PIANO LESSONS
CHRISTOPH ESCHENBACH, Piano
Deutsche Grammophon 483 9846 (16 CDs)
Did you once dread going for piano lessons, without having practised your set pieces over the past week? Did you remember lugging along that thickest of piano books, the Schirmer Sonatina Album and having to remember what you last played? Oh, those were the days, but little did you know all that slogging would eventually lead to that moment at a children’s concert, hogging the spotlight playing on the school piano, getting eliminated at some piano competition, or charming and amusing your friends at some soiree much later in life.
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| That ubiquitous yellow album every piano student of a certain age lugs around. |
This box-set assembled by Deutsche Grammophon brings back all those memories, and the names of composers you once thought were gods but have more or less been forgotten. And there is no better guide that the former child prodigy and now highly-respected conductor the German Christoph Eschenbach, in recordings he made in the 1960s and 70s.
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| Christoph Eschenbach as a very young pianist. |
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| Ferdinand Beyer, not Porsche! |
The first disc is devoted to the German Ferdinand Beyer (1803-1863), whose Vorschule im Klavierspiel (Pre-School in Piano Playing, Op.101) is a primer of basic keyboard technique. Most of the 63 very short and simple pieces are in C major (no sharps or flats) and G major (only F sharp), and built upon the interval of the third and triads. Master these, remove Beyer and slap on some 20th century minimalist name (Glass or Einaudi will do), and you are ready to make millions.
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| Czerny was Beethoven's student, and Liszt's teacher. Great pedigree. |
There is some perverse pleasure to be had listening to two discs of Carl Czerny (1791-1857) in 30 Etudes de mechanisme (Op.849) and The School of Velocity (Op.299), where mind-numbing note-spinning has been raised to a fine art. Note also those insanely high opus numbers (does the man even sleep?) More significantly, he had been the teacher of the child Franz Liszt, whose Study in Twelve Exercises (S.136) from 1826 strongly bore Czerny’s imprints. These would eventually become transformed into his 12 Transcendental Etudes (S.139).
The German Friedrich Burgmuller (1806-1874) was a contemporary of Robert Schumann, and his 25 Etudes faciles et progressives (Easy and Progressive Studies, Op.100) are far more charming than their titles suggest. These are more than a challenge for Schumann’s Album for the Young, which have unfortunately not been included in this collection, with the sole exception of The Merry Peasant (Op.68 No.10).
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| Whoever knew Friedrich Kuhlau was blind in one eye? |
Then we come to the Danish composer Friedrich Kuhlau (1786-1832), whose sonatinas for children have been lumped together with those of Italian composer Muzio Clementi (1752-1832). These are highly effective primers for beginners of the piano, and can sound impressive in the right hands. I have personally heard these in the Thailand Steinway Youth Competition and can attest for their didactic quality.
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| Muzio Clementi, after whom Clementi new town was named. Nah, that was his grandson! |
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| The immortal J.S.Bach |
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| C.P.E.Bach, like father like son. |
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| So that's what Christian Petzold looked like! |
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| Haydn wrote some 62 piano sonatas, at last count. |
From Joseph Haydn (1732-1809), there are eight sonatas, increasing in degrees of complexity. The C major (Hob.XVI:35) built on the C major triad falls within the hands of a talented ten-year-old, while the D major (Hob.XVI:37) was well-known enough to be spoofed by Shostakovich in his First Piano Concerto. The E minor, G major and E flat major sonatas (Hob.XVI:34, 40 and 49) are in the remit of adults, and do get heard occasionally in international piano competitions.
It is said that the sonatas of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) are “too easy for amateurs but too difficult for professionals”. How true that is. Nine sonatas are represented including the C major Sonata Facile (K.545), obviously, but from there the learning curve becomes far steeper. The A major (K.331), famous for its opening Theme and Variations and Rondo alla Turca (Turkish March) is by no means simple. The sonatas in A minor, B flat major and F major (K.310, 333 and 533) were famously in the recorded repertory of Dinu Lipatti, Vladimir Horowitz and Emil Gilels respectively.
There is a single sonata disc of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) that is rightly the territory for proficient young people. This contains the Op.49 pair (my first introduction to Beethoven sonatas), Op.14 pair (not so easy) and the delightful Op.79. The two short Sonatinas in G and F major belong to children. Besides being popular and famous, the Pathetique (Op.13) and Moonlight (Op.27 No.2) are actually advanced works. The same would apply to the F minor (Op.2 No.1) and A flat major (Op.26 “Funeral March”) sonatas.
The set is completed by eight books of Felix Mendelssohn’s (1809-1847) Songs Without Words, each comprising six pieces of varying degrees of difficulty. The Venetian Boat Songs and several of the slower numbers are simple enough, but Mendelssohn was a keyboard virtuoso himself and his Hunting Song (Op.19 No.3) and Spinning Song (Op.67 No.4, also known as The Bee’s Wedding) are concert hall material – just ask Jorge Bolet and Sergei Rachmaninoff.
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| Christoph Eschenbach plays for Herbert von Karajan. |
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| A slightly older Christoph Eschenbach. |
This is a splendid set of piano pieces, lovingly performed by Christoph Eschenbach, which should engage for many hours the budding piano player, young and not so young.
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