Playing Repertoire

In Praise of Cream Paper

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Reflection by Andrew Eales

Among the positive differences this website has sought to encourage, the growing adoption of cream paper by music publishers is to be celebrated.

Regular readers are sure to have noticed that I typically include information about paper quality and colour when reviewing music books; some will be glad for this tidbit of information, while others may wonder why it matters, or if indeed it matters at all.

Is the use of cream paper simply an odd, even slightly elitist, anachronism? Actually, no. So let’s consider the noteworthy advantages of using cream paper for music printing and publications…

Why The Classics Still Matter

Fermata • Pause and Reflect

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Reflection by Andrew Eales

When considering a pupil’s stated musical interests, an expectation can easily take hold that they are unlikely to be interested in playing classical music. But as the great composer and educator Zoltan Kodály wisely cautioned:

“Let us take our children seriously!
Only the best is good enough for a child.”

A commitment that “only the best is good enough” should ensure that music which is second-rate or pedagogically weak stays on the shelf.

Meanwhile, the core classics, while not exclusively “the best”, surely (and by definition) have continuing educational importance. And if piano teachers don’t enthusiastically communicate the many glories of our repertoire, who on earth will?

Our work as piano teachers fundamentally involves expanding the horizons of each student’s musical knowledge and experience, taking them to territory they are unlikely to explore without a competent guide.

The Piano Jukebox

Fermata • Pause and Reflect

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Reflection by Andrew Eales

The prevalence of pop, game and film tunes in simplified piano arrangements in the latest syllabus publications from ABRSM and Trinity College has led to a healthy debate among teachers and players.

Such arrangements are of course nothing new. It is simply that we are now freshly encountering them in a different context, giving rise to lively discussion about their suitability, broader musical and educational value.

There are issues here that need to be considered carefully, with appropriate attention to context.

Embracing our limits

Fermata • Pause and Reflect

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Reflection by Andrew Eales

“Every river has its banks, every ocean has its shores. Constant expansion is not possible. Everything reaches its limits, and the wise always try to identify these limits.”

Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao Daily Meditations

I love this metaphor of the river: it is the banks which give it direction, focus its energetic flow, and encourage it towards its destination. It doesn’t want to burst its banks, and quickly dissipates when flooding causes it to. How much better to flow where its banks lead.

The shores of the ocean, meanwhile, are ultimately the boundaries which define it. The shoreline is a point of safety, security, a haven from the deep. And while I often remind students that piano playing is the journey of a lifetime, without destination, we all need to spend time in port, resupplying our vessels and finding refreshment.

The desire to push beyond our natural limits may have become an endemic demand in every field of human endeavour, but there is surely little doubt this attitude is responsible for many of the problems we face. So how can we come to terms with our limitations and leverage them to our advantage?

When East Meets West

Fermata • Pause and Reflect

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Reflection by Andrew Eales

In his foreword to Wing-Tsit Chan’s A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, published in 1963 by Princeton University Press (and still one of the outstanding collections of Chinese philosophical writing in English translation) Charles A. Moore writes:

“One of the hopeful signs in these otherwise hectic times in which we are living is the long-overdue realisation of the need for mutual understanding between the peoples of the East and those of the West. Genuine understanding of people who are separated from us by great distances or who are different from us in language, in way of life, in social custom, is difficult to achieve, even for those who are sincerely dedicated to this task.”

In the six decades since Moore wrote these inspiring words, I wonder how far we have come. Here in the 2020’s, have our continents, countries and communities become more tolerant, more open to the ideas and culture of others? It seems to me that, perhaps, we still have quite a distance to cover.

Ever since my very first post to launch the Pianodao site back in 2015, I have continued in my efforts to apply the wisdom of Eastern philosophy to piano playing and education. As a music reviewer, pianist and teacher, I have also increasingly discovered the wonderful benefits of developing a more inclusive, extended core performance and pedagogy repertoire.

Why use Graded Anthologies?

Pianodao Articles • Full Archive

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Written by Andrew Eales

It’s no secret that I have a somewhat ambivalent attitude towards graded music exams. Certainly, many of my students have found them positive, and over the years it’s been a joy to watch players that I have taught getting distinctions, with plenty of success stories across all eight ABRSM grades and beyond.

