Variation form was a central feature of Beethoven’s piano writing in general, from his early years until the end of his life. The many witty transformations of popular tunes give us an insight in how it might have sounded when the young Beethoven sat down to improvise at the keyboard, while works like the Eroica- and Diabelli Variations belong to […]

22 pieces by Sergey Prokofiev have been added to Piano Street’s library of downloadable sheet music: Four Etudes, opus 2 Four Pieces, opus 3 Four Pieces, opus 4 Ten Pieces, opus 12 Listen to Sviatoslav Richter playing Diabolic Suggestions (opus 4 no 4):

“The other day I heard Chopin improvise at George Sand’s house. It is marvelous to hear Chopin compose in this way: his inspiration is so immediate and complete that he plays without hesitation as if it could not be otherwise. But when it comes to writing it down and recapturing the original thought in all its details, he spends days […]

“In every fugitive vision I see worlds, full of the changing play of rainbow hues…” Konstantin Balmont Visions Fugitives (fleeting visions) by Sergey Prokofiev is a set of pieces based on a poem written by Russian poet Konstantin Balmont. They were composed between 1915 and 1917 and premiered by Prokofiev on April 15, 1918 in Petrograd, Soviet Union. The pieces, […]

The Hungarian-French composer Stephen Heller (1814-1888) produced a large amount of piano music of which his numerous studies are still very popular because of their fine pedagogical qualities as well as their strong and appealing characteristics. His other piano pieces of all kinds, variations, character pieces, operatic transcriptions, fantasies, sonatas, dance movements, nocturnes, waltzes, caprices and scherzos might by today’s […]

Playing piano pieces for four hands is often very motivating for beginning piano students. Diabelli’s 28 Melodious Exercises opus 149 are simple but appealing pieces and the primo part stays in the five finger position all the time which makes them great for practicing sight reading. Diabelli’s 28 Melodious Exercise, opus 149 are now available for download from the Piano […]

“The more I play, the more I am thoroughly convinced that the pedal is the soul of the piano. There are cases where the pedal is everything” Anton Rubinstein Two interesting books on the use of the piano pedals have been added to Piano Street’s new Special Content page. The books are downloadable as e-books in pdf-format. Guide to the […]

This legendary manual in both English and German documents principles and techniques of the legendary piano teacher Theodor Leschetizky, who taught Paderewski, Schnabel and many other great pianists. The book devided into two parts begins with explanations of hand and finger positions and proceeds to discussions of the touch; diatonic and chromatic scales; trills, chords and arpeggios, double notes, thirds, […]

———————————————————————- EDIT 13 January 2008: The audio files are no longer available for free but will soon be added to the Gold membership resources. ———————————————————————- We would like to wish you Happy Holidays with some of our new recordings for you to enjoy! The seven new recordings below are freely available until 12 January 2009. All tracks recorded on Steinway […]

Russian tone-poet Alexander Scriabin composed his Mazurkas over a period of fifteen years (from 1888 to 1903). A Mazurka was originally a stylized Polish folk dance in triple meter with a lively tempo and a heavy accent on the second or third beat. It has either a triplet, a trill, a dotted or even eighth note pair before two quarter […]

24 Fiver-Finger Exercises, opus 777 by Carl Czerny has been added to our sheet music library. This opus contains 24 easy exercises practicing various technical skills such as legato and staccato playing, thirds etc.

A pilot video for our planned series of pedagogical tools is now available on YouTube: