Piano Street has today published a new urtext edition of the four Ballades by Frédéric Chopin. The Ballade or Ballad was originally a sung poem, recounting a myth or an historical event. The form, with its connotations of simple folkloric authenticity, became popular in literature with the rise of Romanticism; Chopin is usually credited with originating the genre for the […]

A new instalment of two Preludes and Fugues from Bach’s WTC I, performed by Martin Sturfält, has been published today; the joyous and energetic C-sharp major set (which must surely be one of the most difficult to read on account of the extreme choice of key – seven sharps – taking you through keys such as B-sharp and E-sharp major!) […]

Piano Street has recently launched a page on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Piano-Street/121748274521447 In less than two weeks the page has attracted over 4,000 fans and we are of course very encouraged by seeing that there is such an interest in classical piano music! To celebrate the launch we offer free downloads of the three most popular Nocturnes by Chopin, all in or […]

Piano Street has today published a new urtext edition of the Nocturnes by Frédéric Chopin. This new edition attempts to present the most valid version of these pieces following consensus among today’s prominent scholars and pianists. The edition has Chopin’s own fingering only and for anyone needing further advice on fingering we refer to the edition by Herrmann Scholtz, also […]

During his Weimar period, Johann Sebastian Bach composed a wealth of works. Among them are the 22 solo keyboard transcriptions of concertos by his Italian and German contemporaries: six for organ (BWV 592–596) and 16 for single-manual keyboard (BWV 972–987). The latter includes many famous baroque concertos by for example Vivaldi, Marcello and Telemann. This collection of 16 works is […]

What Scarlatti is most prominently remembered for are the 555 short keyboard sonatas originally labelled Essercizi (Exercises). When he died in Madrid, Scarlatti left this treasury of manuscripts, which were largely unplayed beyond Spain and Portugal until pianist Carl Czerny published a selection of the sonatas in 1839. 34 of the most popular sonatas have been added to Piano Street’s […]

Each of the two volumes of Bach‘s Well-tempered Clavier contains one prelude and one fugue in every major and minor key. Often called “the 48”, or the “Old Testament” of piano music (the new being Beethoven’s sonatas) it is perhaps the most important keyboard work of all time. The preludes are very varied in style and often deal with a […]

The sheet music of Burgmüller’s opus 109, 18 Characteristic Studies, has been published as Piano Street Editions together with recordings by Henrik Sandback. This collection may be used as a sequel to the studies opus 100. Each study challenges the player with a specific technical problem, inseparable from the main idea of the composition. Like the earlier pieces, the Characteristic […]

Pictures at an Exhibition, one of Modest Mussorgsky’s most famous work, is a set of ten pieces originally composed for the piano. The work is also well known in various arrangements with Ravel’s orchestration being the most recorded and performed. Sheet music of the piano version is now available in urtext edition in the Piano Street sheet music library. The […]

This incomplete masterpiece was Bach’s last and greatest effort in the area of fugue writing and musical transformation. In contrast with the earlier Well Tempered Clavier, this collection of fugues and canons all share not only the same key but also the same subject. Recent handwriting and watermark studies have shown that The Art of the Fugue was composed about […]

Wanderer Fantasy Considered being his most technically demanding piano composition Schubert himself said “the devil may play it” about his Wanderer Fantasy, opus 15. It was composed in 1822 and dedicated to Emanuel Karl Edler von Liebenberg, who was a student of Hummel. Schubert’s Diabelli Variation Schubert wrote one variation on the well known Waltz by Diabelli, which Beethoven based […]

John Field is generally regarded as the father and inventor of the Nocturne, and influenced several of the later romantics, most notably Chopin. Rather simple in form, these pieces are mainly concerned with setting up a mood – usually rather melancholy – and a continuous flow of beautiful melody, with plenty of virtuosic embellishments. Both Field and Chopin were in […]