Customer Reviews

Complete Preludes, Books 1 and 2 (Dover Music for Piano)

5 star:		(4)
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3 star:		(1)
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This is one of those sets that I think, if I were stranded on a desert island with a Steinway (and a good piano tuner), I could delve into for years with little other music.
These short pieces are excellent for sight-reading difficult passages with many key changes and unexpected accidentals, for intricate harmony and for expression of mood. The names are evocative of feelings and sights, such as an underwater cathedral, bells in the evening air, wind through heather and the like.

Though short pieces of a few pages, each provides a particular challenge to the piano student, as well as being appropriate for concert encores or intimate playing.

This is an affordable book that is fine for following along while listening to the music being played by someone else, but very frustrating to play from for oneself. The book does not open flat on a piano stand, and keeps falling when the pages are turned. It needs constant propping up by other books, which interrupts passages that have not been memorized (especially for non-professional pianists like me with a poor memory). The Schirmer editions are a bit better in this regard, and the Peters and Kalmus editions open even more flatly than the Schirmer volumes. I will not buy a Dover piano book again for playing -- only if I intend merely to follow a score while listening. Dover editions are cheap compared with those published by other companies, but you get what you pay for.

The Preludes of Debussy are from a different planet. The sounds that he got from the piano are still like no other composer, even after over 100 years since their composition. Dover yet again has printed a most economical edition that is very affordable for the pianist that would like to delve into these gems. Recommended!

I love Debussy music, but a lot of his solo piano pieces have gone overlooked, masked by overly-exposed favorites like "The Moonlight Sonata." This book contains some very interesting and unique sounding preludes, and the editing has been top-notch as far as I can tell. The music is easy to see/read, the spacing between staves is just right, and I haven't been able to find a single mistake yet (though, finding a wrong accidental in Debussy's music because of an editorial mistake would be comparable to finding a needle in a haystack). Some French terminology is also explained in the front of the book. I've had this for close to a year now, and though I do take very good care of my music, there have been NO issues with binding/pages tearing/whatever. Want some Debussy preludes? Buy this edition.

Oh, if you want to hear some of these preludes performed by a reputable Debussy interpreter, look up "Michelangeli" on YouTube and you'll find a series of videos where he plays the majority (if not all) of these preludes.

So far in the playing through this album: an excellent compilation of favorite Debussy piano pieces. Thoroughly enjoyable. Clear pages and easy to read.