William Baines. Coloured Leaves for piano

Not long ago, searching for new piano sheet music, I saw in the Internet the works by William Baines 'Coloured Leaves' unknown to me. This is a small piano cycle of three pieces: Prelude, Valse, and Still day. It is absolutely charming piano miniatures written in Romantic style. They attracted my attention, as if to take these three pieces separately, they can be played by middle class students (I’m a piano teacher at a music school), and the cycle as a whole suits for a high school program.
Usually, when I introduce the children to new pieces, we also acquaint ourselves with authors’ biographies. It upset me to learn that the life of William Baines was not so rosy and very short. A very young soul begot these compositions. And each of them is like a page of his life.

Here you may find the sheet music of Coloured Leaves

I thought that the pieces, written by their peer, will be very close to the children. The first piece Prelude sounds like a story. It’s expressed in a frequent meter change, emphasis change and even calm rhythm. The second piece is a light and graceful Valse, which firstly seems to be simple, but has many melodic details, and, well performed, can sound very impressive. But most of all I liked the final piece Still day. It’s full of sadness, calm and serenity.
In my opinion, the title 'Coloured Leaves' fits this cycle very well. Although all three pieces have the same romantic mood, they are very different in their genre and character. Therefore, I suggest you performing of the entire cycle. The piece won’t be arid, and, at the same time, it will allow the students to demonstrate their skills to embody different characters and moods.

S. Smith's Piano Music. Grande Fantaisie L' elisire d' amore

This piece is a brilliant piano fantasia on the themes from opera "The Elixir of Love"("L' elisir d'amore") by Donizetti. Smith showed masterfully feelings of the main characters of the opera: affection, coquetry, rivalry, jealousy, and above all, love - and made them festal and playful.
It’s surprisingly, that the composer retained in his piano piece the characters of the opera’s heroes. It seems the author is painting the image of a timid young peasant Nemorino, of the beautiful coquette Adina, dreaming of elevated love, of the cunning and tricky quack Dulkamar; of the brave but ignorant Sergeant Belcore and of many other characters. Following Donizetti, Smith makes his own parody interpretation of the legend about the magic love potion. In an effort to portray different characters, as well as to embody the comicalness of the situation, the author combines in The Grande Fantaisie 'L' elisire d'amore' absolutely contrasting moments, which require different manners of playing. Frequent changes of dynamic nuances, accents, techniques and ways of playing music help to create a vivid and colorful imagery of the piece. And the light, lofty theme of the "love drink" is a unifying element in such a multifarious and variegated work.
Smith has created a great piece - light, refined, but worthy of virtuoso performers and large concert halls.

S. Smith.The Last Rose of Summer

Some time ago I’ve found in the Internet a piece by Sydney Smith with a fascinating title - The Last Rose of Summer ... I have played it often and for a long time and every minute I immersed deeper and deeper in the amazing atmosphere, created in this work. The composer pictured very masterly the image of a lone flower, the summer’s ending and, probably, last hopes of us all.
Through skilful whirling passages, taking the whole piano keyboard, the barely hearable, modest melody begins to appear, gaining strength with its gradual development. Suddenly, the beautiful image appears to my eyes: a flower of astonishing beauty, growing in the stormy ocean among the fading summer’s nature. This defenseless essence makes you unwittingly stop and reflect. What a grace, elegance and therewith power are hidden in this fragile rose! The composer shows with amazing precision her thin, almost transparent petals, the drops of dew, fallen that very morning on the accurate, as if specially cut leaves. It seems you even start feeling the subtle aroma emanating from this plant. And what a tranquility and tenderness come over the listener while the short moments of contemplation! You draw such a strength and endurance from it!
The Last Rose of Summer ... the ending summer... As if it were our farewell to something. But still, the last hope remains in the soul.
That is the very natural beauty, which we usually do not notice, the last hope, which we all so desperately need.

Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto (Piano Transcription)

I love romantic music so much and perform romantic concertos for piano and orchestra with great pleasure! Sometimes I take scores at home, play a piano solo part and imagine the sound of an orchestra. Recently I’ve found scores with the piano transcription of a violin concerto by Mendelssohn. This was a Paraphrase of the composer Sydney Smith. He was able to merge the solo and orchestral part into one unity. Now, I enjoy learning of this piece. I wonder how Smith could keep all the beauty of the concert by Mendelssohn. The piece has practically lost nothing over the only piano sound. On the contrary, such pieces allow the pianists to perform the whole piece by themselves and immerse in the beauty of music. Especially as its difficulty level is not very high and many musicians could enjoy its practicing thus.
While performing of the piano transcription of the Mendelssohn's Violin concerto, you get into the world of a lone, misunderstood human soul, seeking for calm and serenity. I sometimes have this feeling by myself. May be that's why this work is so clear and close to me.

Sydney Smith. Romeo and Juliet

Not so long ago I’ve been looking in the Internet for any piece of music that could touch my heart and soul. And finally I’ve found the fantasy by S. Smith on Shakespeare's tragedy "Romeo and Juliet". Tell me, which woman doesn’t care about love and devotion? I think each one does. Especially when such strong emotions are running high. There’s everything you need in this piece: the first young love, so sincere and ingenuous, the long-standing war between two proud families, who do not want taking the first step towards reconciliation, good and evil, life and death.
All these themes are shown so brilliant and magnificent in the fantasy. Frequent march intonations describe the picture of self-confident young people, going through life bold and proudly. At this moment the music is dynamic and vigorous. A soft, light and melodious tune, which embodies the great feeling of love, changes the lively and bold tone of the march. And this love is mutual! That’s why the simple melody develops gradually into a tremulous theme.
There are some difficult moments in the fantasy Romeo and Juliet, which hold our attention while practicing this work: a rather large number of virtuoso passages, dense texture of music and octave doublings. But what a pleasure you take in surmounting of all these difficulties. You feel like you were involved in this love story, so tragic, but very beautiful.

Guitar Today

In the big concert hall and near the campfire, in the club and at home: guitar is always a guest of honor in any situation of our live and fits into every scenery well. I doubt strongly whether there is any person in the world, who doesn’t love this soft and sincere sound. One of the most wonderful musical instruments had won my heart for ages. Long before I became a pianist I’ve been enchanted with its modulating touching harmony.

Over many centuries the guitar was a faithful companion of human civilization. It changed strongly its size and shape, which may vary greatly, but its purpose is still the same – to amuse the listeners and to give free rein to the performer’s thoughts and feelings. And nowadays it’s really impossible to imagine some musical styles without this instrument: they are recognized as one of the primary instruments in jazz, blues, country and rock music. Guitars, both acoustic and electric, can be played solo and as a part of the instrument background. It should be noted that guitar-concerts enjoy increasingly popularity and a number of guitarists from different genres (classical, rock, jazz and so on) became self-sufficient world-known stars, e.g. Joe Satriani, Eric Clapton, David Gilmour, Ritchie Blackmore and many others.


Download guitar sheet music

As a pianist I can add, that it’s always a great joy for me to play pieces which include the guitar part. Its sound enriches the melody strongly, makes it more vivid and memorable.

Sydney Smith. Fantasia La Traviata for Piano

I'm a big opera fan, you know. And I was so happy, when I’ve found sheet-music by Sydney Smith some time ago! This author has a few fantasies on themes from operas by various composers. I was deeply interested in «La Traviata». I’ve been right looking for music scores my pupils could play at the concert. And I set my choice on this piece. It contains everything what I needed: beautiful music and numerous playing techniques, which can effectively adorn the performance.
The piece’s playing techniques are very diverse. You can work out the chord-playing technique (octaves occur often) by practicing this fantasy. You can demonstrate your skills in playing cantilena (beautiful melodies are enough here). And the musicians, who succeed in fast virtuosic playing, having good fingering techniques, will also enjoy this piece. It has a large number of passages.
So, you can give a very spectacular performance and show all your performing skills due to Fantaisie brillante sur l'opéra de Verdi La Traviata, Op.103, which has everything you may need. And though you have to take some pains in its practicing, believe me, the thing is worth the effort. I recommend it strongly.

