Piano Solo. Ballade Piano Collection For Play I... \/\/FREE\\\\

Much of Fauré's piano music is difficult to play, but is rarely virtuosic in style. The composer disliked showy display, and the predominant characteristic of his piano music is a classical restraint and understatement.

Piano solo. Ballade Piano Collection for play i...

In later years Fauré's music was written under the shadow of the composer's increasing deafness, becoming gradually less charming and more austere, marked by what the composer Aaron Copland called "intensity on a background of calm."[13] The critic Bryce Morrison has noted that pianists frequently prefer to play the accessible earlier piano works, rather than the later music, which expresses "such private passion and isolation, such alternating anger and resignation" that listeners are left uneasy.[19] The Fauré scholar Jean-Michel Nectoux writes:

The Pavane (1887) was conceived and originally written as an orchestral piece.[75] Fauré published the version for piano in 1889.[14][53] In the form of an ancient dance, the piece was written to be played more briskly than it has generally come to be performed in its familiar orchestral guise. The conductor Sir Adrian Boult heard Fauré play the piano version several times and noted that he took it at a tempo no slower than crochet=100.[76] Boult commented that the composer's sprightly tempo emphasised that the Pavane was not a piece of German romanticism.[76]

In Koechlin's view, "Apart from the Préludes of Chopin, it is hard to think of a collection of similar pieces that are so important".[90] The critic Michael Oliver wrote, "Fauré's Préludes are among the subtlest and most elusive piano pieces in existence; they express deep but mingled emotions, sometimes with intense directness ... more often with the utmost economy and restraint and with mysteriously complex simplicity."[88] Jessica Duchen calls them "unusual slivers of magical inventiveness."[91] The complete set takes between 20 and 25 minutes to play. The shortest of the set, No. 8, lasts barely more than a minute; the longest, No. 3, takes between four and five minutes.[92]

Fauré made piano rolls of his music for several companies between 1905 and 1913. The rolls that survive are of the "Romance sans paroles" No. 3, Barcarolle No. 1, Prelude No. 3, Nocturne No. 3, Thème et variations, Valses-caprices Nos 1, 3 and 4, and piano versions of the Pavane, and the "Sicilienne" from Fauré's music for Pelléas and Mélisande. Several of these rolls have been transferred to CD.[104] Recordings on disc were few until the 1940s. A survey by John Culshaw in December 1945 singled out recordings of piano works played by Kathleen Long, including the Nocturne No. 6, Barcarolle No. 2, the Thème et Variations, Op. 73, and the Ballade Op. 19 in its orchestral version.[105] Fauré's music began to appear more frequently in the record companies' releases in the 1950s.

I hope you enjoyed this lesson on learning how to use shell chords on a jazz piano ballad. As usual, practice all the above slowly in bite-size sections. Once comfortable, you can gradually increase speed until you can play it cleanly at full speed.

The two versions of Fauré's Ballade -- the first for solo piano, the second for piano and orchestra -- have very few bar-to-bar discrepancies, but their effects are quite different. The solo version, using Chopin's Ballades as its obvious model, is thick, large-scaled, and passionate; the concerto version, by redistributing the thematic and harmonic strands, seems leaner and more elegant. Fauré showed an early version of the solo Ballade to Franz Liszt in 1877; the older composer played part of it, then asked Fauré to finish, saying, "I have no more fingers." The writing is elaborate and formidably difficult in the solo version. The more accessible version with orchestra, which the composer premiered with Edouard Colonne's orchestra in 1881, is no longer a display of virtuosity; this version seems more relaxed, even prettier. Debussy caustically dismissed it as overly charming and effeminate. The Ballade enjoys a very free form -- "somewhat outside what is usually done," in the composer's admission -- but essentially falls into three initial sections, each developing its own theme, followed by a fourth section that combines the second and third themes. In the version with orchestra, Fauré added a bar just before the flute solo that hints at the third theme, thus now incorporating some form of all the thematic material into the work's first 40 bars. The opening Andante cantabile, in F sharp major, introduces the A theme, a lyrical melody over a gently palpitating left-hand accompaniment, with the orchestra delicately supporting and answering the piano's phrases. The piano part soon becomes more declamatory and intense, but then relaxes into the sorts of arpeggios and runs that the score's detractors deemed too frivolously decorative. Some unsettling modulations lead to the E flat minor Allegretto section, dominated by the B theme. This decadent, falling motif is more impetuous (by Fauré's gentle standards) and sends the pianist into long passages of runs and trills. The harmony brightens to B major for the Allegro section (framed by two short Andante interludes), which centers on the rocking and trilling C theme. The final section, Allegro molto moderato, returns to the opening tonality of F sharp major and gracefully intertwines the second and third themes with busy, sparkling piano writing. Fauré eschews a bravura ending, wrapping up the Ballade with a few quiet, arpeggiated flourishes.

