Customer Reviews

The Hours: Music from the Motion Picture Arranged for Piano Solo

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The Amazon description doesn't say much, so here's the deal: This piano solo songbook contains 11 of the 14 tracks from the CD, "The Hours: Music from the Motion Picture Composed by Philip Glass." It leaves out two short tracks "'For your own benefit,'" "Vanessa and the Changelings," and regrettably "The Kiss", as the latter is one of the best tracks from the soundtrack.) Despite these omissions, however, the songbook is pretty awesome, a dream come true for those who love the movie "The Hours" and Glass' haunting score. Stephen Daldry's 2002 film entrances you, yes, and so does listening to Glass' score. Michael Cunningham's novel, on which the film is based, seduces you, too, into a portrait of the suffering of women, the modern and timeless female psyche, the powerful connection between life and art.

But playing the songs yourself allows you to immerse yourself to an even higher level of connectedness with the themes of the whole "Hours" enterprise, and specifically, relive the film and music of the film. The piano solo arrangements, by Michael Riesman, range from easy to moderately difficult. They are all in C-major, but have lots of flats and sharps. Those with two to three years of piano lessons/experience could pull it off, and many of the pieces are simple enough to sight read.

But the songs also lean toward moderately difficult to advanced. You'll frequently run into right-hand triplets to be played on top of left-hand eighth notes. A few are more on the advanced side -- "The Poet Acts" and "The Hours" -- as they require tricky fingering, large hands, and probably a lot of practice. Timing is mostly 3/4 and 4/4 measure time. A great thing is that each song tells you exactly how fast to play so you can set your metronome to it (i.e. a quarter note = 96 in "Dead Things"). The songs do not tell you when to pedal or fingering, which would've been helpful on some of the more difficult pieces.

This book would be great for piano students/teachers. The pieces are arranged so that it is possible to learn casually, yet beautiful and challenging enough to really take your time with and perfect.

As an added bonus, for sale separately, there is Michael Riesman's piano solo CD of "The Hours." And what you hear on that CD is exactly the same as the arrangements in this book! This book gives you the ENTIRE arrangements of the ENTIRE tracks. They do not cut the songs short! Pair up the CD with the songbook, and you have a piano student's dream. On top of that, you can sample the piano solo CD on Amazon: check in the Free Downloads section of Music. You can download three entire tracks from Riesman's solo album.

For $12.95, the book is a steal. On Amazon or Overstock, it's even cheaper! A great buy, as a lot of today's songbooks of this caliber, size, etc are 19.99$. The arrangement of "Morning Passages" is worth getting it alone. I would've rated the book 5 stars if not for the omission of "The Kiss," and if pedaling and fingering were in the book.

In short, Glass's music is very easy to play compared to other composers. It is still beautiful even if it is not virtuoso-material. Easy for anyone - from an intermediate pianist to an expert - to pick up and get a good deal of enjoyment out of.

Nice big book, lovely music. This was a gift for my piano playing sister, a fan of the film, and she loved it.

"The Hours" is one of my favorite movie and book of all time. Due to the depth of character analysis on three different individuals in three different time periods.

The complexity of the issues involved, the delicacy of writing, everything is impeccable.

Although an overal "depressing" film, one cannot overlook what a literature masterpiece it is from our time.

The accompanying soundtrack is incredible too. It just takes the viewer into the lives of these characters in such a seamless way. Beautiful.