Cello and Violin Duo Sheet Music

Metz Ekghern. In the Memory of the Genocide by Hrach'ya Yessayan.

Filled with infinite sorrow this piece shocked me with its acute sharpness and strong emotionality. It involves me into the cruel world, where hate and fear reign, where is no place for love and compassion. While its listening awful images of the ruthless war are raising in my eyes. The anxious strings create a very strained atmosphere that electrifies the listener during the whole piece. Melody interrupted from time to time with knocks gives additionally the feeling of utter despair. It seems to me, that this music is an exact reflection of the inner state of mind of the people from the “lost generation”, these, who lived and grew up just before and right after the World War II: nervous, broken and very sorrowful.

You can listen to the sound sample, download the sheet music for free, and even buy a license to perform or record this striking piece.

And I’m very grateful to the author for this remarkable work, because I think that it’s a very necessary thing – not to go ahead such a terrible fact like genocide – especially nowadays, when people became blind to cruelty and violence happening in the world.

Hans Huber. Eight Pieces for Piano Op.85

The cycle consists of eight piano miniatures. Although pieces are written by the author in the beginning of the XX century, they are composed upon the pattern of romantic music. The titles of pieces, the character of music, rich harmony and used techniques of the musical development testify this.
General feeling of the cycle is joyous and full of optimism: the opening pieces are filled with light and playful images, which gradually lead to a calm, dreamy, melancholy mood.
The composer used various musical tempos (from adagio to vivace), performance techniques (staccato, legato, marcato), registers and rhythmic patterns (along with the even rhythm tied notes, syncopation and polyrhythm are often found here).
Due to this diversity of means of the musical expression the performer has the opportunity to demonstrate his mastery of cantilenas’ technique and his virtuosic playing.

Download sheet music of the Eight Pieces for Piano Op.85

The small size of pieces and the average level of skills allow many performers to include these pieces into their repertoire.

Contemporary Music from Russia

The new music I've recently discovered comes from Russia. Contemporary composer Dmitri Capyrin creates a highly refined and mental music for different instruments.Here I'd like to say a few words about his compositions.

And a Light through Foliage
for Trio (Piano, Flute, Cello)

When I’ve heard this piece for the very first time I was deeply impressed by the excellent mastery of its composer to transmit to the listener such a realistic image of his own impressions. Listening to this music I have dual feelings: on the one hand it is a light inexplicable anxiety, on the other hand it’s a little bit morbid joy that hides in blind corners of the heart, ready to break out at any moment.


House of Cards
for Quartet (Piano, Clarinet, Violin, Cello)

I like this piece very much because of its exceptional fragility and charming lightness. It touches gently the secret chords of my soul, makes me think about how delicate our life is, threatened on every corner of the fatal blow of fate, which invisible hand can destroy it like we destroy the house of cards. With one push. With no regret.

You'd better listen these compositions yourself and download scores of Russian contemporary music, in case you like it.

Shinichi Suzuki about talent

I have the firm belief that there is no inherited talent for music; therefore, we could make a child become either an excellent musician or a tone-deaf person according to the law of ability and principle of the life force activity.

If we do not educate at all, the child will learn nothing. For instance, the talent for music can only be had by cultivating it and can not be achieved by itself. This is my conviction.

If music talent could be acquired naturally, the cultural history of mankind would have been quite different, I am sure.

If a newly bor baby is played a record of a Vivaldi violin concerto every day whenever it cries, the baby will have learned the concerto well after four or five months. The same thing is true if the baby is brought up listening to a Bach concerto.
This method of training is being put into practice today everywhere in Japan.
This fact entirely demolishes the common-sense notions that we have long held about the inborn talents of human beings, since it proves that there is no such thing as a person literally born with a special aptitude, such as an inborn talent for music.

Guitar Sheet Music - Tarrega, Gran Vals

I think almost everybody has heard the famous Nokia tune. It seems as it was the first remarkable ring tone from those times of first mobiles.

