The Post Classical Piano Repository

ShiroKuro

This thread is a place to share information about composers who write post classical piano music. It is a work in progress, so please contribute! Click on the links below to jump down to a post about a specific composer.

Post Classical Piano Composers (in alphabetical order)
Arnalds, Ólafur

Beving, Joep

https://forum.pianotell.com/d/2489-the-post-classical-piano-repository/33

Crain, Brian

https://forum.pianotell.com/d/2489-the-post-classical-piano-repository/2

Currea, Rachel

https://forum.pianotell.com/d/2489-the-post-classical-piano-repository/3

Einaudi, Ludovico

https://forum.pianotell.com/d/2489-the-post-classical-piano-repository/4

Fiscella, Thad

https://forum.pianotell.com/d/2489-the-post-classical-piano-repository/5

Ffrench, Alexis

https://forum.pianotell.com/d/2489-the-post-classical-piano-repository/6
https://forum.pianotell.com/d/2460-the-simplest-ffrench (takes you to a different thread)

Frahm, Nils

Gjeilo, Ola

https://forum.pianotell.com/d/2489-the-post-classical-piano-repository/40

Glass, Philip

https://forum.pianotell.com/d/2489-the-post-classical-piano-repository/32

Hammer, Doug

https://forum.pianotell.com/d/2489-the-post-classical-piano-repository/7

Hicken, David

https://forum.pianotell.com/d/2489-the-post-classical-piano-repository/8

Hisaishi, Joe

https://forum.pianotell.com/d/2489-the-post-classical-piano-repository/9

Lanz, David

https://forum.pianotell.com/d/2489-the-post-classical-piano-repository/10

LaVallee, Jacob

https://forum.pianotell.com/d/2489-the-post-classical-piano-repository/11

McLaughlin, Michele

https://forum.pianotell.com/d/2489-the-post-classical-piano-repository/13

Moccio, Stephan

Nevue, David

https://forum.pianotell.com/d/2489-the-post-classical-piano-repository/15

Nyman, Michael

https://forum.pianotell.com/d/2489-the-post-classical-piano-repository/16

Richter, Max

https://forum.pianotell.com/d/2489-the-post-classical-piano-repository/36

Sakamoto, Ryuichi

https://forum.pianotell.com/d/2489-the-post-classical-piano-repository/17

Tiersen, Yann

https://forum.pianotell.com/d/2489-the-post-classical-piano-repository/18

Wesley, Phillip

https://forum.pianotell.com/d/2489-the-post-classical-piano-repository/19

Winston, George

https://forum.pianotell.com/d/2489-the-post-classical-piano-repository/20

Yiruma

https://forum.pianotell.com/d/2489-the-post-classical-piano-repository/21

Please add your comments below, and add any composers who should be added to the list. (Please be sure that it is a composer of piano music, if not exclusively than significantly).

Request: If possible, please limit each post to a single composer, and then it will be easy to add a link in this top post so readers can jump straight to a post about a specific composer. I will do my best to keep this top post edited with links to posts below as more composers and comments are added.

A note about definitions: the term post classical is subject to a fair amount of debate (see this PT thread). The list below will include composers who might also be listed under film composition, anime or game music, or who might be called by other terms (e.g., new age, neoclassical), so let's not turn this thread into a discussion of the label, but rather keep it as a place to talk about the composers and their music. My intention is to be inclusive rather than exclusive.

Disclaimer: I wrote the posts below based on years of listening to and playing music made by these composers. It's not intended to be a definitive resource, but more a place to get started for anyone who's curious about post classical piano music, or who's looking for something new to listen to or play. If some important information is missing in one of my posts, please add it and tag me and then I'll add a link above. If a composer is missing, please make a post in this thread about them, tag me, and I'll add them above.

ShiroKuro

Brian Crain (https://briancrain.bandcamp.com/) writes piano music, and has some compositions for piano and violin, and piano and cello (some of these are pieces that have a solo version and a version with strings).

Difficulty: I would put his pieces at the intermediate level (some being on the harder side, others easier), and for example, I think many of his compositions are easier than those of Ffrench.

One of my favorite pieces to play by him is Wind (which I have played as a solo piece and with a violinist). This piece is written in 5/4 time, which is fun!

Some other Crain pieces I recommend are: One Morning In June and Song for Sienna.

In addition to his original compositions, he has a great arrangement of Pachelbel's Canon and also Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen), both of which are very accessible for an early intermediate pianist.

ShiroKuro

Rachel Currea (https://rachelcurrea.com/piano_sheet_music/) write piano music as well as orchestral and choral compositions. The sheet music page I linked to includes rankings for difficulty of each piece, which is nice.

Difficulty: intermediate

Two recommended pieces are I Found You, You Found Me and Time Marches On.

ShiroKuro

Ludovico Einaudi (https://ludovicoeinaudi.com/about/) ... Where to start? He's arguably one of the most recognized pianists and composers in this genre (if not the most recognized). In addition to solo piano, he composes music for piano and strings and well as orchestral music, and he is a prolific composer of film music. I will keep this post piano-centric though.

Difficulty: all over the map! Some of his pieces are quite hard, but many are very accessible. One of the difficulties in his music is bringing out the melody line, which sometimes seems buried in repeated notes in both hands, perpetual motion style. Another challenge is due to the length of the pieces.

If you would like to get started playing Einaudi, here are some recommendations.

I Due Fiumi is one his easier pieces, and our beloved Monica from PW once recommended to me to start with I Due Fiumi as a way to prepare for playing I Giorni. I would put this

Song for Gavin is similar (and maybe actually easier?)

I Giorni and Nuvole Bianche are perhaps his most recognized pieces, followed by Le Onde. More recent pieces that have caught my ear are Ascent and Oil on Wood.

Score Books
Easiest Original Pieces: https://www.amazon.com/Einaudi-Easiest-Original-Pieces-Ludovico/dp/1783055375/ref=sr_1_9

Graded Pieces Grade 2 (these are arrangements) https://www.amazon.com/Ludovico-Einaudi-Graded-Pieces-Preperatory/dp/1787600076/ref=sr_1_6

Graded Pieces Grades 3 to 5 https://www.amazon.com/Ludovico-Einaudi-Graded-Pieces-Grades/dp/1787600084/ref=sr_1_5

Best of https://www.amazon.com/Best-Ludovico-Einaudi-Piano-Solo/dp/0634078917/ref=sr_1_1

Islands https://www.amazon.com/Ludovico-Einaudi-Islands-Essential/dp/1780382359/ref=sr_1_2

ShiroKuro

Thad Fiscella (https://www.thadfiscella.com/) is one of the composers in the list above that I know the least about. So if anyone else has more to say about him, please do and I’ll incorporate it here.

But some recommended pieces are Valley and When Leaves Fall.

ShiroKuro

Alexis Ffrench (https://www.alexisffrenchmusic.com/about/) Unlike Einaudi, Ffrench’s “name recognition” is a more recent phenomenon. Although he’s been performing and composing for a long time (I believe his first score book was published in 2012), he seemed to really start getting a lot of attention in just the last 5-6 years. He composes piano and orchestral music, and has contributed his music to film scores. He’s also very active in the classical music scene, especially in the UK, being on the board of the Royal Academy of Music and serving as the artistic director for ABRSM. He’s quite active on social media, and during the pandemic, I had the good fortune to participate in an online master class with him (and I got to turn my video on and have a direct Q&A with him, which was a real treat!) From that experience and from following him on social media, I’ve found him to be kind and generous to piano students and I have the impression that he cares deeply about piano education.

Difficulty: early intermediate to advance. Some of his pieces are fairly accessible, while others are fantastically difficult. Here are some of his pieces, with the easiest ones first.

The Singing Swan, which @KevinM posted about, it ABRSM grade 2.

Wishing is another relatively easy piece (which I think is easier than Bluebird)

Bluebird and Moments are not listed in ABRSM, but both are fairly accessible, I would rate them as early intermediate.

The above three pieces are all in 3/4 time and there’s something lovely about playing them together.

On the other end of the scale, Last Song is graded at ABRSM grade 6, and Footprints in the Sand is listed as grade 8.

Two other pieces that should be mentioned are September Song and Miracles. Both of these are significantly more difficult than many of his other pieces, and there are no official scores for them (by official, I mean a score that he has written and released through his publishing company). But you can find a transcription of September Song for sale on the digital score sites. September Song is interesting because I alway feel like it’s a little but “jazz adjacent,”and see if you can figure out which 1970s R&B song is hidden in its melody.

Miracles also doesn’t have an official score, but PT’s own @Rubens transcribed it for me (for which I will be forever grateful!) and you can find that here: https://forum.pianotell.com/d/1185-hey-alexis-ffrench-fans/76

Here’s Moments:

Score Books:
There are several office scores books of Ffernch’s music. Also, sadly, Amazon currently has several pirated books of his music for sale on their site. So if you’re going to buy any physical scores, please make sure that the publisher is either Boosey & Hawkes or Hal Leonard. Anything is pirated.

The Secret Piano https://www.amazon.com/Alexis-Ffrench-Secret-Piano/dp/0851626483/ref=sr_1_1

The Sheet Music Collection https://www.amazon.com/Alexis-Ffrench-Sheet-Music-Collection/dp/1540091740/ref=sr_1_3

Truth https://www.amazon.com/Alexis-Ffrench-Truth-Piano-Songbook/dp/1705160700/ref=sr_1_4

Classical Soul Volume 1 https://www.amazon.com/Alexis-Ffrench-Selections-Performance-Intermediate/dp/B0F44BN2CF/ref=sr_1_2

ShiroKuro

Doug Hammer (https://doughammer.com/) is another pianist I don't know a lot about, but here is the first piece I heard by him, which I think is beautiful and some day I plan to play. If anyone has more info, please share!

