Editions Musica Ferrum – Page 2

The Mosaic Series

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
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Mosaic is a series currently comprising four music books, each showcasing fresh and varied repertoire newly commissioned and composed by piano educators from around the world.

The pieces are loosely graded, arranged in order of difficulty, compiled as books suitable for elementary, intermediate and advanced players, and published by Editions Musica Ferrum. A fifth book (reaching towards Grade 8 level) is currently planned.

I am honoured to be one of the composers featured in all four books, alongside such well-established names as Barbara Arens, Ben Crosland, June Armstrong and others.

The collections are a natural addition to the Pianodao Music Library, and while I obviously cannot ‘review’ them in quite the usual way, this article will introduce the series with an overview of the concept, several recordings, and hopefully sufficient information for readers to decide whether to take a closer look.

Josh Winiberg: Change

Pianodao Music Library

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
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UK-based composer Josh Winiberg’s album Change was released back in 2018, delivering ten tracks of contemporary music in the vein of the hugely popular Ludovico Einaudi, who Winiberg respects and acknowledges as an important influence.

Winiberg’s ten compositions were originally recorded with piano, string quintet, guitars and electronics. It is a measure of the popularity of the recording and the quality of its music that a solo transcription for piano has now been published by Editions Musica Ferrum, the subject of this review.

Adventures & Accolades

Pianodao Music Library

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
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Composer James Welburn (whose Musical Escapades I have reviewed here, and Reflections in Waltz reviewed here) continues to impress with his latest publication.

Written “for the aspiring virtuoso”, this new addition to Welburn’s catalogue is alliteratively titled Adventures & Accolades. Comprising 14 short pieces, the collection is once again brought to us by the ever-brilliant Editions Musica Ferrum, while the recordings of the pieces are available here:

In common with Welburn’s previous two publications, the music is suitable for intermediate players, although the pieces here are shorter than in his earlier collections, and have a wider variety of style, tending perceptibly towards the more jazzy.

Sound Stories, Riddles, Puzzles and Plays

Pianodao Music Library

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
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The brilliantly inventive music of Bulgarian pianist and composer Borislava Taneva has steadily become one of the jewels of the Editions Musica Ferrum catalogue.

Taneva’s music appears in the Mosaic books (which I have featured here and will revisit as the series continues to grow), and she has three titles of her own: Sound Stories (2016), and two volumes entitled Riddles, Puzzles and Plays.

Taneva’s music is strikingly creative, and the seam of pedagogy running though it is not simply good: it’s truly inspiring. So read on for a full review and overview…

Simon Hester: Scenes from the Movies

Pianodao Music Library

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
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When I reviewed Simon Hester’s Megabytes from Editions Musica Ferrum a couple of years back, I was immensely impressed with his music, concluding that it was,

“…an absolutely brilliant and hugely creative collection: strongly recommended!”

Hester has a new collection available, again published by Musica Ferrum.

Scenes from the Movies delivers 8 new pieces suitable for advanced players (UK Grades 6-8), inspired by classic cinema.

Let’s find out whether it has “box office hit” written all over it…

Markus Schimpp: Yearning for Silence

Pianodao Music Library

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
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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…

250 Piano Pieces for Beethoven

Pianodao Music Library

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
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Just in time for the 250th anniversary of the birth Beethoven (1770-1827), Editions Musica Ferrum have published the tenth and final volume in their series 250 Piano Pieces for Beethoven, surely one of the most ambitious musical projects of recent years.

In this article I will offer an overview and brief review of the ten volumes before including a short interview with Musica Ferrum founder Nikolas Sideris…

Garreth Brooke • Healing

Pianodao Music Library

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
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Garreth Brooke is a talented English composer currently living and working in Germany. He has been publishing recordings of his music on Soundcloud, Bandcamp and elsewhere for several years, gaining an appreciative audience drawn to the new-classical style and emotive qualities of his writing and playing.

In this review, it’s my pleasure to review the most recent publication of Garreth’s music, appearing under his alias Garreth Broke: Healing and published by Editions Musica Ferrum.