I was a bit surprised, when I’d found out, that this is a fragment of Gran Vals by Francisco Tárrega. This piece was written by composer in 1902. A virtuoso guitarist himself, Tárrega is considered as a musician who promoted a classical guitar. His guitar compositions are often performed in recitals and stand first in the guitar repertoire. You may download Gran Vals of Tárrega as many other guitar sheet music, and play these famous measures yourself. If you haven't got which measures I am talking about, see the picture.

Though many composers have written and are continuously writing nice guitar pieces, there is no as much sheet music for the guitar as for the piano. Especially nowadays, it is quite difficult to find some really interesting piece of classical genres, which can be of interest for modern public. And this concerns not guitar only. In the piano repertoire the situation with contemporary music does not look favorable too, as it is very difficult to find new expressive methods nowadays. It is often too difficult for contemporary composers to strike a happy medium between complexity and primitive keeping large scale of expressiveness.

Etude

Once I had to do research in which I interviewed a great number of children from seven to twelve years, who learned to play different instruments. One of the questions I asked was: "Do you like to play etudes?" Some children answered, that they had not played etudes yet, others said that it wouldn’t make any difference to them whether they played an etude or any other piece. But most of them answered that they like to play neither etudes, nor exercises.

What is the reason for such an aversion to compositions of this type? The etudes, which are played by the novice musicians, have many negatives. A lot of etudes don’t have a figurative content. The theme for such an etude is nothing more than a simple melody, performed in the appropriate technique. The uniformity of the texture doesn’t promote the development of the child’s imagination. The expressive tools are limited to a few piano or forte and ritenuto between the middle part and the reprise. At the same time the sheet music of etudes is full of complex elements. The etude becomes faceless, non-emotional for the child. It turns into a mechanically performed burden, like a walk through the desert with a bag of stones on your back.
The question arises why musicians have to play etudes? Perhaps, they do it to learn to perform and improve the quality of a certain type of technique of performing. Meanwhile, one important point is missing. Why do you have to learn the new techniques? Of course, to gain the skills for a variety of compositions. Often, we are able to perform an etude correctly, based on some technique. Problems appear, when that same technique is applied in a piece. Here techniques are interweaved in the musical context of the piece, have a content, the musician must express in his performance, embodying the imagination, whereas playing etudes, many musicians play the appropriate notes without thinking about any expressiveness.

But we must keep in mind, an etude is also a musical work and at the heart of any piece of music is an idea. It is very important to teach the beginner to treat etudes like a concert pieces, which he has to play not only quickly, but also expressively. It goes without saying that the teacher has to select carefully etudes and exercises, selecting the most interesting from a musical point of view. If the etude becomes a music composition of full value for a student, which excersising he will be interested in, the work on the technical skills will be an additional bonus to the exciting study of the music world.

Great pianists. Ferruccio Busoni, part 4

Details of Phrasing and Accentuation
"Some students look upon phrasing as a detail that can be postponed until other supposedly more important things are accomplished. The very musical meaning of any composition depends upon the correct understanding and delivery of the phrases which make that composition. To neglect the phrases would be about as sensible as it would be for the great actor to neglect the proper thought division in the interpretation of his lines. The greatest masterpiece of dramatic literature whether it be Romeo and Juliet, Antigone, La Malade Imaginaire or The Doll's House becomes nonsense if the thought divisions indicated by the verbal phrases are not carefully determined and expressed".

"Great actors spend hours and hours seeking for the best method of expressing the author's meaning. No pianist of ability would think of giving less careful attention to phrasing. How stupid it would be for the actor to add a word that concluded one sentence to the beginning of the next sentence. How erroneous then is it for the pupil to add the last note of one phrase to the beginning of the next phrase.
Phrasing is anything but a detail".

"Fine phrasing depends first upon a knowledge of music which enables one to define the limitations of the phrase and then upon a knowledge of pianoforte playing which enables one to execute it properly. Phrasing is closely allied to the subject of accentuation and both subjects are intimately connected with that of fingering. Without the proper fingers it is often impossible to execute certain phrases correctly. Generally, the accents are considered of importance because they are supposed to fall in certain set parts of given measures, thus indicating the meter".

