Pianodao Music Library
Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
Spin the clock back to 2015, and ABRSM’s Encore series of four graded piano books was among the first ever reviews on Pianodao. I loved the series then and still do, although much has changed in the intervening years, and Encore has been due an update that accounts for the intervening decade of syllabus publications.
That now arrives in the form of Encore Plus, a new set of four books that broadly match the grade groupings and spirit of the original series, again compiled by Karen Marshall and complete with her teaching advice.
The original series remains available; these new volumes are not so much replacements as complementary collections, bringing together a more contemporary selection of repertoire drawn from recent ABRSM syllabuses.
ABRSM are certainly no strangers to graded compilations of this sort, but I think Encore Plus is among their best series yet. In this review I will reflect on the included repertoire, consider Marshall’s supplementary teaching material, and assess the overall quality of the resource…
The four publications
Let’s begin with some first impressions, and an overview. The Encore Plus books maintain the design of the original series, but with a fresh, modern appeal. Within, the books are printed on off-white paper.
Each volume begins with a warmly written Welcome page, followed by an extended Contents that not only lists the composers and titles, but also highlights each piece’s key musical qualities, technical challenges, style and period.
Across the series, the notation is spaciously and superbly engraved, and presumably reproduces the editions which previously appeared in ABRSM’s exam publications. In keeping with the original Encore series, each piece is followed by three short educational footnotes, written by Marshall to support teachers and players.
In the original Encore books these were often slight, but valuable, offering useful insights, lesson and practice activities. In my review at the time I wrote,
“At all levels the suggestions given are creative and highly welcome. Those who follow up on even some of these ideas are likely to find their musical experience transformed for the better.”
If you found those footnotes helpful, you’ll be pleased that in Encore Plus they are still more prominent, generously spaced on the page to allow Marshall’s teaching approach and ideas to shine. Her characteristically warm manner and pedagogic experience are ever present, her contribution significantly elevating these books above ABRSM’s more standard fare.
The first two footnotes again offer “background information on the composer, genre or piece” and “Ideas for activities to explore the music”, while the third has been revamped. This now recommends “scale and arpeggio activities, short sight-reading challenges, theory or musicianship exercises”. Marshall notes that this reflects a concern that learners taking ABRSM’s digital Performance Grades may neglect these core skills.
Meanwhile, one criticism I made of the original series was that, despite the existence of audio recordings produced alongside the previous exam publications, ABRSM did not provide them with Encore. This time round they have rectified the oversight: professional recordings of the full content from all four books are freely available to stream on the major platform of your choice.
The included music
The original purpose of Encore was to bring back favourite pieces from recent exam publications, based on Marshall’s experience, feedback from teachers, and statistics from exam entries.
Happily, in doing so, that series included many of the key influential and most popular composers of the core piano repertoire, alongside lesser-known pedagogic works which had proven popular in the exam room, thereby preserving these in the teaching repertoire: a seemingly perfect blend that immediately established the series as useful curriculum content, well beyond exam use.
The Encore Plus books continue this pattern, although in common with recent ABRSM syllabuses (see my review of the latest ABRSM syllabus here), “the greats” are sometimes represented by less familiar works, while the overall balance of selections gives greater prominence to newer educational compositions, and arrangements commissioned and devised for exam use.
For that reason, though packed with interesting repertoire choices and returning exam favourites, Encore Plus doesn’t in my view deliver quite so compelling and inspiring a musical introduction to the repertoire as the original series, at least prior to the fourth and final book. In any case, here are the listings of pieces in each book:
Encore Plus BOOK ONE
Since the original Encore series, ABRSM have introduced their Initial Grade, and an enlarged Encore Plus Book 1 brings together 27 pieces spanning Initial Grade, Grade 1 and Grade 2:
- The Lost Bone (Yvonne M. Adair)
- Melody in G (Ferdinand Beyer)
- Dodgems (Alan Bullard)
- Detective Wombat Blues (Julie Knerr Hague)
- Sprinkling Stardust (Karen Marshall)
- Gavotte in G (Michael Praetorius)
- The Waltz of the Toads (Kerstin Strecke)
- What shall we do with the drunken sailor? (Trad.)
- Patterns (Heinrich Wohlfahrt)
- Arietta in C (Muzio Clementi)
- Sneaky Business (Martha Mier)
- Never Vex a Tyrannosaurus Rex! (Paul Drayton)
- Løvet faller (Knut Nystedt)
- A Morning Sunbeam (Florence B. Price)
- Minuet, Z. 649 (Henry Purcell)
- The Swing (Chee-Hwa Tan)
- Muss i denn (Trad. German)
- Little Whale Explores the Calm Sea (Caroline Tyler)
- Daydream (Kristina Arakelyan)
- Dusty Blue (June Armstrong)
- Allegretto (1st movt from Sonatina No. 3 in F) (Thomas Attwood)
- Wonderful Tonight (Eric Clapton)
- The Singing Swan (Alexis Ffrench)
- Impertinence, HWV 494 (George Frideric Handel)
- Serenade (Cornelius Gurlitt)
- Tarantella (Agnieszka Lasko)
- Waltz in G (Bedřich Smetana)
This is clearly a distinctive selection, and teachers who enjoyed working on these pieces with candidates in recent years will welcome the reappearance, and the continuing availability of those which landed well with their pupils.
Encore Plus BOOK TWO
Encore Plus Book 2 similarly revisits music from recent Grade 3 and Grade 4 syllabus publications, serving up an appealing selection of exam-benchmarked music that would be difficult, expensive, and in some cases impossible to source elsewhere.
