Piano Street's Classical Piano Blog

Two piano pieces, one organ transcription and 14 harmonium pieces by César Franck are now available for download as Piano Street Editions and recordings:

Slow Dance (piano piece)
Dolly’s Complaint (piano piece)
Prelude to Ave Maris Stella (originally for organ)
14 Harmonium pieces

In César Franck’s keyboard music he clearly indicated in the scores for which specific instrument the music was composed for; piano, organ or harmonium. The harmonium pieces are however often performed on the organ. Some of those pieces are also suitable for the piano, while others are more problematic to perform on the piano, for example due to long sustained notes.

Our collection of 14 of the most characteristic harmonium pieces from L’Organiste is based on the selection by W. Mohr for Edition Peters’ well known publication of short keyboard pieces by Franck. They are beautiful and delicate little works. Despite their small format, most of them are more tricky than they sound like and can effectively be used for teaching purposes due to their great challenges in legato technique.

When we dealt with the fingering suggestions for our piano edition of these pieces, originally intended for harmonium, the question was to what extent to use the right pedal in order to achieve legato.
The present Piano Street Edition contains many examples of organ style legato fingering which can serve as studies for learning the fingering principles essential when playing more complex contrapuntal music such as for example the Fugues by Bach. However, when recording the pieces such fingering were not always used and I instead utilized the right pedal to achieve a more natural and pianistic style of playing. Which way to deal with this issue is up to each pianist’s own decision.

Gabriel Fauré is considered one of the most influential and gifted French composers of the late romantic and early 20th century period.

His early compositions, influenced by Chopin and his teacher Saint-Saënt, are of very romantic character while he later developed a more personal and harmonically complex musical style. The Nocturnes for example were composed over a range of 45 years and clearly reflect this developement.
The Waltz-Caprices are composed in a romantic virtuoso style and offer a profusion of fresh, charming melodies and the Barcarolles are certainly the most impressive collection of Barcarolles in the history of classical music.

43 of his most well known piano pieces have been added to the Piano Street sheet music library.

12 Nocturnes
12 Barcarolles
9 Preludes
5 Impromptus
4 Waltz-Caprices
Ballade, Opus 19

Marguerite Long plays Fauré Nocturne no 4 in E-flat:

Free sheet music:

An articel by George Stephen Murray about how composer Fauré’s and pianist Long’s careers worked together:
Gabriel Fauré’s and Marguerite Long

For decades people who were fortunate enough to see and hear esteemed pianist Artur Rubinstein (1887-1982) perform left concert halls spellbound.
Rubinstein went for the soul of the audience as he wrapped his soaring and spirited playing around each listener. His magnificent interpretation of Chopin remains without equal.
Biographer and music historian Sachs first heard Rubinstein play in 1959, but it was not until 1986 that he seriously considered writing a biography of Rubinstein. Not having primary source material from the musician’s first 53 years was an obstacle (Rubinstein’s papers were destroyed or lost when the Germans occupied his house during the war), but Sachs had the full cooperation of Rubinstein’s wife, Nela, and access to a huge amount of source material that had accumulated after the Rubinsteins came to the United States. Since in his memoirs (My Young Years and My Many Years), Rubinstein occasionally changed some dates and facts, Sachs realized an added necessity of thoroughness in his research. The resultant biography “Rubinstein – A Life” is definitive and belongs on the shelf alongside those memoirs.

From the treasure caves of the Russian television, we have here a live rendition of Chopin´s Barcarolle Op. 60, one of Rubinsteins most beloved pieces and also frequently mentioned in his memoirs:

Additionally, Peter Gutmans concentrated webpages on Rubinstein are
highly recommended:
http://www.classicalnotes.net/columns/rubinstein.html