Late Intermediate Repertoire – Page 13

West Side Story

Pianodao Music Library
Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales

With Steven Spielberg’s acclaimed new movie version of West Side Story arriving at multiplexes around the world, you surely won’t have missed the buzz once again surrounding the great Bernstein/Sondheim masterpiece.

Looking for an accessible piano score, I found that there are more than 300 search results on Musicroom, narrowing down to several piano solo and duet publications. I’ve selected the “intermediate piano solo selections” version for review here, which has been around for a few years, and is linked (via Musicroom) at the end of the short review which follows…

Elena Cobb: Recital Piano Solos

Pianodao Music Library
Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales

Elena Cobb is without doubt one of the single most inspiring educators and committed visionaries that I have ever had the privilege of meeting.

A musical force of nature, she has made a global impact in music education through her Star Prize events at London’s Royal Albert Hall which attract young players from around the world, her festival and awards sponsorships, online networking (her Facebook community for Russian-speaking teachers has more than 10,000 members) and her music publishing.

Building her publishing business EVC Music from scratch, the last decade has seen Cobb supporting new music, in the process launching and expanding the careers of several excellent educational composers. It would be easy to overlook that Cobb is herself an outstanding composer.

Having recently signed to Hal Leonard as global distributors for EVC Music, her music is once again in the spotlight, and there’s never been a better time to remind readers of two excellent collections which showcase Cobb’s own, brilliant creative voice…

Koželuch: Six Easy Sonatas

Pianodao Music Library
Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales

“By 1790, ‘without question the living composer most loved by young and old’ was not Haydn or Mozart but Leopold Koželuch.”

So writes Christopher Hogwood (quoting from Ernst Ludwig Gerber’s Historisch-Biographisches Lexicon der Tonkünstler, Leipzig, 1790) in his deftly compelling introduction to Bärenreiter’s new score Koželuch: Six Easy Sonatas, BA 11565.

This opening claim is not the only surprise in this excellent new publication, which is surely an attractive purchase for anyone teaching intermediate pianists, and for players of all ages at this level. So let’s find out more…

Adrian Lord: Piano Meditations

Pianodao Music Library
Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales

The challenges of self-publishing cannot be overstated, and generally when a composer sends me work they have put together themselves I am left wishing they had found an established publisher to edit, advise, and produce the best score.

Not so in the case of Adrian Lord, whose recently arrived Piano Meditations is so superbly presented that it could even leave those big companies blushing. I am equally happy to report that neither is the collection simply a triumph of style over substance: Lord’s music is absolutely wonderful.

Piano Meditations is a real find. Read on for the full Pianodao review…

Harry T. Burleigh: Through Moanin’ Pines

Pianodao Music Library
Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales

I have pleasure in sharing my recording of a piece I first discovered in the collection Four Early 20th Century Piano Suites by Black Composers, published by Schirmer edition, and which I have subsequently included in my Yorktown Music/Hal Leonard anthology The Joy of Graded Piano: Grade Five collection, which you can find out more about here.

Henry Thacker (“Harry”) Burleigh (1866–1949) was an American composer and professional baritone. As a composer he was a pioneer in the development of a characteristically American music.

Burleigh introduced many classically trained musicians and composers (including Dvořák) to spirituals, while also including this wonderfully rich and expressive music in his own compositions.

Through Moanin’ Pines is the first of the six pieces which make up his 1907 piano suite “From the Southland”, his only solo piano work. The movement is accompanied by the following text:

“Along de desolate roads we pass
Thro’ lonely pines and wither’d grass: –
De win’ moans in de branches tall
An’ a heavy sadness broods o’er all.”

Here is my recording.

Piano: Andrew Eales (Nord Grand, Amber Upright piano)
Recording & Mastering: Ableton Live Suite 11, 22 October 2021

Peaceful Piano Solos • The Series

Pianodao Music Library
Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales

Hal Leonard’s Peaceful Piano Solos series began life in 2018 with an initial title and matching easy piano version, offering the same 30 popular relaxing piano solos.

Peaceful Christmas Piano Solos (which I have already reviewed here) and Peaceful Piano Solos Soundtracks followed the next year. With Peaceful Classical Piano Solos recently joining the range, this seems like a good moment to catch up with the series as a whole.

First, I will introduce each of the books in turn, including their track lists and particular points to note. For information about the Christmas edition, please refer back to my previous review. Later in the review, I will then offer some generic observations about the publications and series as a whole…

Markus Schimpp: Yearning for Silence

Pianodao Music Library
Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales

Markus Schimpp’s recording Yearning for Silence, which was released on the NEOS Music label in 2019, is one of the more interesting albums of original piano music from recent years, melding the post-minimal simplicity of Einaudi with the more advanced (and at times dissonant) harmonic language of the 20th century’s modernist classical composers.

Happily, his full transcriptions of these “33 Approximations of Silence” have recently also been published by the ever-wonderful Editions Musica Ferrum, their sheet music book the subject of this review.

Suitable for early advanced players (the easiest pieces here are around UK Grade 3, but most are closer to Grade 6), I believe this collection will be a superb discovery for many readers, and is certainly my pick of the recent bunch of inventive and evocative miniatures for players at this level.

Let’s take a look, and a listen…

Disney Goes Classical

Pianodao Music Library
Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales

Disney Goes Classical is the latest hit album from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, comprising 15 favourite songs from Disney movies. You can stream it on all the usual platforms, and now you can also play the arrangements from the recently published 72-page accompanying music book…

The “Classical” of the title presumably refers to the fact that the album was recorded by seasoned classical artists (including cameo appearances from guitarist Kaori Muraji and singers Renée Fleming and Matteo Bocelli) rather than a studio orchestra; most of the songs seem to me little changed from the originals.

As such the new music book serves not only as a companion to the RPO recording but as a potentially useful and inspiring collection of some of the most iconic Disney songs.

There’s no shortage of Disney songbooks on the market of course, but this one has special appeal, so let me sprinkle you with fairy dust and we’ll take a tour of this magical publication….