Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Challenging pieces for beginners.

Ok, first just quick relevant background information: 16 years old, no teacher, self teaching for 3-4 months, started with a keyboard, obtained digital piano few days ago, can play fur elise entirely including middle section, but not well as in evenly and expressively, just up to speed, still adjusting to weighted keys and playing evenly, most of the 3 months were spent on pop, ear playing and improvisation, been learning to read music for 3 weeks (because I want to get into classical), still working on better note identification and comprehending rhythm.

Now what I want, I am now halfway through the 11th grade and I have a target of being able to play a challenging and impressive piece before I graduate from high school, maybe at a school event if I could do it.

I was first thinking of something like fantasie impromptu but then I realized that I was thinking waaaaay over my head, 1 and a half years is all I have, and I really want to make something out of my self.

I am working on scales and arpeggios and expanding my knowledge on technique and theory in every practice session.

I am willing to skip a lot of easy pieces and sacrifice a good foundation to learn a lot of pieces for the ability to play one fast difficult piece.

I want someone to give me a short list of pieces starting from the difficulty of fur elise and increasing in difficulty to harder and harder pieces. I want pieces that will challenge my fingers and quickly help me improve in terms of physical ability. I learned to play fur elise, just the notes and rhythm and pace, in only about a week, of course I can't perform it passably (uneven playing, robotic, if I performed it on a keyboard it would sound right, but a piano no), but I think I can get the notes and rhythm or skeleton of a piece faster than the average beginner. By skeleton I mean just getting the notes and rhythm right with maybe some basic articulation and dynamics, but not really making something musical out of the piece, just the core of the mechanical aspect.

Can someone propose to me a list of pieces that I can learn in the next 1.5 years that will challenge my fingers and eventually lead me up to the last piece which should be something that would appeal to school students, not something really emotional like a nocturne, something mysterious, mystical, magical such as fantasie impromptu, but it would have to be something that I could be ready to play passably by that time and should appeal to a young audience not that I'm sure that I will be able to perform at a school event, my school is filled with students that have been playing for many years, but I am very motivated to do this.

Solfegietto, CPE Bach

I suggest a Mozart sonata. So many great sonatas to choose from. My personal favorites are K330 and K331. The K331 is especially crowd pleasing, as you get a GREAT first movement and a very well known third movement.

If any of your future audience are not totally piano aficionados a repertoire chosen from Shumann's "Kinderscenen" usually goes down well, all the pieces are do-able if not really easy.

KINDERSCENEN

-

Or, take a look at Mendelssohn's 'Songs without Words'.

Some of those are easy, some hard -- but all beautiful.

If you can get a copy of the Royal Conservatory of Music (Toronto) piano curriculum, it will have a nicely-graded sequence of "test pieces". That would be a good source for "what to study, in what order".

A suggestion for public performance of classical music:

. . . Play something a little easier than you can handle.

This is one time where being _really good_ is more important than being adventurous.

I continue to admire your spirit --

. Charles

PS -- how is the digi-piano ?

Please, just stop. This is the equivalent of building a house, with no foundations. It doesn't work.

I'm not trying to be mean, but I, and I'm sure some people reading this are just seriously face-palming right now. Pianists who play for 10years + still have challenges with pieces like Fantasie Impromptu, and even when you eventually get to a level to learning such an intricate piece like that - even Fur Elise (Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor) it will take you a very long time to get it to a level where you shouldn't be embarrassed to play in public, let alone perfect it.

You saying that you want to skip easy pieces to learn difficult ones. Those 'easy' pieces as you call them, are actually set in place to build your skills so that you have the foundation to eventually play the pieces you desire.

If you're serious about piano, then don't try and cut corners. It will only bite you in the ass.

I am a total beginner so I probably shouldn't say anything, but I completely agree with ju5t1n-h. What is it with playing fast, difficult stuff? All music can be beautiful and meaningful, even the easiest tunes. It's great to challenge oneself but one also needs to enjoy the ride, the very process of learning an instrument is an achievement in itself.

I suspect this has something to do with the accelerated life we live now, picking here and there without ever going deep, seeking quick, short-lived enjoyment and never stopping to actually digest anything and make it ours. Mmm, how it shows I'm not 16 anymore!

