Carl Czerny: 100 Progressive Studies without Octaves Op. 139: Piano: Study

Carl Czerny is considered by many to be the father of modern Piano technique. He composed over 1 000 works including hundreds of Piano studies. Germer carefully selected and organized 3 volumes ofCzerny studies in progressive difficulty from various volumes.Volume 1 Part 1 moves quickly from the early intermediate to intermediate level while Volume 1 Part 2 moves from the lateintermediate into the advanced levels. The gradual progression of difficulty found in these volumes offers the best approach to Czerny studies for Piano students of all ages.

The majority of works by Czerny are confusing to most Piano academics. Out of these the following are still the classics: Op. 139 261 299 335 337 355 365 453 553 599 636 718 740 755 802 821 823 834 et 849. Each one of these volumes contains numerous exercises some contain more than a hundred. It is of course impossible for aspiring pianists to study them all and it is difficult for Piano teachers to sort them out and organise them into the ones that could be the most interesting in a logical and progressive way.This is exactly what Heinrich Germer has tried to do. Germer an outstanding teacher and German pianist was born in Sommerdorfin 1839 and died in Dresde in 1913. He was 18 years old when Cerny died at the age of 66 years. Germer had great luck in knowing the first generation of pianists he was studying and saw the need to reorganise this huge quantity of didactic material. Germer's success was down to the fact that his systematic organisation of Czerny's work split into three volumes continues to be the three used by contemporary piano teachers. Germer did not make hardly any changes to Czerny collections. And there is more - he adds dynamic text for phrasing and pedals so that there is more musicality in the books making the exercises more enjoyable to play. He changes some archaic armatures for more modern ones. He revises Czerny's method on regrouping notes by placing bar values making reading rhythms a lot easier. He corrected numerous printing errors. In the longest pieces he adds capital letters to indicate the beginning of each movement same or part period which helps pupils to know blocks it would be better for him to practise. The revision work undergone by Germer introduces order and the results obtained for the Piano teachers that use them are very satisfying.

Schott Piano Classics-These short eight-bar exercises are generally regarded as some of the best most versatile and comprehensive of Czerny’s studies. Apart from helping to achieve speed suppleness and versatility of tone and touch these exercises concentrate on many essential aspects of piano technique: diatonic and chromatic scales tone repetition chords progressions and arpeggios thirds and octaves two-part playing in one hand polyphony alternating hands trills and other ornamentation etc. This new edition is based on the first edition of 1853 and contains Czerny’s original fingering.