Difficulty: upper intermediate

ShiroKuro

David Hicken (https://davidhicken.com/) writes for piano and organ (although I'm not familiar with his organ work). His piano pieces always strike me as sounding difficult, but I have yet to play any.

Difficulty: Upper intermediate to advanced

Two recommendations are below:

ShiroKuro

Joe Hisaishi (https://joehisaishi.com/) is a prolific composer of orchestral and solo piano music, and in the US is perhaps best known for his scores for anime films produced by Studi Ghibli (e.g., Princess Mononoke. Spirited Away). He does much, more than that though, including a lot of solo piano music beyond the film score genre. I fell in love with his music when I lived in Japan, and you could hear it all over the place. A recent NYTs article suggests that he probably would prefer to be called just classical rather than post-classical, but I will still include him here.

Difficulty: in their original versions, most of his solo piano and piano arrangements of orchestral pieces are probably upper intermediate to advance. But it's my understanding that some of his pieces show up in method books and grade systems, so there are easier pieces as well. Also there are tons of arrangements, making his music accessible to pianists at all levels.

Since his anime work is so well-known, I will share a lesser known work here. Some years ago, he put out a score book of solo piano arrangements of some of his popular, and it's one of my favorite books (I'll add the link below). Here is Summer, the score is in the book.

The score book: https://www.amazon.com/ENCORE-PIANO-Jō-Hisaishi/dp/4111790119/ref=sr_1_1

For some reason, all the live and solo piano videos of Hisaishi himself seem to have been taken down, so I'll add one more, the pianist Animenz, who's famous for doing amazing arrangements of anime and game music, playing The Merry Go Round of Life by Hisaishi

ShiroKuro

David Lanz (https://davidlanz.com/) is a pianist and composer, and of all the composers in this list, he might be the only who embraces, or at least doesn’t reject, the “new age” label. I have the impression that in the U.S., his music started to be widely known around the time that George Winston’s did (e.g., 1980s), so in a way, Lanz (and Winston) might be part of the “old guard” of new age piano, in which case we might put Einaudi and Ffrench into the second wave of contemporary (and now post classical) piano. (Even though I believe Lanz and Einaudi are close in age. I’m pretty sure Einaudi’s big selling albums first came out more in the mid to late 1990s). Back to Lanz… many of his recordings include “atmospheric strings” (synthesizer) as backing or accompaniment (which I never really liked, perhaps it’s a product of the 1980s and is too synth-ish, because to my ear, it sounds quite different to the way Einaudi uses strings), maybe one of the most famous of these is Cristofori’s Dream (which sounds very nice as a solo piano piece imo).

For a long time, Lanz composed primarily for piano, but more recently, he has collaborated with a vocalist and maybe other instrumentalists. In addition to his original material, he does “new age” (or controversy) solo piano arrangements of Christmas music, some of which are really nice and very accessible.

Difficulty: Most of his pieces are upper intermediate to advance. He does have some pieces that are early intermediate, although on the long side, which might be challenging for early pianists. There are also books with easy arrangements, making them more accessible.

One of my favorite Lanz pieces: Painting the Sun

And the aforementioned Cristofori’s Dream (with those 1980s synthesized strings)

ShiroKuro

Jacob LaValle (https://www.jacoblavallee.com/) is another pianist who I know very little about. He’s younger and his solo piano music is more recent, having been released in the last five years or so, so I’m looking forward to seeing how his catalogue grows in the future.

Here is my favorite piece by him, The Balance:

ShiroKuro

Placeholder for

ShiroKuro

Michele McLaughlin (https://michelemclaughlin.com/), one of only two women in this list so far, should perhaps be called one of the first “streaming pianists” (along with David Nevue) in that her piano music took off in the 2010s on platforms like Spotify and Pandora. (There was a NYT article a few years back that featured McLaughlin and Nevue and talked about how much money they made from streaming). So although she may not have the name recognition of some of the other pianists in this list, she is a “big star” in the post classical piano world. McLaughlin is also a truly self-taught pianist, unlike Ffrench or Einaudi (who are both classically trained), and she does to know how to read music. (Apparently she pays someone to do transcripts so she can seek her sheet music, which she has talked about on social media).

Difficulty: many of her pieces are highly accessible, in the intermediate range. The key difficulty in them lies in syncopation and sometimes tempo.

