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Pianodao is the piano music, education, and wellbeing website of teacher, writer, consultant, and composer Andrew Eales.

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Pianodao features hundreds of FREE articles and reviews to support pianists, teachers, and students everywhere. Explore recent highlights:

10 Piano Resolutions for 2026

HAPPY NEW YEAR, 2026! And good news for piano players looking to turn over a new leaf in the coming weeks and months: there’s no shortage of positive goals that we can embrace…

2025 • The Pianodao Top Ten

Over the last twelve months, I’ve published 80 new articles and reviews on Pianodao. As we arrive at the end of the year, here is my annual list of the top ten most read…

ADHD • Insights for Pianists

ADHD has had a huge impact on my piano journey. And my wife has three decades clinical experience treating ADHD. Together, we have created this page to offer expert advice and support.

Understanding the importance of the three dimensions of musical learning, Musical Mind, Body, and Soul, empowers us to teach, learn and practise music holistically, making effective and lasting progress.

Winter Repertoire Challenge

Musicians have always had a significant part to play in the feasts and festivals of community life, and for piano players this is a time of the year in which our Active Repertoire can play a particularly significant role in our music-making…

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Spotlight or quiet life?

Fermata • Pause and Reflect

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Reflection by Andrew Eales

Anonymity can mean many things. As musicians, we perhaps associate the word with those composers of old whose names have been lost to history. Their works are attributed to “anon”, either because they weren’t that interested in taking the credit, or because they left the stage without providing a forwarding address.

And let’s face it, in the pressured world of piano playing, as elsewhere, being well-known certainly brings its own challenges, with exposure to scrutiny, conflict, and the envy of those who are less successful or simply unfulfilled. No wonder some actually value the quiet life more highly than the spotlight!

And yet we still sometimes confuse anonymity with failure, because we equate success with making a name for oneself. But there are many other (some would say better) ways to measure our success in life.

So should we actively pursue anonymity? Can a wise balance be found, whereby we authentically share our gifts and lives without constantly craving the limelight?

Piano Music of Latin American Composers

Pianodao Music Library

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
Find out more: About Pianodao Reviews

A couple of years ago, Hal Leonard launched a new series of repertoire collections under the banner of ‘Expanding the Repertoire’, the first two books being a couple of volumes edited by Leah Claiborne called Piano Music of Black Composers. Reviewing them at the time, I concluded that although the two volumes could be welcomed simply as an inclusive diversification of the pedagogy literature, nevertheless,

“…the quality of the content makes a compelling case for introducing this music to all our elementary to intermediate students, regardless of their heritage.”

I am glad to see that the series has now itself been expanded, with two complementary volumes of music by Latin American composers. Once again, the Level 1 book will suit elementary to late elementary players (UK Initial to Grade 2), while Level 2 caters for early to late intermediate (Grades 2-5).

Compiled and edited by Desireé González-Miller, Piano Music of Latin American Composers is an eye-catching resource, so let’s take a look…

Piano teaching: an uncertain future?

Fermata • Pause and Reflect

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Reflection by Andrew Eales

In the ever-evolving landscape of piano education, our work as private teachers has transformed significantly in recent years, and I know many who are quietly struggling with a nagging sense of uncertainty about their continuing career prospects.

But by embracing a mindset that views challenge as an opportunity for growth, we can navigate uncertainty and face the future with positivity…

The Beatles • Graded Pieces

Pianodao Music Library

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
Find out more: About Pianodao Reviews

With last year’s publication of Calming Christmas Carols for Graded Piano, Willis Music Company introduced the fresh and rather neat idea of curating an anthology of popular music, presented in arrangements suitable for players from Grades 1-5, divided into sections that progress accordingly.

In my review, I noted:

“Cleverly, and rather uniquely positioned as the progressive collection to which learners can reliably return each year throughout their Elementary to Intermediate piano journey, and thus maximising the book’s continuing value to teachers, learners, and parents, the concept is certainly attractive.”

I’m not surprised to see Hal Leonard visit this useful and inspiring concept, this time delving into the enduring songbook of The Beatles for material, and with ace arranger Christopher Hussey on board, whose name you may recall from the brilliant Gradebusters! series, which I have reviewed here.

From me to you, here’s my review…

Creativity is a Dialogue

Fermata • Pause and Reflect

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Reflection by Andrew Eales

Developing creativity is one of the high goals of learning an instrument. And yet over the decades I’ve taught, those advancing a more creative approach have been variously seen as either maverick outliers or magical superstars, but rarely as the piano teacher norm.

I have also met some who emit an impression that improvising pianists are somehow superior to those who “merely” regurgitate the music of others. Some even cast the concert pianist who can rattle off Rachmaninoff as a rather pitiable savant, akin to an imagined orator who can deliver a Shakespeare soliloquy, but who can’t hold a real conversation.

