PWM Edition – Page 3

The Most Beautiful Paderewski

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

Music from Chopin’s Land
In 2020, I was commissioned by PWM Edition to record five films showcasing educational piano music by Polish composers. Captivated by my new musical discoveries, I have continued to independently explore and review the music of Chopin’s land…

Most piano lovers will of course have heard of Ignacy Paderewski: a seminal figure from the “golden age” of the piano whose brilliant career as a touring virtuoso was interrupted when he became Poland’s Prime Minister from 1919-21.

Aside from the popular Minuet in G (which I will be discussing in the tutorial film below) however, his fabulous and highly accessible piano music is far too little-known…

Feliks Rybicki: I Begin to Play

Pianodao Music Library

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

The piano educational music of Feliks Rybicki is one of the great treasures of the pedagogic repertoire, and deserves to be known by teachers and students everywhere. Let me tell you more…

Filming “Music from Chopin’s Land”

Pianodao Music Library

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

Back in May, I received an email from my friend Tracey Connell suggesting I might be interested in a collaborative project with the legendary Polish publishing house PWM Edition: Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne. And so began an unexpected journey…

PWM Edition (for short) were commissioning well-known piano teachers from France, Italy, Germany, Japan and the UK to film a short series of promotional tutorial videos supporting their range of educational piano music.

Would I like to fly out to Poland and feature in the English films?

Though this seemed a slightly surreal suggestion in the middle of a global pandemic, I sensed that taking part would give me something to shift my focus in a positive direction. And my excitement grew further when, a few days later, an enticing box of music arrived from Kraków.

Quite apart from selecting the five pieces/collections that I would like to discuss in my films, I was immediately taken with many of the other titles. How come this music isn’t better known here in the UK?

Bacewicz: Children’s Suite

Pianodao Music Library

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

Grażyna Bacewicz (1909-1969) is at last gaining the recognition she deserves as one of the great composers of the mid-twentieth century, her towering Second Sonata rightly applauded as one of the significant piano masterpieces of the last century.

Among the composer’s many smaller-scale piano works the Suita dziecięca or Children’s Suite is a delightful highlight, its eight charming miniatures for the late-intermediate pianist a fascinating progression from the educational piano music of Bartók, Kabalevsky and Prokofiev, whose popular Musiques d’enfants reviewed here appeared just one year after Bacewicz’s Suite.

Poland’s major publishing house Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne, PWM Edition, have recently delivered a delightful new edition of the work, edited by Monika Dziurawiec and with a gorgeous cover design by Joanna Rusinek.

Let’s look at this new publication and delve into the imaginative pianism of Bacewicz, not least because this important work surely deserves a place within the core pedagogic repertoire that every piano teacher should try to be aware of…