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Piano was the favored instrument of galore composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Liszt or Debussy. This instrument helps us view “the subtlest universal truths” from the perspective of music. Hearing a person playing the piano may lift your spirit. Many humans want to learn to play piano but they are either too affrighted to get started or too convinced that they will not make it. However, learning to play piano is not that difficult if you keep in mind assorted tips.
Be motivated
The most necessary thing is your level of motivation. If you are not motivated enough, you will not be capable to get over all the obstacles in your learning process. You have to be ready for galore hours of sustained effort. Though your progression might seem slow at first, in time the fruits of your labor will be visible as you will become more fluent and more precise in your playing technique.
Taking piano lessons from a teacher
You may learn to play the piano in two ways: by taking lessons from a teacher or by learning on your own. Taking piano lessons from a teacher is likely to bestow to a rapidly and without delay acquisition of the basic notions because you will gain from the total attention of your tutor. In addition, you may be sure that the instructing methods will be adapted to your own needs and personality. For instance, a private tutor will be capable to assign a repertoire that suits not only your interest but likewise your level of ability.
Online piano lessons
Conversely, you may learn to play piano on your own by taking online lessons. All you have to do is browse in a patient manner through the web-pages and discover the tutorial that works best for you. Usually, websites that specialize in instructing online piano lessons provide free online sheets of music and example sound files. All these are accompanied by a series of video demonstrations which facilitates comprehension.
The importance of having your own piano
Buying a piano or at least a digital keyboard may be a wondrous idea if you want to improve your playing technique. Having such an instrument in your home means that you will be capable to exercise whenever you want. However, if you consider purchasing a piano, ask for the counsel of a registered piano technician. The latter will let you recognise incisively if the instrument that you plan to buy is worth the money.
Feel the music
Learning to play the piano is surely not easy. You may attain proficiency in this instrument only if you are perseverant and determined to succeed. Aside from learning how to master the technical aspects, a promising piano player ought to likewise tune his own sensations to the songs interpreted using this instrument. True music is rendered through the soulful interpretation of the notes that appear in front of the musician.
Nj.com, Bradley Bambarger, December 3, 2009Frenchman Jean-Efflam Bavouzet already had a fine traversal of Ravel’s piano music to his credit. Now he has finished his finish series of Debussy’s more voluminous output for the instrument, an even more impressive accomplishment thanks to his lapidary sense of the composer as sensualist (but not a softy). This fifth album serves as a distinctive coda to the main body of work, featuring piano versions of three ballets: the masterwork “Jeux” and two best known in posthumous orchestrations: “Khamma” and “La Boîte à Joujoux.” The orchestral incarnations are ever-intoxicating (especially “Jeux”), but Bavouzet’s dynamic range and feel for Debussy’s mysterious rhythmic syntax may make a listener almost forget that fact. With outstanding production values, Bavouzet’s Debussy edition is one of the jewels in the 30-year Chandos catalog.
MusicWeb International, Gary Higginson, February 2010Even before my copy had dropped through my letterbox, reviews of this CD could be read all over the place – largely laudatory ones too. So I waited various weeks before listening. In fact I am, like every one else, very impressed. I’ll explain. I suspect that Jean-Efflam Bavouzet had expected to record Debussy’s finish piano music in the four volumes, already very well reviewed (see below). The probability arrival of the piano score of `Khamma’ seems to have set him on the path of also tackling the other two ballets for a single disc. In fact Debussy always devised for the ballet pianist a usable rehearsal version. In the case of the score for ‘Jeux’ Bavouzet remarks in his further and added essay (there is likewise a popular one by Roger Nichols) “A note from the artist” that Jeux was “genuinely unplayable by one pianist”. This was primarily due to the composer’s habit of adding, above and underneath the basic staves, extra flourishes and phrases as an aide-memoire for the later orchestration. A few years ago Bavouzet made a four-hand version of the ballet but for this recording had to manage the performance alone and without any `jiggery-pokery’ in the recording booth. The result was “one of the most difficult works I have ever played”. On opening the booklet one espies a rare photo of Debussy with that marvellous and under-rated composer André Caplet who passed from physical life young in 1925. Debussy wrote to Caplet that in composing this Diaghilev-commissioned ballet “I forgot the difficulties of the world so as to write music that was almost joyous with the rhythm of