essays, experienced scholars survey the dominant geographic centers of organ music (France, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, the United States, and German-speaking countries) and investigate the composers who made important contributions to the repertory (Reger in Germany, Messiaen in France, Ligeti in Eastern and Central Europe, Howells in Great Britain). Twentieth-Century Organ Music provides a fresh vantage point from which to view one of the twentieth century's most diverse and engaging musical spheres.

Jazz, Rags & Blues, Books 1 through 5 contain original solos for late elementary to early advanced-level pianists that reflect the various styles of the jazz idiom. An excellent way to introduce your students to this distinctive American contribution to 20th century music. Available separately (item #18115), the CD includes dynamic recordings of each song in Books 1-3 of this series.

Using a replica of Beethoven's Erard piano, scholar and performer Tom Beghin launches a striking reinterpretation of a key period of Beethoven's work. In 1803 Beethoven acquired a French piano from the Erard Freres workshop in Paris. The composer was "so enchanted with it," one visitor reported, "that he regards all the pianos made here as rubbish by comparison." While Beethoven loved its sound, the touch of the French keyboard was much heavier than that of the Viennese pianos he had been used to. Hoping to overcome this drawback, he commissioned a local technician to undertake a series of revisions, with ultimately disappointing results. Beethoven set aside the Erard piano for good in 1810. Beethoven's French Piano returns the reader to this period of Beethoven's enthusiasm for all things French. What traces of the Erard's presence can be found in piano sonatas like his "Waldstein" and "Appassionata"? To answer this question, Tom Beghin worked with a team of historians and musicians to commission the making of an accurate replica of the Erard piano. As both a scholar and a recording artist, Beghin is uniquely positioned to guide us through this key period of Beethoven's work. Whether buried in archives, investigating the output of the French pianists who so fascinated Beethoven, or seated at the keyboard of his Erard, Beghin thinks and feels his way into the mind of the composer, bringing startling new insights into some of the best-known piano compositions of all time.

(Willis). Part 1 of a comprehensive step-by-step course specifically designed to suit the needs of all students beginning the piano. Includes: characters and illustrations * writing exercises * sight reading drills * review work * accompaniments * accompaniments for teacher or parent. Beloved worldwide since 1955 and now with audio tracks accessible online!

Now available in paperback, the critically acclaimed, lyrical, analytical, yet deeply affecting (The Washington Post) memoir about one woman's obsessive search for the perfect piano-- and about finding and pursu- ing passion at any age. The daughter of a pro- fessional musician, Perri Knize was raised in a home saturated in classical music, but it wasn't until adult- hood that she returned to the one instrument that mesmer- ized her most: the piano. When, in her forties, Perri decides to buy a piano of her own, she begins by searching for a modestly priced upright, but falls madly, illogically, in love with a rare German grand she discovers in a New York showroom. After a long dalliance, Knize refinances her house to purchase her piano and has the instru- ment shipped to Montana. But when it arrives, the magical sound that enthralled her is gone, and the tone is dead and dull. One piano tuner after another arrives to fix it, but no one can. Knize sets out on an epic journey to restore the instru- ment to its rightful sound and to understand its elusive power. This quest leads her into an international subculture of piano aficionados, all intrigu- ing and eccentric characters-- concert artists, dealers, tech- nicians, composers, designers, and builders--whose lives have been transformed by the spell of a piano. She even hikes into the Austrian Alps to learn how the special trees used to build her piano are grown and harvested. Beautifully composed, passionately told, Grand Obsession is itself a musical masterpiece-- and will resonate with anyone who has ever expe- rienced deeply passionate desire.

While Chopin composed only a few works in variation form, he employed variations and variation technique in the majority of his works. Multiple modified repetitions of musical units on different levels of a work are so typical of Chopin's works that this may be considered one of the chief determinants of his style. Focusing on a broad range of Chopin's works, this book explores the extent to which Chopin's oeuvre is suffused with variations, the role that variation technique plays in his work, to what extent it interacts with other techniques for developing and modifying musical material, and how the variation technique itself evolved. Beginning with a comprehensively documented investigation of the concept of variation in its own right, Zofia Chechlinska employs Riemannian and Schenkerian theory to consider, in turn, the ways in which Chopin constructs variations on the level of microstructure (motif and phrase) and macrostructure (thematic areas, sections, movements and form). This is the first English translation of one of the classics of musicological literature in Poland and is essential reading for scholars of Chopin and nineteenth-century music and music analysts.

Pierre Boulez's first piano pieces date from his youth, prior to his studies in Paris with Messiaen, and his subsequent meteoric rise to international acclaim as the leader of the musical avant-garde during the 1950s. His most recent published work is a solo piano piece, Une page d'ephemeride, written some sixty years after his first attempts at composition. The piano has remained central to Boulez's creative work throughout his career, and although his renown as a conductor has to some extent overshadowed his other achievements, it was as a performer of his own piano music that his practical gifts first found expression. Peter O'Hagan has given performances of various unpublished piano works by Boulez, including Antiphonie from the Third Sonata and Trois Psalmodies. In this study, he considers Boulez's writing for the piano in the context of the composer's stylistic evolution throughout the course of his development. Each of the principal works is considered in detail, not only on its own terms, but also as a stage in Boulez's ongoing quest to invent radical solutions to the renewal of musical language and to reinvigorate tradition. The volume includes reference to hitherto unpublished source material, which sheds light on his working methods and on the interrelationship between works.