Helen Marlais' Succeeding At The Piano - Recital Book: Grade 1A is filled with entertaining pieces with artistic illustrations and fanciful lyrics. The pieces featured in this collection are slightly longer and can serve as performance pieces for recitals or adjudications. Optional teacher duets are included but these selections can stand on their own. The arrangements of classical works are particularly interesting.Each piece has 3 tracks on the CD: practice speed performance speed and performance speed with orchestral accompaniments. Free downloads of all tracks are available at www.fjhmusic.com/downloads.

Theory-Imaginative and motivational note-reading and writing activities provide an educational and fun way for students to reinforce note reading at the very beginning levels of piano study. Slowly paced and logical students can easily learn each new note on the staff with confidence. Students learn how to read in an ideal way by combining a traditional note reading approach with an intervallic approach. This is the surest way to quickly succeed with music reading right from the very beginning!

'Quartet In C Minor' is in four movements with a total duration of about 25 minutes. The opening Allegro is similar in style to Dvorak in its lyricism though there is a darker more brooding atmosphere towards the close. It is tempting to detect a hint of folk-song in the theme of the Andantino played by the viola but that may be stretching hindsight too far. The movement has a wistful melancholy that carries over into the following Intermezzo a song-like episode containing some of the most virtuosic writing in the work. The last movement is a theme and six variations with a fugal ending. The theme is ballad-like with a suggestion of 18th-century elegance. Modalitycreeps into the second Adagio variation and there is rhythmic exhilaration in the succeeding Presto. What can be admired in this attractive quartet is its conciseness. This String Quartet was his first major composition of any kind.

Piano Play-Along-Performed by Kevin Class piano. Accompaniment: Stuttgart Symphony Orchestra. Conductor: Emil Kahn Long popular with audiences and performers alike the Schumann concerto is felt by many to be one of the greatest concerted piano works. In the words of noted authority Maurice Hinson Schumann succeeded in a magnificent manner by composing what is probably the most beautiful of Romantic concertos....This flawless masterpiece is one of the most outstanding and romantically inspired concertos in the repertoire. Integrating the piano and orchestra in an unprecedented manner it embodies the melodic grace and fine tonal texture so characteristic of one of the great composers of alltime. This pack includes a 96-page printed music book newly engraved and printed on beautiful acid-free ivory paper; and a compact disc containing a complete version with soloist followed by a second version in full stereo of the orchestral accompaniment minus the soloist; plus a second compact disc containing the full-speed complete version followed by a special -20% slow-tempo version of the accompaniments for practice purposes.