gay gestures … I am thinking of orchestral colour that seems back-lighted”. At primary I heard the work in it is orchestral guise then I heard Bavouzet. Make no mistake, in the piano version much is lost but Bavouzet has a way of almost reproducing orchestral colour, with his touch, pedalling and phrasing – a veritably remarkable achievement. It ought to be remembered that `Jeux’ is genuinely called a `Poème dansé’ and the `plot’ if I may call it that, is a more or less (erotic|sexual pleasure|sexually arousing ménage à trois concerning three tennis players, two females and a male who, in the search for a tennis ball, dance both separately and in respective pairs, and as a three-some finally resulting in a combined kiss. This precedes the surprising arrival of a second tennis ball just before the music evaporates. Sadly for Debussy and Nijinsky whose `vulgar’ choreography Debussy failed to enjoy, `Le Sacre du Printemps’ hit the world just two weeks later and Debussy’s score was forgotten for fifty years. Oddly sufficient `Khamma’ is also a ballet with regards to a girl who dances herself to death. This time the ballet is set in ancient Egypt involving propitiation for the `sins’ of a besieged city. The music which represents Debussy at his most experimental comprises of four scenes and a series of three internal dances the whole woven together with stylistic consistency. The composer only orchestrated the initial three or four minutes. There was much confusedness and argument in regards to the orchestration and contractual details. Charles Koechlin orchestrated the rest after Debussy’s death. The primary concert performance of the orchestral version – which I have not heard myself – took place in 1924. The piano version is noteworthy in the orchestral effects which may so readily be heard. The trumpets near the beginning are, for example, specially striking. I would like to listen what little Debussy did orchestrate. It may be odd to think of Debussy as having been influenced by Stravinsky but the fact is that the plot of the ballet `La Boîte à Joujoux’ is not different from that of `Petrushka’. Cardboard characters act out a love disaster rather of circus dolls. In addition `La Boîte’ like `Khamma’ has a major role for the piano although, again, Debussy never finished it. André Caplet did that, and rather brilliantly too. In fairness to invent a new ballet in 1913 on the eve of the Great War and just a few months after `Le Sacre’ was in all probability doomed. We ought to be thankful that Debussy was much inspired here by the games and toys of his seven year-old daughter ChouChou. Why not, after all the work is subtitled `Ballet pour enfants’. One way in which Debussy gives rise to this atmosphere is by quoting children’s songs, peculiarly in the final tableau. These songs include `Pop goes the weasel’; without doubt you could have much fun playing `spot that tune’, what with Mendelssohn’s Wedding March and Debussy’s own `Danse Nègre’. Towards the end did I not also spot a quote from portion two of `Le Sacre’? We will have to be delighted that Debussy found the energy and longanimity to stick with the task of completing the ballet. It is great fun to listen to either version. However, as a stand-alone piano piece I am not so sure. Whereas `Khamma’ is integrated and closely symphonic in construction `La Boîte’ because of the nature of it is material is a bit more fragmentary and programmatic. In addition the characters are individualised musically. For example the soldier may evidently be represented by a trumpet and a fanfare has been written for him. There is an enigmatic toy-waltz for the doll and a curious figure in seconds (Petrushka again) for Punchinello. My only criticism is that Chandos will have to have given the initial tableau it is own track rather of linking it to the Introduction. Otherwise this is a marvellous disc and the climax in so a heap of ways of Bavouzet’s finish Debussy cycle.
Allmusic.com, Jim Leonard, February 2010The fifth volume of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s survey of the finish piano music of Claude Debussy is at least as fine as the former four, and perhaps even more interesting. Throughout this series, Bavouzet has shown himself to be not only a stupendous virtuoso — not one thing in the Études or the Préludes is technically beyond him — but likewise an exemplary Debussy pianist. He knows how to blend, balance, shade, and shadow so that the music always sounds like it is by Debussy and no other composer. In this volume, Bavouzet takes on three works seldom programmed or recorded in any form and plays them in their closely unknown piano versions: the ballets Khamma, Jeux, and La boîte à joujoux. Though the piano versions were intended only as aids for dance rehearsal and not as a alternate for the full scores, they prove altogether persuasive in these performances. Bavouzet tosses off the most challenging passages as effortlessly as if they were five-finger exercises, but more importantly, he makes compelling cases for these rare pieces, revealing each as a entirely worthy work, something at which a great deal of conductors have failed. Though no fan of the composer ought to be without the orchestral versions of these scores, this disc will have to be of interest to any individual who loves Debussy. Chandos’ digital sound is warm, deep, detailed, and colorful.
