Piano Duets – Page 2

Dusk of Day, Dawn of Night

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

Nikolas Sideris is a composer of formidable musical intelligence and imagination who is perhaps best known for his extraordinary duet collection Fairyland in Treble.

Reviewing that collection, I concluded:

“I must say that this book stands out as being VERY special indeed. It’s truly an essential purchase.”

Fans of that duet book will undoubtedly be delighted to know that its successor, The Dusk of Day, The Dawn of Night, is now available. So let’s take a look…

Mike Cornick’s ‘Dinner for Two’

Pianodao Music Library

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

Mike Cornick remains one of our most prolific piano composers, and one who has made a very substantial contribution to the popular piano duet literature.

His latest release, Dinner for Two, subtitled “Romantic arrangements for piano duet”, continues his best-selling “for two” series which began with 2010’s Tea for Two and has now grown to 7 titles.

As ever, the book is brought to us by Universal Edition. Let’s take a look inside…

Piano Sketches & Duets

Pianodao Music Library

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

With so many great new educational piano music publications on the market, it is becoming easy to miss or overlook some genuinely top-drawer material. And of the many collections to be published over the last few years, Vitalij Neugasimov’s two books of Piano Sketches are among those that you really DON’T want to miss!

Publishers Oxford University Press (OUP) have now added two new volumes of duets to the series, appropriately titled Piano Sketches Duets 1 and 2, providing the perfect opportunity to explore the whole series.

OUP do seem to have the Midas touch when it comes to selecting sure-fire winners to publish. Their many best-sellers include the Nikki Iles Jazz Series, Janet & Alan Bullard’s brilliant Pianoworks, and of course Pauline Hall’s Piano Time range of method books, which despite stiff competition remains one of the UK’s favourite piano tutor books.

So let’s see whether the Piano Sketches series compares favourably…

8 Great Piano Duet Books

Pianodao Music Library

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

The Piano Duet is a musical genre that I have explored too little with my students in the past, so a few years ago I decided to stock up on a few duet books.

Finding excellent material for more advanced students was easy enough, given the wonderful works for “One Piano Four Hands” by such classical greats as Mozart, Schubert, Brahms, Debussy, Poulenc et al. But finding good material for beginners and intermediate players proved far more difficult.

Fast forward to 2016 and that gap in the market has been addressed by a succession of simply great publications over the last few years. Here is my selection of some of the best, which I hope you will go ahead and explore for yourselves!