Today’s piece is a favorite in cartoons as you’ll see below. Hungarian Rhapsody number 2 by Franz Liszt is the second in a set of 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies and is by far the most famous of the set. They are all based on Hungarian folk tunes, or what Liszt assumed were Hungarian folk […]
Today, we’ll listen to the Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67, of Ludwig van Beethoven. It was written between 1804–1808. It is one of the best-known compositions in classical music, and one of the most frequently played symphonies. As is typical of symphonies in the classical period, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is in four […]
Today’s assignment is Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C-sharp minor. It is the second in a set of 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies by composer Franz Liszt and is by far the most famous of the set. In both the original piano solo form and in the orchestrated version this composition has enjoyed widespread use in animated […]
Since we had the Bridal Chorus a couple days ago, it’s time to march the bride and groom back up the aisle with the Wedding March by Felix Mendelssohn. This Wedding March comes from Mendelssohn’s incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It became customary to play this at marriage ceremonies from about the […]
Happy Birthday is a song that I like to have each of my students learn at various levels appropriate to their level. When a friend or family member has a birthday, it’s great to be able to sit down and play. It’s only been fairly recently that piano students could have this music in […]
1791 ~ Carl Czerny, Austrian pianist and composer whose vast musical production amounted to over a thousand works. His books of studies for the piano are still widely used in piano teaching. More information on Czerny At the age of fifteen, Czerny began a very successful teaching career. Basing his method on the […]
Alfred Brendel was born in 1931 in Wiesenberg, Czech Republic. After World War II, Brendel composed music, as well as continuing to play the piano, to write and to paint. However, he never had more formal piano lessons and, although he attended master classes with Edwin Fischer and Eduard Steuermann, he was largely self-taught after […]
I have just purchased a set of Christmas Shades of Sound Listening & Coloring Book for the studio. Please let me know if you do not want your student to participate in Christmas activities and I will assign alternate activities. Each week, I will print out some of the pages for your student and put them in […]
Danse macabre, Op. 40, is a tone poem for orchestra, written in 1874 by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns. It started out in 1872 as an art song for voice and piano with a French text by the poet Henri Cazalis, which is based on an old French superstition. In 1874, the composer expanded and reworked […]
The final movement is the best known part of the symphony, thanks to its use in the Julia Roberts movie, Sleeping With The Enemy. It features a four-part structure, which Hector Berlioz described in his own program notes from 1845 as follows: “He sees himself at a witches’ Sabbath, in the midst of a hideous gathering […]
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