Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum "Mastering the Piano" by Valery Lloyd-Watts - opinions? OR?

I was wondering if anyone has used this series. Does it include all four eras of work or no? It doesn't seem to contain contemporary pieces. Nor does it seem to have a lot of pieces at each level before advancing. The last book looks to have some pretty intense stuff - is the work that precedes it an adequate 'diet' before tackling that?

http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Pia...mp;s=books&qid=1273453730&sr=1-2

Also, except for 'First Impressions,' do you know of any other intermediate piano method series - something structured? I know of all the anthologies, but something actually designed similarly to other method books containing intermediate/early advanced literature.

Thank you as always

I'm not familiar with the series, but there are several graded repertoire series available which more than cover lower intermediate piano up through early advance.

One such series you should explore is Piano Repertoire, edited by Keith Snell and published by Kjos. In addition to covering Baroque through late 20th century lit, at graded levels, Primer to 10, there is an accompanying Theory text at each level, plus Technique and Scale books and Etudes.

Whether you use this series, or another, such as the Celebration series, I would urge you to prepare each piece as if you were presenting it in recital. Only then will you have explored the possible problems which students are going to encounter.

Another suggestion for your consideration is to have your students learn at least 4 pieces from each period represented at each level, before going on to the next level.

The Kjos site is down at the moment, but you can see an overview of the series here.

Thank you, John!

The series in question was actually for my brother (while I teach, it's not piano! yet! ha!). He uses the Piano Repertoire series as sight-reading material (currently at level 3, holding off on 4 for right now) alongside the 'Easy Moderns vs Classics' series. The reason he's resistant to using the KJOS method is because he knows his teacher will make him do every song at every level and that's just a bit much for only 30-minutes a week, especially when he's progressing quite quickly already.

We do enjoy them very much, though, and heard about them from you originally! And he does use the theory books as his main theory series.

I also found 'Keys to Stylistic Mastery,' but was unsure about it because there are a lot of author-composed pieces in there and I'd rather see him learn the classics instead of an imitation at this level.