After 30 years of teaching piano and observing the various technical challenges that pianists need to master (particularly contemporary and late romantic repertoire) I have often felt the need to prescribe preparatory exercises for students. These have ultimately taken the form of little extended pieces of which this collection is a sample. For this reason it might be best to think of these pieces being ‘about the piano’ as much as ‘for the piano’.
These pieces set out primarily to aid the student in their orientation on the piano by exploiting the inherent symmetrical characteristics of the keyboard. They are designed to be easy to remember and fun to play. Each piece has a sub-title which alludes to the character of the work and perhaps might offer a technical narrative for the teacher/student to refer to.
In this second volume I include pieces in a more lyrical style to offer some contrast to the more frenetic rhythm-focused pieces that dominate the first book in the series (piano-scapes I).
I trust both the student and teacher will enjoy discovering these pieces as much as I enjoyed writing them.
Jeroen Speak
"I could not be happier to welcome this second instalment of Jeroen Speak’s piano-scapes. I firmly believe these pieces should be in every piano teacher’s collection, alongside those much-loved classics by Kabalevsky, Lutoslawski, Bartók and others."
Emma Sayers