Sinophilia, what you say is so true. To play an easy piece beautifully, with as much nuance and expression as a seasoned pro might play a difficult piece, is actually quite hard to do. Just a quick listen to performances of simple pieces on youtube will show you that extremely few of them are performed with virtuoso beauty despite how "easy" they are.

btw, do you know of Mariangelo Vacatello? She has come from your country to play in our little town several times and she is a marvelous pianist. If you get a chance, you might wish to hear her.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GAeKw2rfXc

And to the OP, I second Whizbang's suggestion of CPE Solfeggietto. Its an impressive showman piece that's fun to play yet not terribly difficult and can provide a excellent challenge in learning to play it with good musical expression.

I would go with Traümerei before Solfeggietto. The latter is likely to be taken with speed as an objective. That's no way to learn a musical instrument.

Thinking further, scales and arpeggios won't help as much as pieces in the first year.

We don't learn easy pieces because they're easy. We use them to learn particular techniques in an easy setting. It's having a broad range of techniques from a wide range of pieces that makes our fingers well schooled. And that's what makes us sound good. Not time on one particular piece. With a broad technical foundation we sound good on every piece.

Listen to the last, or any, ABF recital. The first few notes, however easy or difficult the piece is, and you'll have a good idea of how competent the player is.

Learning a fast or showy piece with less than three to five years experience and you'll just sound like a plonker.

Thanks for the tips. The DP is the CDP-120, the only one I could possibly afford and it was on sale for $300 on boxing day.

I think you misunderstood, I don't want to learn fantasie impromptu or something of that difficulty, and I don't want to just learn difficult pieces, what I want is a steeper learning curve, something more challenging and progressive than the path the average person might take. I will still have a foundation, that is why I asked for a list of increasingly difficult pieces, I just want, as I said, a 'steeper' learning path.

I sort of take back what I said about skipping difficult pieces, basically I want a steeper learning curve, a definite objective of learning my way through a series of pieces to learn a piece like Solfeggietto.

I'd reverse your plan and spend more time on pieces at "each level". We started doing that (we = me & my teacher) about a year ago and it's really paying off.

(Though I'm trying to convince my teacher that it's time, it's really time, for Chopin's Nocturne in Eb ...)

There's no need to go any further than something like Fur Elise.Most people in a normal school would be impressed by it and those that do know about the piano or classical music in general will still be impressed if you can play it well.

An expert pianist playing something like Fur Elise will be immediately obvious to anybody who knows about music.That's not because the pianist has spent years practicing the piece, it's because of the immensely solid foundations that their pianism is built on.You can't really fake it.
The worst thing you could do in my opinion is to play something difficult badly.

With only 18 months to go this would still be a tough challenge for most people and then there's the business of performing in front of an audience which is a challenge in itself.

I think this is a mistaken view as well. If you have some talent, dedication, a good teacher, and practice a lot, you might very well climb the learning curve faster than some others. But if you want to be the most accomplished player you can be, then there aren't any shortcuts that produce a "steeper" curve by just leaving out some of the steps.

I suggest Beethoven's Eleven Bagatelles, Op. 119. These will be individually challenging and then may be performed together as two entire impressive pieces. Beethoven's bagatelles are focused technique builders for the beginning player.

Keep polishing Für Elise for the same reason. The purpose of the piece isn't in memorizing the notes, it's in learning technique for beautiful music.

Or, if you can play Für Elise well in another 6 months then his Moonlight Sonata #1 may also be possible within 18 months.

If you can play fur elise at pace with control, clarity and emotion then you will wow your classmates.... but i doubt very much you will.... i recon that by the time your 18 months are up you will be much more appreciative of what it takes to create BEAUTIFUL music.... doesnt have to be fast or intricate... ive been learning fur elise 8 years. Its work in progress....

But if you do want some reasonable works that sound more difficult than they are...

Burgmuller op 100

25 progressive etudes and numbers 12, 21 and 24 are all really rather showy....

If you work through from the start youll get through all 25 in 18months and build on your skills....

From what most of you are saying, there are no shortcuts, but as for the pieces I could be looking at, these are some wonderful suggestions, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Burgmuller, soo much to choose from.


For now, I'll just finish off Fur Elise and upload my performance of it, in about 3 weeks to this thread, because I have exams, and will post it to see what are the precise things that need working on.

I do very much understand how easy pieces can be difficult to play well, I watched so many virtuoso performances of the piece and I can really tell the difference.

When a piece has a bunch of notes a lot of them just sort of blend and not much attention is given to the way you play each individual note, but with simple pieces, it just becomes fascinating how much more there is to do than what is dictated on the score.

Well, I understand that now, so many experienced people have told me similar things, so I guess I should be patient.

Bach prelude no. 1