Educational Resources
Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
Created by leading educator Paul Harris and brought to us by Faber Music, “Practice Starters” is an innovative pack of cards which aims to kick start and refresh your practice sessions. As we’ll see, it’s a great learning resource, and a lot of fun!..
Continue reading Practice Starters – Pick a Card!Pianodao Music Library
Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
Christopher Norton is very deservedly one of the most famous and beloved educational composers alive today. Perhaps best known for his ground-breaking and million-selling ‘Microjazz’ series, Norton has added many other outstanding collections to his list of publications, with material for pianists at every level.
His piano “Preludes” series from Boosey & Hawkes has proved popular with players at an early advanced level (around UK Grades 7-8), with genre-based collections that include ‘Jazz Preludes’, ‘Rock Preludes’, ‘Latin Preludes’ and ‘Country Preludes’. To these, Norton has also added the more exotic ‘Eastern Preludes Collection’…
Continue reading Christopher Norton: Eastern PreludesSupporting Piano Education
Article written by Andrew Eales
Lack of practice is an issue that most piano players grapple with at some point – and it is something that teachers don’t always handle graciously and with understanding…
Continue reading Let’s talk about our practice expectationsPianodao Music Library
Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
21 Amazingly Easy Pieces is an original collection of new pieces by Barbara Arens, published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 2014, which has recently come to my attention, and I am seriously impressed with it.
Composer Barbara Arens is a passionately dedicated piano teacher. She began her studies at the Mozarteum in Salzburg at the age of 13. After a concert career performing primarily as harpsichordist and organist, she now puts her diverse abilities and experiences into composing for her piano
pupils. She presently lives near Würzburg, Germany, after living in Beirut, Dallas, San Francisco, Singapore, Salzburg, London and Munich.
Knowing that Barbara has such extensive experience – of performing, of teaching, and of the world – gave me high hopes for these books, and I was not disappointed.
Continue reading 21 Amazingly Easy PiecesPianodao Wellbeing
Article written by Andrew Eales
András Schiff, surely one of the most respected concert pianists of our time, made the following extraordinary observation in a recent interview with Pianist Magazine (No.76, Feb-March 2014):
“For me, it is breathing that is vital. You must breathe naturally, like a singer. Pianists and string players often tend to forget the necessity of breathing and they can become very tense; then they get back pains and wrist pains and so on. Usually it can be sorted out through the breathing.”
Breathing is a subject that I have rarely seen discussed in connection with piano technique, and even less so in the context of pianists’ injuries, their causes, cures and corrections. Schiff is hitting on a point that it would seem is indeed too often overlooked.
In this article I will consider the links between natural breathing and Qigong practice, as well as offering a simple breathing exercise that anyone can try…
Continue reading András Schiff & Natural BreathingSupporting Piano Education
Article written by Andrew Eales
The great Russian pedagogue Heinrich Neuhaus (who taught such legendary classical pianists as Radu Lupu, Sviatoslav Richter and Emil Gilels) wrote:
“I consider that one of the main tasks of a teacher is to ensure as quickly and as thoroughly as possible that he is no longer necessary to the pupil; to eliminate himself, to leave the stage in time, in other words to inculcate in the pupil that independent thinking, that method of work, that knowledge of self and ability to reach his goal which we term ‘maturity’, the threshold beyond which begins mastery.”
Heinrich Neuhaus
The Art of Piano Playing, (trans. K.A. Leibovitch, London 1973)
Pianodao Music Library
Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
The latest series of new piano music books from ABRSM promises “great arrangements for easy piano”.
Does it deliver? Let’s take a look…
Continue reading ABRSM’s ‘Piano Mix’Supporting Piano Education
Article written by Andrew Eales
Educators often debate the relative merits of aural-based learning versus a notation-driven approach. Seeing the topic wheeled out for discussion again recently, I was reminded of a brilliant quote by legendary concert pianist Andor Földes, from his book Keys to the Keyboard written in 1950 :
“There is no such thing as a proper age for a child to start playing the piano. I avoid saying ‘to start his musical education’ because I believe that an education in music should start very early, perhaps years before the child ever actually learns how to read notes, or can find his way among the black and white keys.”
Földes’ basic point, made some four decades before George Odam’s seminal book The Sounding Symbol (1995) re-popularised the phrase “sound before symbol”, is that music is essentially an aural language, and that playing and reading must build on that foundation.
Continue reading Sound before symbol: lessons from history
