This book of First Australian Songs follows the world-renowned John Thompson's Easiest Piano Course method that has helped thousands of beginners learn the Piano. Now you can learn all of those famous Australian pop and folk songs with ease.The John Thompson's Easiest Piano Course is one of the best-selling Piano methods ever, and for good reason. The collection of repertoire books that are intend…

A wedding without a famous wedding march - unimaginable! Wagner's 'Bridal Chorus' from 'Lohengrin' and Mendelssohn's 'Wedding March' from the incidental music of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' vie for the favour of bridal couples and wedding parties. If, however, the music shall be festive, Mendelssohn's background music for the wedding ceremony remains first choice. In order that the march cannot on…

Best remembered for his extraordinary advancement of Piano technique, Franz Liszt saw himself in quite a different light: as an innovative composer prepared to move beyond convention into uncharted waters. He and Richard Wagner were allies in Zukunftsmusik, the 'music of the future,' a new approach that was liberated from all prescribed rules of musical form. Liszt invented the tone poem, and this…

Par CHARPENTIER GUSTAVE. French composer, Gustave Charpentier (1860-1956) is best known for his Opera, Louise. Having premiered in 1900, the Opera remains performed to this day. Louise depicts Parisian working-class life, telling the story between a young seamstress, Louise, and an artist, Julien. Having undertaken composition lessons from Jules Massenet at the Paris Conservatoire, Charpentier 's …

This School of Organ Playing presupposes a certain technical facility on the piano. The pedal exercises at the beginning are rudimentary and should be practiced in all keys, gradually accelerating the tempo. The studies are graded according to their polyphony, beginning with simple two part exercises, followed by those in three and more parts. This acquaintance with the strict principles of po…

Par MOZART WOLFGANG AMADEUS. Mozart composed the majority of his works for solo String Instruments and Orchestra during the years 1773 to 1779. Especially important in this context are the years 1773 and 1775, which witnessed the creation of the five concertos for Violin and Orchestra as well as several single movements for the same scoring. The reasons for this flourish of activity in this domain…

B Minor. Par DVORAK ANTONIN. Like every other great 19th-century solo concerto, Dvorák ’s famous Cello Concerto was a collaboration between composer and virtuoso. It has long been known that certain solo passages in Dvorák ’s autograph score were actually written by the cellist Hanuš Wihan; but Bärenreiter’s edition now reveals that some details in the Orchestral parts are also in his writing, sho…

Par SCULTHORPE PETER. 'Tailitnama' is an Aboriginal totemic centre in Central Australia. The text for this work consists of four verses, in the Aranda language, from a rock wallaby song associated with the area. The verses concern the glowing of the mountains, the coming of dawn and the singing of the Ilbirbia bluebirds as they soar to the sky. Roger Covell describes the piece as borrowing 'from a…

Par DE HAAN JAN. The source of inspiration for the composer was the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl in Russia. The first movement Ostinato expresses desperation, helplessness, fear and anger. The themes from the first movement are further exposed in the second movement Fantasia which has a spectacular finale. In 1989 this composition was the test-piece for the finals in the fourth section of the Nat…

Par BENJAMIN GEORGE. George Benjamin wrote Sortileges especially for Paul Crossley, to a commission for Northern Arts with funds provided by the Arts Council of Great Britain. Andrew Porter from The New Yorker called it '...fresh, beautifully constructed, harmonically bewitching, and sensitively written for the instrument.' / Niveau : Intermédiaire / Répertoire / Piano

Par THOMPSON WENDY. How do you bring a forgotten silent film back to life? What are the techniques behind writing a successful film score? How do you work with and inspire choreographers? Carl Davis's fascinating story gives an insight into the prolific composing and conducting career of one of the world's most celebrated film and television composers. Born in New York, Carl Davis spent his early …