I think they are quite profoundly wrong. Having frequently improvised in front of an audience, I feel considerably less comfortable rising to the challenge of performing Chopin to the classical cognoscenti. I suspect many would. We all have different strengths, and need not compete.

And I would say that the creative arts of interpretation and improvisation are equal in value, complimentary in nature, and both have an important role to play in piano education.

The Year of the Horse

Fermata • Pause and Reflect

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Reflection by Andrew Eales

Since ancient times, the Chinese have followed the lunar calendar, New Year coinciding with the first hint of Spring’s arrival in the northern hemisphere.

New Year’s Eve 2026 falls on Monday 16th February, heralding the start of Spring Festival, which culminates two weeks later with the Festival of Lanterns on Tuesday 3rd March.

The years are traditionally named after the twelve symbolic animals of the Chinese zodiac. These are multiplied by the ‘Five Elements’ of traditional Daoist cosmology to create a 60 year cycle. Following on from the Year of the Wood Snake, we now enter the Year of the Fire Horse.

Regardless of how we view ancient beliefs and customs, it does us no harm to reflect on our lives and progress using the cycle of the seasons and calendar of old traditions as a simple tool.

Peter and the Wolf

Educational Resources

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
Find out more: About Pianodao Reviews

Here’s a delight! Peter and the Wolf is one of a number of books that make up a colourful series from Schott Music, called ‘Get to Know Classical Masterpieces‘.

Featuring the whole of Prokofiev’s masterpiece of musical storytelling in a “simple arrangement for piano”, the book is the work of the ever-industrious Hans-Günter Heumann. The full story is presented in an English translation by Julia Rushworth, and with superb colour illustrations throughout by Brigitte Smith.

The book can comfortably be recommended, but the review that follows will assess the difficulty level of the piano writing and consider, as usual, who this publication is particularly suitable for. Read on for more details, and a list of other titles in the series…

Lang Lang Piano Book 2

Pianodao Music Library

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
Find out more: About Pianodao Reviews

The Lang Lang Piano Book is undoubtedly one of the music publishing landmarks of recent years, a collection of inspiring pieces for advancing players selected by the classical superstar in part because of the joy many of them added to his own musical learning as a child. Now available as the paperback Encore Edition, I have reviewed it here in depth.

Following the success of the original publication and CD double album, a sequel was perhaps commercially inevitable, and is now here. Lang Lang Piano Book 2 delivers another 30 piano pieces, both as a recorded album from Deutsche Grammophon (CD, vinyl, download, streaming), and as a Faber Music piano anthology.

We are told that for this second installment the pianist has included “a rich blend of playable classics alongside neoclassical pieces and music from film, pop and video games”, marking something of a departure from the first collection. So let’s investigate further…

ABRSM Jazz Piano Solos

Educational Resources

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
Find out more: About Pianodao Reviews

When ABRSM announced their Jazz Piano syllabus Grades 1-5 back in 1998, and published a raft of outstanding books and recordings to support it, I was at the front of the queue for copies, and one of the many who rejoiced at the arrival of such a superb resource.

Here, at last, was a well-thought out, superbly paced approach for introducing swing, blues, Latin and modern jazz styles, all with integrated improvisations, relevant scales, aural, and technical development.

In the years since, while I’ve not used the actual exams, many of my students have enjoyed the excellent music, learning core jazz skills from the course materials. I have still enjoyed playing and teaching the accessible jazzy pieces and arrangements available elsewhere, but these ABRSM books have been a mainstay for teaching jazz “properly”.

An update of the lower grades, and continuation into the higher ones, has long been requested. In the meantime ABRSM have released three music books in their Nikki Iles & Friends series (reviewed here).

Now, more than a quarter of a century after their first five grades appeared, they have published a syllabus specification for new, video assessed Jazz ‘Performance Grades’ 6-8, together with a Jazz Piano Solo Pieces Grades 6-8 book including five pieces from each Grade level. Let’s take a look…

Mélanie Bonis • Children’s Albums

Pianodao Music Library

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
Find out more: About Pianodao Reviews

The superb Schott Student Edition series has recently grown to include two very welcome volumes of music for children by the Late Romantic French composer Mélanie Bonis.

The Album pout les tout-petits Op.103 includes 20 pieces suitable for elementary players (around UK Grades 1-3), while the eight pieces that make up Scènes enfantines Op.92 will suit intermediate players (UK Grades 4-6).

Both books are edited by the indomitable Melanie Spanswick, who has also written an excellent introduction which includes a composer biography, and several pages of in-depth teaching notes.

These excellent volumes are an important addition to the pedagogy repertoire, and in this review I will consider each of the two sets after first briefly introducing the composer…