40(ish) Pieces in 2025

Nightowl · 2024-12-27T21:45:28+00:00

The 40 Piece Challenge has been around for a few years, as a way to improve sight reading skills - here is a link to an article which outlines how the concep...

ShiroKuro

Wow that is pristine indeed, thanks @pianoloverus !

Hey @BartK is this basically the arrangement you played or is the Henle version written different? The Ossia più facile starts on page 4 in this pdf.

BartK

ShiroKuro Hey @BartK is this basically the arrangement you played or is the Henle version written different? The Ossia più facile starts on page 4 in this pdf.

Yes, this is the same ossia. I made a few modifications where I mixed the ossia with some parts of the main score; mainly the octaves in the bass because the ossia sounded a bit thin without those. But this looks indeed the same and it's what Liszt wrote.

twocats

ShiroKuro I knew that, but if my memory is correct, you can't get the pdfs out of the app, is that right?

You can! From the Henle app, view the score in "print mode" (this is the same layout as their printed scores) and then print to PDF.

ShiroKuro

@twocats good to know, Thanks!

ShiroKuro

@BartK awesome, thank you for checking! And @pianoloverus thank you again for finding that score, it sooo much easier to read than the one I found!

Gooseberry

Here is the "nice walking tempo" piece that I wanted to learn next:

Thornton's Walk by Martin Phipps
It's from the soundtrack of the BBC mini-series "North and South", an adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's novel.

And then...

Sophia I also sense a theme developing... Wild Horses, Wild Horseman, so what's next...

Well, I couldn't resist when I saw the title of this piece 😂:

Dragon Rider by Hans-Günter Heumann
I think it fits the theme? There is also the "Halloween Witch Ride" by the same composer, but it will have to wait till October...

WieWaldi

Anyone tried this resource for easy sheet music?

Animisha

WieWaldi Yes, actually, all levels. Very nice arrangements.

Gooseberry

WieWaldi Yes. And this one too - nicely edited free sheet music.

BartK

This time I picked something easier because I was on a business trip and didn't have that much time to practice. It's a Burgmüller etude from the Eighteen Characteristic Studies set. Quite fun to play. 🙂

Quick Study List for 2025

Animisha

BartK As with all your quick studies, wow!! And this last one is something easier...

BartK

Animisha As with all your quick studies, wow!! And this last one is something easier...

Yes, compared to my previous pieces. 😆 This is about RCM 8 and I didn't really play it at full tempo. It should be much faster.

Thanks!

Animisha

I had such a flying start! But then, life happened. However, I can now add two more pieces to my list. One of the pieces is actually not a piece but a book: Piano Adventures' Technique and Artistry 1. Every single one of the pieces is too easy to add to the list, but I learned them all and I count this as one piece. It is a book that I for a long time considered buying. I never did that, and I am glad, because now that a friend lent it to me, I am a bit disappointed. I think they could have added some more technical principles.
The quick study piece (Lollipop's waltz) that I add is rather horrendous. But I learned it at last.

J.S. Bach - Arioso from cantata 156 (lesson piece)
John Thompson - Hide and seek (quick study)
Erik Satie - Petite prélude à la journée (quick study)
J.C. Bach - Prelude in A minor (quick study)
Andrew Lloyd Webber - Memory, from Cats (quick study)
Sarah Konecsni - Bells in the mist (quick study)
Edward MacDowell - To a wild rose (lesson piece; see our 3rd recital)
Linda Niamath - Lollipop's waltz (quick study)
Piano Adventures' Technique and Artistry 1

WieWaldi

I am very late, and I guess I will not manage to learn 40 pieces in a year. But the way is the goal, therefore I'll start now:

"Oh! Susanna" isn't exactly the sheet music in the link. I changed the bass line to an Oompah-pattern because I think it sounds more lively, and I hope I can reuse this muscle memory for other songs of this kind.

plop_symphony

Thanks for starting this thread! I have a problem where I start too many pieces in too short a span of time and now I currently have more than a dozen pieces in various states of mastery, which then leaves me with no time for practicing improvisation, arrangement or quick sight-reading. I amassed a huge collection of intermediate sheet music from lots of different sources over the past couple of years and I am now experiencing some anxiety about not having enough time to play it all... Fortunately, only a couple of these dozen pieces are so-called "stretch" pieces; most are at my level, and a few are quick studies.

