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Rhapsody in Blue – A Piece of American History at 100!
The centennial celebration of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue has taken place with a bang and noise around the world. The renowned work of American classical music has become synonymous with the jazz age in America over the past century. Piano Street provides a quick overview of the acclaimed composition, including recommended performances and additional resources for reading and listening from global media outlets and radio. Read more >>

Topic: Piano rep beginners to intermediate, order of difficulty  (Read 2084 times)

Offline note101ns

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I've been teaching professional students in Asia, mostly middle to high school who go on to study at top conservatories in US and Europe (Curtis, Juilliard ect). Recently started teaching beginners and young transfer students, also serious/dedicated practice at least 1hr/day (4-6 year olds).

For those of you who teach similar kind of students, do you have any suggestions on piano pieces method books, especially regarding order of difficulty, when to introduce what etc. With these young ones I'd usually start them on Alfred's (Basic Piano Library) but they go through the first few levels very quickly. Here in Asia, almost all other teachers use Thompson, combined with ALL Czerny 599, then 849, then 299, then 740, as well as Hanon, Beyer, Sonatinas (Clementi and others) Bach (Ana Magdalena, then Little Preludes, then 2/3 voice inventions, WTC and so on)

What I'm not clear about is having all that repertoire in mind, how to combine it, what goes together with what and combined with which level of Alfred's (or other method books). For example, for a student doing Alfred's method, at which level do you start introducing Czerny or other technical pieces, sonatinas, Bach, and other pieces (Burgmuller etc). Do you know of helpful online resources discussing these issues?

Any advice would be very much appreciated!