Modern repertoire for the beginner

[juchecouture]

Hi all, I'm a casual pianist. I studied for about five years when I was younger, but gave it up; I re-started about two years ago from a very poor initial level. To give you an idea of my standard, the hardest piece I can play is Liszt's 3rd Valse Oubliée (I'm currently struggling with the fourth and really struggling with the first). And like every other beginner pianist, I think I play a mean Clair de Lune

My issue is that I would love to play more post-Romantic music. I love Stockhausen, Ligeti, and Toru Takemitsu, to give a few examples. The problems I have are:

1) the contemporary canon is so large and varied that I don't know where to begin;
2) a lot of it is ferociously difficult - some of it deceptively so - which makes it hard to find pieces; and
3) although I love listening to it, I worry that without a good theoretical understanding of what informed the movements' approaches to harmony etc. I won't be able to do them justice.

Is there such a thing as a contemporary piano curriculum? How can I find pieces around my standard? I've thought about working through Bartok's Mikrokosmos (at least as far as I'm able), but that's an intimidatingly huge prospect.

Suggestions would be much appreciated!

[kevinr]

I'm sure working through Mikrokosmos gradually would be really rewarding. The first volume starts with just 5 finger exercise stuff and the subsequent volumes increase the technical difficulty. So you would improve your technique, get into Bartok's musical language and play some fantastic music all together.

You said you like Ligeti. While some of his stuff is formidably difficult (e.g. Etudes) there are some pieces in his earlier Musica Ricercata (pub Schott) which might be within your grasp.

Also, if you have a duet partner there is a volume of 4 hands music by Ligeti, which is really good, and some of it not very hard. This is also published by Schott.

Still on duets, there's 3 Easy pieces and 5 easy pieces by Stravinsky. These have on part which if easy (beginner level) and the other somewhat harder but not too bad. Also Grainger wrote quite a bit of 4 hand music where one part is easier than the other.

A lot of Messiaen is very hard but there is an early set of preludes which include some quite accessible pieces technically e.g. Plainte Calme.

Some Shostakovitch is not too bad. If I remember correctly there's 5 Preludes and 3 Fantastic Dances. The 24 Preludes and Fugues make quite heavy demands but some of the preludes might be OK.

Prokoviev Visions Fugitives might be worth a look.

Schoenberg 6 Little Pieces.

Also in similar idiom there's Quaderno Musicale, a set of 12 tone pieces by Dallapicola.

Mompou wrote a large number of short piano pieces. Musica Calllada is one collection, containing miniatures - challenging musically but not too much technically. These are contained in a Mompou piano selection published by Barenreiter.

If you want some absolutely contemporary piano pieces, there is the Spectrum series, published by ABRSM  containing many pieces expressly written to be accessible to lower grades and specially commisioned for the series:

https://www.thaliamyers.com/spectrum/

Hope this helps.

[juchecouture]

Wow, thanks for such a great reply. I don't have a duet partner (I do have a flutist partner, who is also my life partner ), but some of the rest definitely looks within my grasp! I will have a look at the piece from Musica Ricercata used in Eyes Wide Shut as soon as I get home.

Thanks again.