Bertini’s playing was described as “having Clementi’s evenness and clarity in rapid passages as well as the quality of sound, the manner of phrasing, and the ability to make the instrument sing characteristic of the school of Hummel and Moschelès.” And let’s not forget that Bertini was a celebrated teacher who concentrated on strict pedagogy. With the best will in the world, we find it difficult to be angry with Bertini, yet he drives us to distraction with his perfumed Parisian phrases all his music is as smooth as silk and satin.” We also know that Bertini gave a concert with Franz Liszt on 20 April 1828, playing Bertini’s transcription of Beethoven’s 7th symphony for piano eight hands. Robert Schumann reviewed one of Bertini’s trios, and wrote, “Bertini writes easily flowing harmony but the movements are too long. After studies in composition in England and Scotland he was appointed professor of music in Brussels but returned to Paris in 1821. There was no doubt that Bertini was a child prodigy, and his father took him on a concert tour of England, Holland, Flanders, and Germany. He received his early musical education from his father and his brother, a student of Muzio Clementi. Henri Jérôme Bertini (1798-1876) was born in London, but quickly returned to Paris with his parents. In all, he published over 300 original compositions, pedagogical works and editions, including 12 Easy Etudes, Op. “He published collections of graded instructional pieces and books of exercises, published new editions of the works of Classical and Romantic composers, wrote widely disseminated books about piano pedagogy, and taught a great number of pupils. In addition, Köhler remained influential throughout his career in the area of piano pedagogy. His first book, “The Melody of Language” established him as one of the leading German writers. He was music critic for the “Hartungsche Zeitung” and his correspondence articles from Königsberg for Brendel’s “Neue Zeitschrift für Musik” brought him to the attention of Liszt and Wagner in 1852. From 1847, Köhler devoted himself exclusively to piano pedagogy and to writing about music. Köhler eventually settled in Königsberg, now Kaliningrad, and worked as a conductor in the local theatre. von Bocklet, and theory with the esteemed teachers Sechter and Seyfried. The German pianist, composer, critic and teacher Christian Louis Köhler (1820-1886) was born in Brunswick and sent to Vienna to study music. I filled in these last year, and among others, completed the first half of volume one.” These fantastic pieces are arranged in order of difficulty, so it is very easy to tailor assignments to the abilities of the student. Finally, in 1938 I had 100-odd pieces together. However, it was only in the summer of 1932 that I really began working on it, and at that time I composed about 40 pieces in 1933-34, another 40 pieces, and an additional 20 in the following years. Bartók described the genesis of his new piano work in 1940: “Already in 1926, I was thinking of writing very easy piano music for the teaching of beginners. The material in volumes 1–3 has been designed to be sufficient in itself for the first, or the first and second, year of study.” The large-scale Mikrokosmos occupied him for several years. The first four volumes of Mikrokosmos were written to provide study material for the beginner pianist and are intended to cover, as far as possible, most of the simple technical problems likely to be encountered in the early stages. Let’s get started with a graduated set of etudes by the French music teacher, pianist and composer Félix Le Couppey (1811-1887). It was nevertheless a lot of fun finding interesting etudes composed for the intermediate-beginner pianist. Finding etudes for your second or third years of piano studies that are both technically beneficial and musically entertaining isn’t an easy task. At some point, however, you will still have to stumble across various etudes to strengthen your technique without numbing your brains. Nowadays there are countless piano methods on the market that promise to make the learning process easy and fun. Many of these first etudes are custom-written for younger children-they certainly sound that way-which really doesn’t help beginning adult students. At that age, I didn’t get bored with finger exercises and I just loved the first little piano pieces with cute and charming melodies. There were so many exciting things to explore, and thankfully I had a very nice and knowledgably teacher. I started piano lessons at the age of six, and it was a lot of fun.
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