- Anastasia (Ailbhe McDonagh)
- Minuet in G, BWV Anh. II 116 (Anon.)
- Where is love? (Lionel Bart)
- L’harmonie des anges (Johann Friedrich Franz Burgmüller)
- Vivace (from Sonatina in C, Op. 36 No. 1) (Muzio Clementi)
- Indigo (Paul Harris)
- Blues in the Attic (Nikki Iles)
- The Entertainer (simplified)(Scott Joplin)
- Bransle de la torche (Michael Praetorius)
- Pentatonic Tune (Béla Bartók)
- The Reef (Walter Carroll)
- Sonata in G, C. 34 (Domenico Cimarosa)
- Canción para dormir una muñeca (Antonio Estévez)
- Buried Rubies (Alison Mathews)
- Ninette’s Musette (George Nevada)
- Erster Verlust (Robert Schumann)
- Bourrée (Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel)
- Allegretto (from Sonatina in A, Op. 41 No. 12) (Johann Baptist Vanhal)
Encore Plus BOOK THREE
Highlights of Encore Plus Book 3 include David Önaç’s A Distant Star in the Stillness (an ABRSM commission which proved a favourite with my students when it previously appeared), Oskar Merikanto’s delicious and popular Valse Lente, and Karen Tanaka’s gorgeously effective Lavender Field.
To my mind, it’s such inclusions that make the series so tempting and worthwhile, and there are many other returning delights in this volume:
- Film Noir (Mike Cornick)
- Andante in A, Hob. I:53/II (Joseph Haydn)
- Mister Trumpet Man (from New Orleans Jazz Styles) (William Gillock)
- Cavalryman: Op. 27/29 (Dmitry Borisovich Kabalevsky)
- Wind in the Willows (Bernadette Marmion)
- A Distant Star in the Stillness (David Önaç)
- Sonata in A, K. 323 (L. 95) (Domenico Scarlatti)
- Jester’s Jig (Chee-Hwa Tan)
- Chant de l’alouette (Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky)
- Over the Rainbow (Harold Arlen / Edgar Yipsel Harburg)
- Liten Fugl (Edvard Grieg)
- Allegro from Sonatina in C, Op. 20 No. 1 (Friedrich Kuhlau)
- Valse lente, Op. 33 (Oskar Merikanto)
- Opening Night Jazz (Martha Mier)
- Invention No. 6 in E (Johann Sebastian Bach)
- Scherzo in B flat (Franz Schubert)
- Sonata alla Scarlatti (Germaine Tailleferre)
- Lavender Field (Karen Tanaka)
Encore Plus BOOK FOUR
The final book in the series continues the pattern, and includes several pieces that will make the volume particularly attractive to Grade 8 pianists.
Highlights include Ni Hongjin’s Cradle Song, the brilliant Bartók Rondo (such a hit when it appeared in the Grade 8 syllabus a few years ago), Billy Mayerl’s evergreen Autumn Crocus, and J.P. Johnson’s (rather challenging) Over the Bars:
- Bagatelle in E flat Op. 33/1 (Ludwig van Beethoven)
- Canope (Claude Debussy)
- Andante espressivo Op. 62/1 (Felix Mendelssohn)
- Pink Minor (Madeleine Dring)
- Allemande and Courante (from Suite in D minor, HWV 437) (George Frideric Handel)
- Cradle Song (from Suite of the Zhuang People’s Village) (Ni Hongjin)
- Allegro (from Sonata No. 6 in A) (Domenico Paradies)
- Rondo (No. 1 from Three Rondos on Folk Tunes) (Béla Bartók)
- Sarabande and Gigue (from English Suite No. 2 in A minor, BWV 807) (Johann Sebastian Bach)
- Étude in D flat, Op. 41 No. 5 (Louise Farrenc)
- Waltz in B minor, Op. 69 No. 2 (Fryderyk Chopin)
- Alla Turca (from Sonata in A, K. 331) (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)
- Autumn Crocus (Billy Mayerl)
- Over the Bars (James P. Johnson)
- Prelude and Fugue in B flat (Clara Schumann)
Closing thoughts
While the first series of Encore provided inspirational core curriculum material, there’s something more overtly “exam oriented” about the selections this time around. ABRSM themselves characterise Encore Plus as,
“An ideal resource for Performance Grade own-choice pieces”.
The series is unquestionably ideal for this, even though it may prove less appealing to teachers who take a less exam-oriented approach to piano education. The difference between these books and the first series is not necessarily that the music is less worthwhile, but that the collection feels more closely shaped by the needs of exam preparation than by the broader aim of introducing pianists to brilliant repertoire.
Teachers may thus want to position these books somewhat differently within the overall resources they use: as exceptionally useful repositories of approved Performance Grade repertoire, rather than necessarily as a core material in themselves. And happily, the books can comfortably be used alongside other collections, as Karen Marshall herself notes in her Welcome:
“I have worked carefully to avoid duplicating pieces from other compilations, making this a distinctive selection for teachers and students.”
That’s another great reason for acquiring these books (and I’m pleased that she has consciously avoided duplication with my own Joy of Graded Piano books, thereby adding to the value of both series). For teachers who like to have a large and varied collection of music at their disposal, the series delivers a highly tempting mix of pieces that might otherwise be lost to players and studios.
For enthusiasts of ABRSM exams, I suspect the Encore Plus series will quickly establish itself as an essential set of books to keep close at hand. And for pianists and educators more generally, these books equally offer an outstanding resource for varied and interesting supplementary repertoire.
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