To the piece and away again

Anyone who likes to look behind the scenes of the pieces to be learned with their pupils will be very interested in this volume published by Breitkopf. Sigrid Naumann invites you to discover, explore and play short, easy piano pieces. The examples come from four eras from the Baroque period to the present day. As the author writes in the foreword, all the suggestions are based on practical experience, which is clearly noticeable. She succeeds in creating scope for combining different areas of learning such as playing literature, improvisation and music theory. Individual aspects are examined in detail in the various chapters and new things are introduced step by step. For example, playing in the five-note range over a drone fifth leads to a piece from Bartók's Microcosmwhich in turn becomes an invitation to experiment with different modal keys and thus expand one's listening vocabulary. A musette by Louis Daquin rounds off this chapter. In addition, small literature examples by Schumann, Kabalewski or Rameau demonstrate compositional principles such as playing in parallel motion or how a minuet can be reduced to a simple two-part movement in order to develop new variations. Two large sections are devoted to playing chords and cadenzas. Mozart's dice game or composing with telephone numbers à la Kurtág (Hommage à Jenny, JatékokVolume 2) provides experience with aleatorics.

The author basically takes two different approaches: by means of improvisational preliminary exercises, she leads the reader to a piece to be worked on and thus provides initial insights into the underlying rules of playing, or she encourages improvisation and alteration of a given piece. In the spirit of Bach, this volume provides suggestions for "not only getting good inventiones, but also performing them well".

Sigrid Naumann, Spielräume - Spielregeln. Easy piano pieces from four centuries with suggestions for improvising, discovering-exploring-playing, EB 8846, € 22.90, Edition Breitkopf, Wiesbaden 2015