Pianodao

Welcome to Pianodao!

Welcome to the piano education website and online blog of teacher, published composer and author ANDREW EALES.

Active Repertoire Project

The Active Repertoire Challenge aims to encourage all piano players to develop an active repertoire of three or more pieces which can be performed to others with freedom, expression and confidence.

The Willis Student Recital Collection

‘The Willis Student Recital Collection’ offers a selection of 40 enjoyable performance pieces for elementary to late intermediate players, written by some of the world’s most acclaimed piano education composers.

How to Practise Music

Accessible and authoritative, HOW TO PRACTISE MUSIC is Andrew’s highly acclaimed book of tips for anyone who wants to get more out of their practice.

The Art of Piano Education Awards 2025

As President of The Art of Piano Education Awards it gives me great pleasure to announce details of the 2025 Awards!

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Favourite Melodies • Jazz Piano

PIANODAO MUSIC LIBRARY

Selected and reviewed by ANDREW EALES
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Eric Baumgartner’s name will be new to many here in the UK. I only came across his work when his excellent Jazz It Up! Christmas collection appeared for review in 2022. Though glancing at his resume, I remained unfamiliar with his other work, but hugely impressed with his seasonal offering.

Writing in my review here I concluded:

“Baumgartner’s writing is wonderfully pianistic, stylistically spot on, and whether played for background entertainment or performed as concert pieces, listeners will be as delighted to hear these arrangements as piano players are to practise and play them.”

It has been a pleasure playing though many of his other publications in the intervening years, in particular while researching and compiling my newly available Willis Student Recital Collection, and it was while exploring these, his latest Favourite Melodies for Jazz Piano Solo also appeared.

The Willis Student Recital Collection

PIANODAO MUSIC LIBRARY

Selected and reviewed by ANDREW EALES
Find out more: ABOUT PIANODAO REVIEWS

My latest piano collection for Willis Music Company, distributed by Hal Leonard, is a bumper anthology which builds on the success of the Graded Gillock series and Naoko Ikeda Graded Collection, and features 40 pieces written by composers from across the publisher’s best-selling catalogue.

This collection especially focuses on performance pieces, suitable for studio recitals, school concerts, and festivals. With that in mind, I have particularly sought out music which is both inspiring for the learner to play, and enjoyable for audiences. The pieces are presented in progressive order from Elementary to Late Intermediate, UK Grades 1-6.

Those who already use the other piano collections I have edited will be pleased to hear that there are no overlaps: this unique selection consciously avoids duplication, and offers fresh, exciting pieces to enjoy alongside those in my previous publications.

The Women Composers Piano Anthology

PIANODAO MUSIC LIBRARY

Selected and reviewed by ANDREW EALES
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Arriving just in time for International Women’s Day, the latest addition to Faber Music’s popular line of bumper piano anthologies focuses on music by women composers.

This is Faber Music’s second ‘women composer’ anthology, following in the footsteps of Karen Marshall’s Herstory, which I reviewed here. But while Herstory focused on forgotten classical composers, accompanied by its author’s teaching content, this new collection offers a more cosmopolitan range of music that encompasses contemporary styles.

The format of Faber Music’s Piano Anthologies will by now be familiar to readers, and I have reviewed the whole series here, so let’s jump straight in and consider the music on offer here.

Schubert • Masterpieces

PIANODAO MUSIC LIBRARY

Selected and reviewed by ANDREW EALES
Find out more: ABOUT PIANODAO REVIEWS

The consolidation of Edition Peters within Faber Music continues to prove a fruitful alliance with the arrival of a new series, Masterpieces for Piano, bringing together Faber’s penchant for producing bumper anthologies with Edition Peters deep and respected classical catalogue.

The first arrival announcing the series is a stunning new 176-page compendium of music by Franz Schubert.

With selections suitable for players from intermediate to advanced level, taking in easy Ecossaises and other dances, and progressing through Moment Musicals to several popular Impromptus and the complete Sonata in A major Op.120, this could well be the ultimate Schubert collection for enthusiastic adult players and students…

My First Handel

PIANODAO MUSIC LIBRARY

Selected and reviewed by ANDREW EALES
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Schott Music’s My First Composers series, put together by Wilhelm Ohmen, have been with us for some time now, and I have previously reviewed several titles here.

The most recent to appear, My First Handel repeats the trick of several previous titles in the series, delivering a superbly curated and presented collection of intermediate pieces by a great keyboard composer whose contribution to the repertoire is often, and too easily overlooked.

And once again, this is a music compilation which doesn’t have an obvious rival in the piano education catalogue, so let’s take a serious look…

Gregson • A Song for Sue

PIANODAO MUSIC LIBRARY

Selected and reviewed by ANDREW EALES
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I first encountered the piano music of contemporary British composer Edward Gregson when I heard a recording made by Murray McLachlan a year or two ago, and I was immediately won over by the variety, appeal, and obvious craftsmanship.

