Piano The Books

This book is a complete survey of all of Bela Bartok's solo piano literature. For each piece (including every piece in Mikrokosmos), it includes detailed notes on the music and its background, playing tips, and ratings of technical and musical difficulty. The book also includes information about Bartok's musical notation and style. Not only are we told which music publishers have each piece in print, but it also includes complete descriptions of the available anthologies of Bartok's music.

The information provided by pianist David Yeomans is of very high quality, and I found his difficulty ratings, in particular, extremely accurate and helpful when selecting works for practice. This book is a must for anyone who loves to play Bartok's music, no matter what your level of playing ability.

Only the information on the recordings is out of date, but this is rendered moot by the fact that all of Bartok's solo piano works are available on CD in the excellent renditions by Gyorgy Sandor.

As an experienced piano teacher, I absolutely love this book. The exercises are predictable melody patterns (CDEFGFEDC), but the rhythms get more challenging at a very comfortable, yet challenging pace. If your student is having rhythm or counting problems, from level 2 on, I would highly recommend this jewel of a book.

This was a good book; very musical, nicely written. What I remember the most is the storyline and plot of this book. I liked how it was written about the friendship between a broken, proud pianist and a an ordinary but obviously musically-talented boy. In the end I even wrote a story about something similar.

The best part of this book was the way it related to the lives of these two characters - strong, willful characters - to the music and life of Beethoven. I'm not big fan of Beethoven (I'm more Mozart and Chopin) but Beethoven's personality was an awesome, heroic, not-easily-understood one.

The only thing I can critisize this book is on its price. For God's sake, it's $8.95 USD, which I don't believe is sensible at all because this book is neither historical fiction nor biographical. $8.95, which translates to about $13 CAN, is rather ridiculous for a book with this cover and binding.

Having compared this piano series to the more recent Faber, Alfred and Leonard, I have to say this is one of the most reasonable and sound (pedagogically speaking) ways of learning how to play piano. Each component of this series (technic, theory, piano and performance) when used TOGETHER provide a solid musical foundation whether you wish to one day play at Carnegie Hall or you just want a good solid musical foundation. All books reinforce taught concepts and students start on black keys then progress to certain piano "positions" of key of C,F,G and so forth. Great value and if you wish to incorporate more modern pop music (this has its own various styles of supplemental music) you can do so easily. One nice thing is that this series seems to progress faster than other series so you save money in the long run while getting the same conceptual material. Good value with great theory backing it.

From Wild West Boogie to Tijuana Trolley all 18 songs are great. I really enjoyed learning to play piano with this book. If you are a beginner to piano and are wondering where to start the Bastien Piano books are a great start. When I started I had no clue what series to start with. The Bastien or the Kasschau series? Should I do Theory or just skip it? All of these questions, and more, flipped through my head. This is the place to start. The Bastien Piano Basics books are great. I learned how to play piano by them. 3 years later I am a great piano player and I really enjoy it. This Book is a great one of the series because it has some sonds that you know, like La Cucaracha and The Washington Post March, and some you don't, but will still enjoy, like Jumping Jacks and Fireworks. This is a great book for everyone to enjoy.

As an older adult learning to play piano for the first time in her life, I have totally enjoyed the Bastien Piano books. It isn't childish and the instruction is well written. I have found them to be easy to use, although no adult book series really covers all the material that you might receive with a real instructor. As I move into level 3, I have found some 'gaps' in my education but have used other materials to try and fill in those spaces. I will never give a concert, but I have found great joy in learning to play over the last couple of years.

I really like this book, the arrangemets are simple but very weel done so that it sounds very nice. Its good for young learners and grownups like me who have a few skills left from childhood peiano lessons but don't have patience too play more challengin music.

I have a few of the other books in this series and find them all great! John Valerio is a wonderful composer and teacher and has a very similar style to Mark Harrison (another composer in this series). This book includes important information about chords, voicings, harmony, chord progressions, scales, tonality, melodic figures and patters, comping, characteristic tunes, styles of Bud Powell and Theolonious Monk...anything that is used in any type of bebop jazz. It goes through the history and evolution of Bebop. The book moves quickly but provides the information that is important. It comes with a very handy CD which allows to hear what it's supposed to sound like. I highly recommend this book and have found that using it with some of the other books in the series is beyond helpful!

Wilfred Mellers casts the most breadthtaking perspective on Beethoven, ever. Well, we do have Tovey, so take a bit of that breadth away.. and so many enlightening recordings, countless opportunities to hear the great living performers.

Back to Mellers:his brilliantly lit path, a trajectory, travels primarily through the piano sonatas, leading to the ulitmate work: the Missa Solemnis.

If you want to know the truth about Beethoven, in the purests of terms, this is The Book.

And if you want your Beethoven Piano Sontatas wildly true, Get Annie Fischer's complete setBeethoven: Complete Piano Sonatas; add Timothy Ehlen's Op.101, and any of Angela Hewitt's Beethoven work (start now with the disk of her 10/3, 7, and 57,Beethoven: Piano Sonatas, Opp. 57 "Appassionata", 10/3, 7 and look for more she may have yet to introduce.

Timothy WilsonKeeping Score: Revolutions in Music - Beethoven's Eroica

Could write forever about Beethoven but I'm hungry, if not, at least somewhat, Hungarian.

T

This is an excellent and very low cost means to obtain this work for solo study. Enjoy the ability to play both orchestra and piano, especially the 2nd movement.