But while supporting independent assessment for its recognition and celebration of achievement, I am less enthusiastic about the extent to which a syllabus can skew the curriculum and compartmentalise learning. Worse, pressure (explicit or implicit) to take regular exams can for some cast a long shadow over what should be a joyous journey.

When it comes to graded anthologies however, I am absolutely a fan! These seem to me to offer most of the benefits of a progressive graded system, with few of the problems that mitigate against effective musical learning, and none of the exam-based issues that can so easily discourage and demotivate players.

Here are four key benefits of using graded anthologies which I value, and which students have clearly found helpful over the years, followed by recommendations of some of the very best graded anthologies available today.

The Appeal of Einaudi’s Music

Pianodao Articles • Full Archive

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Written by Andrew Eales

The inspiration for this article came from a discussion with my wife Louise, who is a clinical specialist in mental health; I am immensely grateful for her insights, which are peppered throughout.

I was recently amused by a message I received from a parent of one of my teenage students, who contacted me saying,

“I thought this might make you smile. Over the last 7-10 days I have never heard the piano practised so much. A beautiful piece which I am told is called Nuvole Bianche. When I enquired why I was hearing more practise I was told (and I quote) ‘it’s a proper piano piece’.”

It’s a story which I am sure could be echoed by many of my colleagues, both in communities up and down this country, and far beyond. And yet, many of my musician friends seem to regard Einaudi’s music with a sniffy contempt, a disdain that appears out of proportion to any offence it could possibly have caused.

In some cases this is undoubtedly rooted in a sense of injustice that he has enjoyed such commercial success from doing, in their view, so little.

More often perhaps, they are baffled that music so lacking in the complexity they themselves enjoy could be so highly prized by others. According to this view, Einaudi’s work is, at best, a gateway that might lead the uninitiated into the more rewarding musical territory that they inhabit, albeit a gateway they personally prefer to position themselves a very long way away from.

To adopt such a viewpoint is potentially to deprive ourselves of a deeper understanding of what it is exactly that makes Einaudi’s music so very appealing, and to so many. And if we can understand that, we might be better equipped to perform and teach Einaudi’s music with sympathetic intelligence, and more effectively decipher and communicate with audiences when promoting other music.

Playing like the Winter Sun

Fermata • Pause and Reflect

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Reflection by Andrew Eales

Those looking to “catch some rays” might head for an exotic tropical beach if they can, but as I drove an early morning errand a few days ago I was struck by the purity of the winter sun blazing brightly, but low, on the horizon.

The fact that in winter months the sun is lower in the sky doesn’t change its essential nature or dim its brightness, even though cloud cover might. On a clear morning, the low angle of the sun only makes it seem brighter. Blinding, even.

The low winter sun is just as virtuosic as the blazing beast of the equator. The difference of course, is the angle of view, the more modest apex, the changed attitude towards altitude.

Lingering awhile with friends

Fermata • Pause and Reflect

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Reflection by Andrew Eales

“Morning rain in Wencheng dampens rising dust.
Sprouting willows colour the guest house green.
Sir, let us drain another cup of wine.
Once you’re west of Yang Gate, you’ll have no friends.”

Seeing Yuan Er off on a mission to Anxi, Wang Wei (699-759)
translated Deng Ming-Dao, Each Journey Begins with a Single Step (2018)

This simple, if somewhat oblique verse has been bearing down on my thoughts in recent weeks. Ever since encountering it, it has stuck in my mind as a salient reminder of the importance of cultivating lasting relationships and savouring friendships.

It is also, in context, fundamentally a poem about going on a journey…

What Can You Play?

Pianodao Articles • Full Archive

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Written by Andrew Eales

One of the major stumbling blocks for players is that we too often feel that we are struggling, making little progress, and perhaps just haven’t got what it takes to become a “good player” (however we define what that is).

To enjoy playing an instrument, we need to move beyond this negative self-talk. And I suggest that one of the most easy and powerful ways we can achieve this is to adjust the balance between working and playing during our personal piano time.

Which brings us to the question,

“What can you play?”