A highlight of that recording, and now available as a single piece published by Novello, A Song for Sue is a tender, jazz-infused miniature suitable for early advanced players around Grade 8, and sure to bring delight to many…

Refreshing Your Active Repertoire

THE FERMATA SERIES

Reflections on Piano Education
Written by ANDREW EALES

Our Active Repertoire is the music we can play any time, any place, without notice or embarrassment, and even from memory. These are the pieces we can perform for our own enjoyment and for others, with freedom, expression and confidence.

Our Active Repertoire is our point of peak strength as pianists.

The aim of Pianodao’s Active Repertoire Project is to encourage players to always have three pieces of Active Repertoire that are performance-ready. It’s a priority which I also explain in my book How to Practise Music, and which I talk about at conferences and on courses.

Of course, many of us already have a large Active Repertoire, so have no need for a special programme that helps develop one. But for others, there is a pressing need to focus on this project.

The music we include in our Active Repertoire is never static. We will become tired of some pieces, while more recent discoveries become ripe for inclusion. And whether we want to continue playing them or not, our Active Repertoire pieces can sometimes become, well, a bit stale. So let’s consider how to deal with our favourites when they have gone off the boil.

Florence Price • Rediscovered Gems

PIANODAO MUSIC LIBRARY

Selected and reviewed by ANDREW EALES
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Florence Price (1887-1953) is rightly, if rather belatedly, recognised today as one of America’s most important composers of the twentieth century.

Price had some success during her lifetime, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra debuting her Symphony No. 1 in E minor, marking the first major orchestral performance of music by a black woman. Several of her works were published while she was alive, but it seems her estate did not effectively preserve her legacy, and sadly most of her music was forgotten in the years following her death.

Then, in 2009 an unsuspecting couple renovating the property that had once been Price’s summer home discovered hundreds of abandoned manuscripts packed in boxes there. Bringing this wealth of music to a wider market has been a complex process, but with her music no longer in copyright, it can finally be evaluated and made more widely available to musicians.

Florence Price: Rediscovered Gems for solo piano is a landmark publication, brought to us by Hal Leonard, and delivering a selection of twenty previously unpublished works suitable for intermediate players, around Grades 4-6, arranged by editor Michael Clark in approximate order of difficulty.

Einaudi • The Summer Portraits

PIANODAO MUSIC LIBRARY

Selected and reviewed by ANDREW EALES
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Ludovico Einaudi is without doubt one of the most globally successful piano composers of our time. His latest single amassed a record breaking 2.5 million streams in a single day. His music is ubiquitous in film, television, and media. It is performed at your local school, and in the world’s most hallowed classical venues.

At the same time, Einaudi’s music continues to divide opinion. Some in the piano education community and classical establishment still dismiss his work as dull, derivative, poorly written, and even cast him as a charlatan.

In my article The Appeal of Einaudi’s Music, I explored what it could be that makes his piano recordings so widely and wildly popular, concluding:

“Music can occupy and fill many different spaces in our lives. Fundamentally, it can be truly accessible to us all. Einaudi’s compositions remind us that music does not always need to be intellectually supercharged, even though his pieces are cleverly and carefully crafted. Nor perhaps should we equate the best composition with a dazzling display of technical expertise, or the best performance with physical pyrotechnics. Great music can equally be driven by the flow of emotion, simple connection, and a quest for lingering beauty.”

If this seems a rather hyperbolic preamble for a sheet music review, it is in part because Einaudi’s latest album The Summer Portraits must be evaluated in the context of this larger cultural phenomenon. When he releases new material, it is always something of an event, but does his latest project meaningfully add to the larger narrative of his body of work?

Discovering Backer Grøndahl

PIANODAO MUSIC LIBRARY

Selected and reviewed by ANDREW EALES
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As I write, I am enjoying the magical afterglow of an event I recently attended at the Norwegian Ambassador’s residence in Kensington. Organised with publisher Edition Peters, the evening celebrated the release of the first ever urtext editions of piano works by Agathe Backer Grøndahl (1847-1907).

The Edition Peters scores for both works have been published in association with Kode, the association of art museums and composers’ homes in and around Bergen, who previously also partnered for the publication of Grieg – A Piano Treasury, reviewed here.

Christian Grøvlen, who is Director of Music and the Composer’s Homes for Kode, and the editor of the Edition Peters scores, performed the two recently published works: the Fantasy Pieces Op.39 and In the Blue Mountain Op.44, introducing each with the rapt fascination and deep insight of a true expert.

While the latter piece was a virtuosic concert work in the manner of Liszt, it was the Fantasy Pieces that impressed me the more. While designating these miniatures “salon pieces,” Grøvlen highlighted Backer Grøndahl’s genius with the form, and her innovative compositional style.

I am surprised that a renewed interest in Backer Grøndahl’s music hasn’t come sooner. Enjoying the generous hospitality and chatting with other guests after the performance, it was clear that none there doubted that this music is of special importance and quality.