Customer Reviews

Etudes, Children's Corner, Images Book II: And Other Works for Piano (Dover Music for Piano)

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For years, due to copywrite issues, "The Children's Corner" suite was only available in a French edition. Now it's here, in an affordale Dover edition, along with some rarer piano solos.

"Children's Corner" ranges from playable ("Dr. Gradus ad Parnassum" and "The Little Shepherd" and "Doll's Lullaby" to the evilly tricky "Snow is Dancing" made famous by Tomita in an electronic version. The suite was written for Debussy's daughter and is utterly charming and really fun to play. The etude's from Book II are incomplete here, but have some of the nices works, along with a beautiful berceuse.

If you play piano and love the Impressionist composers, this is a must-have.

This edition includes a lot of great Debussy music, including La Plus que Lente, Children's Corner, and the Etudes. The book is worth it for the Etudes alone, which were written towards the end of Debussy's life and which are simply amazing. They are as masterful as Chopin's etudes, in my opinion. I recommend buying both this and the other Dover edition of Debussy piano music to have basically (or actually, but I haven't checked to be absolutely sure) everything that Debussy wrote for solo piano.

What can one say? As a composer, Debussy is just right up there with anybody else one wishes to name - his music is definitely a product of genius and puts him in the very first rank of composers - and his piano music is top notch also in terms of how it uses the instrument while not being all that awkward to play even if it's difficult enough!

These pieces (2 of which I had the pleasure to read through a few days ago!) ought to be in every pianist's library and ought to be known by any serious musician - and how better than in this cheap yet top-quality republication of original editions by firms like Durand, Leduc, Eschig, etc.?? An ABSOLUTE STEAL!!!