"In instructing very young pupils it may be necessary to lead them to believe that the time must be marked in a definite manner by such accents, but as the pupil advances he must understand that the measure divisions are inserted principally for the purpose of enabling him to read easily. He should learn to look upon each piece of music as a beautiful tapestry in which the main consideration is the principal design of the work as a whole and not the invisible marking threads which the manufacturer is obliged to put in the loom in order to have a structure upon which the tapestry may be woven".

Great pianists. Ferruccio Busoni, part 3

FINDING INDIVIDUAL FAULTS

"I trust that my experience will set some ambitious piano students to thinking and that they may be benefited by it. There is always a way of correcting deficiencies if the way can only be found. The first thing, however, is to recognize the detail itself and then to realize that instead of being a detail it is a matter of vast importance until it has been conquered and brought into submission. In playing, always note where your difficulties seem to lie. Then, when advisable, isolate those difficulties
and practice them separately. This is the manner in which all good technical exercises are devised".

"Your own difficulty is the difficulty which you should practice most. Why waste time in practicing passages which you can play perfectly well? One player may have difficulty in playing trills, while to another player of equal general musical ability trills may be perfectly easy. In playing arpeggios, however, the difficulties which prove obstacles to the players may be entirely reversed. The one who could play the trill perfectly might not be able, under any circumstance, to play an arpeggio with the requisite smoothness and true legato demanded, while
the student who found the trill impossible possesses the ability to run arpeggios and cadenzas with the fluency of a forest rivulet".

"All technical exercises must be given to the pupil with great discretion and judgment just as poisonous medicines must be administered to the patient with
great care. The indiscriminate giving of technical exercises may impede progress rather than advance the pupil. Simply because an exercise happens to come in a certain position in a book of technical exercises is no reason why the particular pupil being taught needs that exercise at that particular time. Some exercises which are not feasible and others which are inexpedient at a certain time, may prove
invaluable later in the pupil's progress".

"Take the famous Tausig exercises, for instance. Tausig was a master of technic who had few, if any, equals in his time. His exercises are for the most part very ingenious and useful to advanced players, but when some of them are transposed into other keys as their composer demands they become practically impossible to play with the proper touch, etc. Furthermore, one would be very unlikely to find a passage demanding such a technical feat in the compositions of any of the great masters of the piano. Consequently, such exercises are of no practical value and would only be demanded by a teacher with more respect for tradition than common sense".

Great pianists. Ferruccio Busoni, part 2

SELF DEVELOPMENT

"In my own development as an artist it has been made evident to me, time and time again, that success comes from the careful observance of details. All students should strive to estimate their own artistic ability very accurately. A wrong estimate always leads to a dangerous condition. If I had failed to attend to certain details many years ago, I would have stopped very far short of anything like success".

"I remember that when I concluded my term as professor of piano at the New England Conservatory of Music I was very conscious of certain deficiencies in my style. Notwithstanding the fact that I had been accepted as a virtuoso in Europe and in America and had toured with great orchestras such as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, I knew better than anyone else that there were certain details in my playing thta I could not affort to neglect".

"For instance, I knew that my method of playing the trill could be greatly improved and I also knew that I lacked force and endurance in certain passages. Fortunately, although a comparatively young man, I was not deceived by the flattery of ellmeaning,
but incapable critics, who were quite willing to convince me that my playing was as perfect as it was possible to make it. Every seeker of artistic truth is more widely awake to his own deficiencies than any of his critics could possibly be".

"Take the famous Tausig exercises, for instance. Tausig was a master of technic who had few, if any, equals in his time. His exercises are for the most part very ingenious and useful to advanced players, but when some of them are transposed into other keys as their composer demands they become practically impossible to play with the proper touch, etc. Furthermore, one would be very unlikely to find a passage demanding such a technical feat in the compositions of any of the great masters of the piano. Consequently, such exercises are of no practical value and would only be demanded by a teacher with more respect for tradition than common sense".