Jon Davis is a pianist and composer based in New York. He has performed with and contributed compositions to many of the top jazz musicians worldwide throughout his career, which has spanned over 35 years, and has recorded several albums as a leader. Jon took up piano and guitar as a young teenager; he was inspired to play jazz after hearing records of Red Garland and Miles Davis. He briefly studied with Lennie Tristano then attended New England Conservatory, where his teachers included Ran Blake, Jaki Byard, and Madam Chaloff. After six months, he left to begin gigging around Boston. Read more... 11 songs available.

If you are interested in learning the piano, you might want to have a goal to shoot for. That might include eventually playing some of the most difficult piano pieces of all time. The world of classical piano is vast, and the techniques required to play the pieces below can challenge even the most accomplished of classical pianists.

Pentatonic: Let us also mention a fourth way. By playing all the white keys except F and B (which makes it the C Pentatonic Major Scale), you could bring the sound of a pop song to the piano. Try to play chords such as C, Em, F, G and Am with your left hand and then create melodies from the white keys C, D, E, G, A with your right hand. As a suggestion, you could mostly combine C, D, E (tones) with C, F, G (chords) and G, A (tones) with Em, Am (chords).Minor Pentatonic can be used instead of a Natural Minor over a song in minor.

14 piano solos for advanced students, composed between early 1930s and 1960s. The volume includes a CD of these works. Hutchens was an extraordinary teacher, who taught at the NSW Conservatorium for almost 50 years and his writing for the piano is always pianistic. These compositions for piano are quite extraordinary in that despite being based on very natural hand positions, and therefore very comfortable to play, they give the impression of being challenging works. This is the case even for the simpler pieces. His musical language could be described as impressionistic, occasionally late romantic, and he uses compositional elements found normally in the music of Impressionistic compositions: unsymmetrical phrases, whole tone scales, unresolved dissonances, and the harmony, while basically tonal explores chromaticism. This volume of piano solos is unique as until now there has been no collection of his works. Despite having written over fifty piano compositions they had been published as single items and no compilation had existed. This volume includes the more difficult and challenging works. Volume 8 (b) is designed to present works of approximately fifth to eight grade standard and Volume 8 (c) has elementary to grade five pieces. More comprehensive biographical notes are within the volume which also includes a CD of all the works.

The Villa-Lobos suite concerns a little Brazilian girl who owned eight dolls, each of a different nationality, which she imbued with a different personality. No. 1 is the portrait of a beautiful blonde European doll who was just set up for show. No. 2 depicts a brunette doll who was vivacious and jumped around with the girl. No. 3 was a beautiful Indian doll with a lotus flower in her hair who meditated. No. 4 was a mulatto doll who was fickle, No. 5 an African doll that followed her on her adventures. The sixth doll, old and rather ugly, she rocked to sleep in her arms every night. The seventh was a very fast street clown who made her laugh, while the eighth and last always hid her face under a hood because she was a witch. One day, in broad daylight, she stood in a meadow and whispered over her cauldron, creating a thunderstorm, but then the storm suddenly ended and a rainbow appeared which caused the witch to fizzle and disappear. This is played on the piano alone, allowing Gaponenko to show how she creates a mood on that instrument when the cello is absent. It is a lovely, heartfelt performance in which she absolutely revels in the unusual harmonies and Brazilian rhythms. 041b061a72