A Beautiful Distraction (an easier piece)

Life (a more challenging piece)

ShiroKuro

Stephan Moccio (https://www.stephanmoccio.com/) is another pianist who seems be less widely known (at least on the piano boards). I first heard his music on a piano streaming channelit wasn't until recently that I learned that he has written for some hug pop stars (e.g., Celine Dion and Miley Cyrus!) So as far as I know, his compositions are not limited to piano (and in fact, solo piano pieces may be the smallest part of his catalogue). Nevertheless, his piano pieces fir squarely into the post classical piano genre.

Difficulty: upper intermediate (or higher, based on the scores I've looked at).

Here's my favorite Moccio piece, Cadeau (I'm working on it right now!)

ShiroKuro

David Nevue https://davidnevue.com (along with Michele McLaughlin) is a pianist who really became known in the 2000s and 2010s through his Internet and streaming activities. He is a very savvy business man and was one of the earliest artists to independently sell his sheet music on his own website.

Difficulty: from easy to advanced. His sheet music site (https://davidnevue.com/sheetmusic.htm) includes difficulty rankings for all of his pieces. These should be thought of as internal rankings (i.e., difficulty relative to other Nevue pieces) but the rankings are very helpful. Nevue's easy pieces are very accessible to advanced beginner pianists, and his music is quite popular with adult learners.

Musical style: Nevue’s original compositions are melody-driven, and make frequent use of syncopation. He has written about how studying music theory really changed how he approaches composition. However he’s not “classically” trained and his musical background seems quite different from Einaudi or Ffrench. For example, he written that he was a huge fan of progressive rock and Rush, Pink Floyd I wouldn’t say that you “hear” that in his compositions, but it’s interesting that these bands are part of his musical foundation.

One other thing that should he mentioned is that in addition to his huge catalogue of original compositions, he is also a prolific arranger of hymns and has some wonderful arrangements of popular Christmas music. Highly recommended!

Lastly, his incredibly kind and over the years I have emailed directly with him a few times and interested with him on social media.

Here are the first two pieces by Nevue I learned:

While the Trees Sleep

Overcome

ShiroKuro

Michael Nyman (https://www.michaelnyman.com/) might best be thought of as a film composer, and the pieces he composed for the movie The Piano have become part of the "post classical piano canon."

Difficulty: upper intermediate and advanced

His most famous piece is The Heart Asks Pleasure First

Less well-know, but no less compelling, is Big My Secret

ShiroKuro

Ryuichi Sakamoto (https://sitesakamoto.com/), who sadly passed away a few years ago, was classically trained but first made his name in Japan with electronic (synth pop?) music (in Yellow Magic Orchestra). I was living in Japan when his Energy Flow was released and this piece played a huge role in propelling me to finally start learning the piano. Energy Flow ended up at number on Japan's pop charts, a first for a solo piano piece. Another well-known piece is the main theme of the movie Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence.

Difficulty: intermediate to advanced

Energy Flow

Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence

Early in on in the pandemic, he released a video concert, which I will link here as well. If listen to nothing else, listen to the first piece, Andata. It is truly moving. (The video can't be embedded, but click on the link and open in a new browser and you should be able to watch it).

ShiroKuro

Yann Tiersen (https://www.yanntiersen.com/) is another pianist and film composer about whom I know almost nothing, but he's most well-known for his score for the French movie Amélie.

Comptine d'un autre été, l'après-midi

La Valse D'Amelie (Piano) Note that the other version of this piece on the soundtrack is performed by an accordion (IIRC)

ShiroKuro

Philip Wesley (https://philipwesley.com/) is another one of the streaming artists, and his piano music gets heavy play on Spotify and Pandora.

New Date (a personal favorite!)

Dark Night of the Soul (full disclosure: I actively dislike this piece!)

ShiroKuro

George Winston (https://www.georgewinston.com/about/), who sadly passed away a few years ago, might be the pianist whose name is most associated with the "new age" label. Apparently, he never liked the term, and called his own music folk piano. He also played acoustic guitar.

Difficulty: upper intermediate to advanced (with the exception the easy arrangement score book linked below)

Variations on the Kanon (note, he plays it in C major)

Longing/Love

Famously, for many years (decades!) he resisted releasing sheet music of his pieces, arguing that he most improvised and any transcription wouldn't be the true music. So for a time there were bootleg versions of his scores that people passed around secretively. I can still remember when it was announced that he was releasing an official scorebook with his blessing (there was a huge buzz about it in the online piano boards!) Now there are three or four office score books, including one with easy versions.

Sheet music:
George Winston Piano Solos
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1423417097

George Winston Easy Piano Sheet Music Collection
https://www.amazon.com/Winston-Collection-Simplified-Arrangements-Thanksgiving/dp/1540061043/ref=pd_sbs_d_sccl_1_2/134-8962487-3945309