"Footsteps in the Snow" by Angeline Bell
Aria in D minor, K. 32 by Domenico Scarlatti
Minuet in Bb major, BWV Anh. 118 by Johann Sebastian Bach (attr.)
Minuet in D minor, BWV Anh. 132 by Johann Sebastian Bach (attr.)
March in D major, BWV Anh. 122 by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (attr.)
"Once Upon a Frozen Winter" by Heather Hammond
"Pleading the Fifth" by Chilly Gonzales - this one was supposed to be a quick study, but it almost wasn't, because playing even fifths pianissimo was way harder than I thought it would be.

I have 3 other pieces that just need some polishing before I'm satisfied, and the rest are still in progress. My piano teacher went on a monthlong hiatus to go adjudicate a competition halfway across the world, so I was thinking of using the next month to dedicate more time to improv/arrangement/sight-reading because those aren't at all a part of my formal piano lessons.

lilypad

plop_symphony Minuet in D minor, BWV Anh. 132 by Johann Sebastian Bach (attr.)

I start on that piece today! I was going to wait until I get Samuel Maykapar's "Dewdrops" up to tempo, but it's taking me forever. I'm switching it to daily technique practice to open up a slot for a new piece.

Nightowl

Here is my updated list:

Frankie and Johnny
Waltz in G Minor
Theme from 6th Symphony "Pathetique" (Tchaikovsky)
Fascination (F Marchetti)
Loch Lomand
Salut d'Amour (Elgar)
Danny Boy (F Weatherly)
Etude Opus 10 No. 3 "Tristesse" (Chopin)
I Walk The Line (J Cash)

All the pieces except no. 9 are arrangements from the latter sections of Alfred's AIO level 2 book, so they are stretch pieces for me, rather than easy pieces, but I am close to the end now so next month things will be different. I'm not quite done with the Chopin piece yet, but I'm very pleased that I can now play it hands together, albeit slowly. Once I've finished book 2 my intention is to learn one stretch piece and 3 or 4 easy pieces each month - I hope this will help to grow my skills while keeping things enjoyable. I have my eye on a book of blues pieces that might be ideal material. 🙂

BartK

I haven't updated for two weeks so here is my update. A week ago I played play Des Pas sur la neige by Debussy but unfortunately I didn't get a clean recording so I'm not sharing it. 😇 This week I played Written on the Sky by Max Richter and I recorded it in one take and quickly decided to share it before I change my mind. 😆

Quick Study List for 2025

George Frideric Handel, Passacaille (variations 1-8).
Enrique Granados, Danzas Españolas, no. 2 Oriental
Scott Joplin, Maple Leaf Rag (without trio)
Schubert-Liszt, Ständchen (ossia più facile)
Friedrich Burgmüller, La fileuse, op. 109, no. 18
Claude Debussy, Des Pas sur la neige
Max Richter, Written on the Sky

ShiroKuro

BartK Oooh, very nice!!!

I hadn't heard this piece before, but now I want to play it. Thank you for sharing it!

I wonder if I already have the... I have a few different books with some Richter pieces in them but I've never played anything by him.

What book is your score in?

Sophia

BartK I played Written on the Sky by Max Richter

Bart, that was truly terrible (in a terrific way!) It's so nice to see less than stellar performances - it gives courage to us bloody beginners. Even though you are still leagues ahead of me, at least it reduces you to semi human 😁

WieWaldi

Very pleasant exercises - a far cry from your usual blues, but we wanna-be musicians need our share of boring pieces to become a little more all round anyway 😆And you managed to make even This Old Man sound interesting - I loved the dynamics and the delicate ending. What book are you playing from? If you already shared that information, please blame it on busy-mind forgetfulness...

BartK

ShiroKuro What book is your score in?

This one:

Most of it is pretty easy with maybe a couple of exceptions. I don't really like the editing though. Page flips are in awkward places and it looks like they tried to increase the page number by increasing space instead of having a logical paging. This piece for example could have fitted on two pages without having to turn the page, IMO.

ShiroKuro

BartK Thanks for the info!! I'm searching around Hal Leonard's website, and I might actually have a book with this in it, I'll have to wait till I get home to check. It's one of those "Peaceful Piano Solos" books, but there's an easy version and a regular version, and I can't remember which one I bought. I don't like it when pieces get arranged into different keys...

Does the version you played for the 40P challenge have five flats?

Re the pagination and spacing, that's frustrating! It looks like a nice collection...

Hal Leonard also sells a digital version of this book, I'm trying to remember if those are just generic PDFs (i.e., so I could put it into my forScore etc.) or if you have to use some special app...

« Previous Page Next Page »