Debussy Piano Works Vol 5 Pic
Debussy Piano Works Vol 5 Photo
Debussy Piano Works Vol 5 Photo
Debussy Piano Works Vol 5 Picture
Debussy Piano Works Vol 5 Picture
Debussy Piano Works Vol 5 Picture
Most helpful customer reviews
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
 Bavouzet Finishes His Debussy Survey with Three Rarities
By J Scott Morrison
Debussy tended to write his orchestral works in short score, meaning essentially in a version more or less playable at the piano. And this, the final disc in Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s outstanding traversal of all of Debussy’s piano music, is what we get here, a pianist playing pieces we know much better in their orchestral garb. All three of these scores — Khamma, Jeux, and La Boîte à Joujoux — were ballets. And ballets tend to need a piano reduction so that ballet companies could rehearse them without having to have an orchestra present.
Khamma (1910-1912), an ‘Egyptian ballet’, was never completely orchestrated by Debussy because the dancer who commissioned it was unwilling to provide the huge orchestra Debussy felt the work required. Hence he only finished orchestrating about a fifth of the score. Eventually Charles Koechlin finished the orchestration under Debussy’s watchful eye and the piece was premièred (in concert, not as accompaniment for a ballet) in 1924, six years after Debussy’s death. It was never danced until 1947, and it remains one of Debussy’s least known works. The score is episodic in illustration of various aspects of the life and death of the Egyptian priestess Khamma. It contains some forward thinking harmonies and gestures. Bavouzet brings it to life with his fine attention to color and precise articulation.
Jeux (Games) must have one of the oddest scenarios of any ballet, taking place on a tennis court. It was choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky, whose choreography, Debussy said, ‘trampled over my poor rhythms like some weed.’ The première was greeted with bemused incomprehension. And then a couple of weeks later Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring was premièred and in all the hubbub about it Jeux disappeared from the scene until years later it joined the concert repertoire, although still somewhat rarely played. The music, however, is one of Debussy’s finest works — I’m particularly fond of a recording of the orchestral version by Bernard Haitink and the Royal Concertgebouw Debussy: Nocturnes; Jeux — and Debussy himself made the piano version. Bavouzet plays the light-hearted, alternately flirty, seductive and ecstatic music in masterly fashion.
La Boîte à Joujoux (The Box of Toys) is described as ‘a ballet for children’. Debussy wrote it for his beloved daughter Emma (nicknamed Chouchou) for whom he had earlier written the Children’s Corner Suite. The composer envisioned it as being performed by marionettes but then decided he wanted children dancing all the parts. He never saw it performed and when it was premièred in 1919 it was danced by adults. It is one of Debussy’s most lighthearted and unaffected scores. It quotes a number of familiar tunes (e.g., the Soldiers’ March from ‘Faust’ and Mendelssohn’s Wedding March, as well as an English nursery song sung by Chouchou’s English nanny). The scenario has a cardboard soldier falling in love with a doll who spurns him for the love of Punch.
Bavouzet includes a note about the requirements for playing these three scores. La Boîte à Joujoux is fairly straightforward as Debussy prepared the piano version very carefully. Khamma is altogether different in that it requires more than the usual two staves, not all of which can be played without overdubbing (which Bavouzet decided not to do); the pianist has to make judgments about what to include and what to leave out. Bavouzet decided to do his best by imitating what can be heard in the orchestral version. One can hear some differences between the piano and orchestral versions but it is actually amazing what Bavouzet is able to pull off. Jeux is even more difficult, indeed unplayable in some places. And at the same time there are some places where the writing is so thin that it is impossible for the pianist to make up for the piano’s lack of orchestral color. Again, I am amazed at how well Bavouzet makes us hear, at least in our mind’s ear, the orchestral fabric, and he adds something in terms of clarity of structure, something that sometimes does not come through in orchestral performance. (In his notes he says that Jeux is one of the most difficult things he’s ever tried to play.)
Of the five CDs in Bavouzet’s Debussy traversal, this is probably the least essential, but for all that it is utterly fascinating for those who might want to go beyond the usual Debussy piano oeuvre and hear yet more of Debussy’s utterly original piano writing.
Scott Morrison
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
 Excellent Composition/Performance for Piano Fans
By S. R. Arthur
I am an amateur classical music listener, but am a huge fan of piano. This CD is absolutely wonderful. The production quality is fantastic, and Bavouzet truly knows how to make every range of the piano sing with life. This composition is filled with a roller coaster ride of emotions, and I truly enjoyed the ride.
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