Universal Edition

Mike Cornick’s Grieg Favourites

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
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Mike Cornick is perhaps best known for his contributions to the repertoire of jazz-styled solo, duet and ensemble music, and I have previously reviewed several of his publications, all of which are available from Universal Edition.

Cornick’s more recent duet collections have steered towards arrangements of popular classics, and the latest continues this trend.

Mike Cornick’s Grieg Favourites is a sequel to the earlier Elgar Favourites collection, reviewed here, and offers an inspiring selection of new arrangements that are suitable for players around UK Grades 4-7 level, and which are sure to engage performers and their audience alike.

Paul Harris’s Purple Piano House

Pianodao Music Library

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

Paul Harris is known worldwide as one of today’s foremost music educators and I have reviewed numerous publications bearing his name on Pianodao before.

Harris’s latest is unusual indeed, which perhaps need not surprise us given his incredibly fertile mind and innovative creativity.

The Purple Piano House, published by his own Queen’s Temple Publications and subtitled “A Musical Adventure for Pianists” is a delightful story-with-music book which is sure to charm younger players, and offers several intriguing pedagogic possibilities.

The story itself is written by Sam Edenborough, and the book includes illustrations by Jasper Pye. Let’s join them on an adventure…

Mike Cornick • A Piano Sketchbook

Pianodao Music Library

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

Mike Cornick has a long-established reputation as the master of what might once have been called “light music”: easy-going melodic pieces offering a smooth blend of classical, jazz and popular styles, equally accessible to player and listener alike.

I have previously reviewed many of Cornick’s publications, including the more jazzy collections Blues in Two and more, Ragtime Blues and more and Six Jazz Piano Solos, as well as his duet collections Elgar Favourites and Dinner for Two, titles from which you will probably already have deduced Cornick’s musical versatility and the basis of his significant mainstream appeal.

Cornick’s latest collection is called A Piano Sketchbook, and offers a pot-pourri of six assorted intermediate piano solos in a range of jazz and Latin styles…

Egon Wellesz: Sechs Klavierstücke op.26

Pianodao Music Library

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
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Egon Wellesz is one of those great pioneers of 20th century music who perhaps hasn’t yet been given his due either by historians or audiences.

Wellesz’s Sechs Klavierstücke (Six Piano Pieces) op.26 were composed in 1919 but are only now, a century later, appearing in print as a complete work. Perhaps finally their significance within the music to have emerged from Vienna in those decisive early decades of the twentieth century will finally be recognised…

Martin Doepke: Piano Tales

Pianodao Music Library

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
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Born in Cologne in 1957, Martin Doepke has made a big name for himself in Germany as a collaborative keyboard player, recording musician and, since the late 1980’s, composing for theatre and TV productions. He has also taught popular music at the Rheinische Musikschule in Cologne since 1990.

Piano Tales is Doepke’s first published collection of solo piano music from Universal Edition. The book includes three pieces adapted from his hit German musical version of Beauty and the Beast (not to be confused with the Disney one!) as well as ten other original pieces about which the composer writes,

“The pieces in the present volume were written at different times over the years and in various places. They reflect my love of classical music and my passion for film music and musicals. Apart from the three taken from my musical Beauty and the Beast the pieces are not connected.
Each tells a short story. Some are playfully romantic, others are rather mystically melancholic or have a pulsing rhythm. Their styles span today’s music genres and call for a love of musical variety and diversity.”

This is certainly a good summary, but let’s take a closer look and listen…

Igudesman’s ‘Insectopedia’

Pianodao Music Library

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
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Aleksey Igudesman is perhaps best known as one half of inventive and irreverent classical duo Igudesman and Joo, who have taken the world by storm with their unique and hilarious theatrical shows, combining comedy with classical music and popular culture.

Igudesman and Joo’s YouTube clips have to date gathered over 35 million hits, and the duo has appeared live and on television in numerous countries.

But there’s a lot more to St Petersburg-born Igudesman, who describes himself variously as “The World’s Most Ambiguously Inglorious Composer”, “Most Accidentally Immoral Producer” and “Most Attractively Intense Violininst”.

Insectopedia is one of Igudesman’s latest projects, a collection of ten insect-inspired solo piano pieces for the intermediate pianist (the book would suit players around UK Grade 4) which aim to be as educational as they are entertaining.

From the rear cover of the beautifully presented Universal Edition publication, global superstar pianist Yuja Wang tell us:

“Reminiscent of Bartók’s Mikrokosmos, you will have a lot of fun with this little album. In fact, the more you are involved, the more fun you will have with it. The music in Insectopedia is so vivid that you feel like you are becoming one of the insects. Well, perhaps not the cockroach, but try not to fly away after playing it!”

Well that got my attention! Intrigued? Let’s check it out…

Agnieszka Lasko: Little Stories

Pianodao Music Library

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
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Once in a while a music book comes my way which quite simply “blows me away”, and such a book is Little Stories, a new collection of 16 late elementary pieces by Polish composer Agnieszka Lasko, published by Euterpe and distributed by Universal Edition.

With it’s truly lush illustrations and presentation of Lasko’s highly original and attractive compositions, the book is a natural winner. The inclusion in several pieces of opportunities for children to improvise and compose takes the book to another level again, making it a truly essential addition to the childrens’ pedagogic literature.

Let’s take a closer look…

Mike Cornick’s Elgar Favourites

Pianodao Music Library

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
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In addition to Mike Cornick’s new solo piano collection Ragtime Blues and more (which I recently reviewed here), Universal Edition have just published his latest collection for one piano, four hands: Elgar Favourites arranged for Piano Duet.

As one expects from this fine writer,, it’s a collection that’s well worth a look, so let’s take one…