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I seem to recall having read about English language books on classical piano music with attention to individual works. For the life of me, I can't find the names of those. I wonder whether some of you may be aware of such books.

I have a German one by Klaus Wolters (which includes his own difficulty ratings for very many works) and there exist two further ones in German: "Reclams Klaviermusikführer" and "Harenberg Klaviermusikführer", but these both seem to be out of print. Surely there must be a number of similar books in English?

I just came upon the name of one of them: "Pianists Guide to Standard Teaching and Performance Literature" by Jane Magrath. If anyone has experience with this one, please chime in!

Sam recommend the Magrath book in this post

https://forum.pianoworld.com//ubbthr...iece-is-too-challenging.html#Post3167313

Recommended by AZN piano
https://forum.pianoworld.com//ubbthr...for-new-pieces-to-learn.html#Post2987182

Thanks for those links, dogperson. Yes, there is also the Hinson book, which Sam mentions using.

Hutcheson and Ganz: The Literature of the Piano.

Thanks for that suggestion. I found a (somewhat error afflicted) OCR'ed version on the internet, and it looks interesting (highly opinionated, but that's quite fine by me).

The Hinson book is probably the most comprehensive. He has passed on now, but the latest edition has a new co-author, so it is continuing to e updated. Of course, if you don't need the latest edition, the older editions are still great, and available used. The Magrath book is for "teaching" literature, so it does not include more difficult pieces.

Sam

Thanks, Sam! Even the German Wolters book refers to Hinson's book when it comes to American composers (where Wolters is a bit thin on the ground). Unfortunately, it is very expensive over here in physical form, but interestingly the Kindle version is rather inexpensive ...

My copy has 1169 pages. Just printing it would be expensive. It is really astounding how much work went into producing this book. And how much knowledge Hinson had of the piano literature. The first printing was in the 1980s - so the book was probably first conceived using index cards, pen and notebook, and typewriters.

Sam

I am looking at Hinson's book, but I find the text remarkably unspecific. For instance, Schumann, Unpublished Pieces from Album for the Young "Contains seventeen pieces originally intended for Op.68. Some are surprisingly fine, while others are not up to the standards of those included in the original collection." Why not say which pieces are suprisingly fine and which ones are not up to the standards?

Still, of course, what Sam says is also very true.

I’m thinking about getting the Magrath book but the main criticism is that it does not provide a way to find pieces by level. Did anybody create a spreadsheet to allow easy lookup by level? Does the Hinson provide that?

I can think of several reasons. To save space. Not wanting to take the time to make judgements about 17 pieces. Most probably, Hinson thought that amount of detail was not important. When one is discussing thousands of pieces, one has to sometimes make the decision to be brief, especially on the less significant pieces.

The second half of David Dubal's The Art of the Piano contains 300 pages about the main pieces in the piano literature. The first 400 pages are about great pianists, past and present.

Sam
Would you mind looking at the Magrath book regarding these same pieces? Since it is a teaching reference, there might be more detail

Thanks for that! I had never heard of that book.

I also agree with the pianoloverus suggestion of the Dubal book.

I refer to this book all the time when looking for new pieces to explore. The descriptions are brief, but give you a general gist of the piece as well as technical demands.

There are also suggested recordings which I also find quite useful.

The unpublished from op 68? She has a short description of 3,10, and 16. All she says about 3 is that it is a copy of 68/8.

No book can cover every piece, especially unpublished ones. If you are really interested in something, find a copy, play through them, and make your own judgements.

Sam

Of course. But we could make a Wikipedia of Piano pieces, and then everybody could contribute by writing about the pieces they know.

However, imagine the discussions... This piece is a true hidden gem.... Object. It is utterly boring.
Still, such a great project it would be.

YES, to all of the above!

For starters, this has already been done by Hinson to a depth(over 1000 pages) that few people would want to go. But more importantly, I think for something like this to have much meaning, the people writing about each piece have to have great knowledge of the piano literature and a very high level of playing skill. Otherwise, it's just the opinion of some random internet poster.