Set pieces and reviews

List A · C major · 100 bpm

Sparkling Splashes & Smooth Water (from The Mermaid Challenge)

Barbara Arens

Arens is a German-American pianist and composer whose teaching collections — *The Mermaid Challenge* among them — have become widely used in early-grade syllabuses.

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List A · G major · 108 bpm

Moderato (first movement from Sonatina in G, Anh. 5 No. 1)

attrib. Ludwig van Beethoven

The two *Sonatinas Anh.

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List A · G major · 96 bpm

Suite de la réjouissance — Gavotte en rondeau

Louis-Claude Daquin

Daquin was a French clavecinist, court organist to Louis XV and a celebrated improviser; his *Premier livre de pièces de clavecin* (1735) collected his harpsichord music and remains his most-reprinted source.

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List B · C major · 76 bpm

The Singing Swan

Alexis Ffrench

Ffrench is a British composer-pianist whose albums (*Evolution*, *Truth*, *Classical Soul*) sit in the contemporary-classical / soul-piano space alongside Ludovico Einaudi and Yiruma.

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List B · C major · 84 bpm

A Little Song (No. 2 from 30 Children's Pieces, Op. 27)

Dmitry Borisovich Kabalevsky

Kabalevsky's *30 Children's Pieces, Op.

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List B · A minor · 80 bpm

Cloudy Day (No. 9 from Microjazz Collection 2)

Christopher Norton

Christopher Norton's *Microjazz* series (Boosey & Hawkes, since 1983) introduced jazz, blues and pop idioms into mainstream piano teaching at a time when most early-grade material was still firmly Classical.

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List C · A minor · 96 bpm

Spooky Wood Hollow (No. 5 from Grooves for Piano Dudes, Book 3: Halloween)

Heather Hammond

Hammond is a British composer and educator whose *Grooves for Piano Dudes* series (Pianissimo Publishing) targets early-grade students with rhythm-and-character pieces — short, idiomatic, programmatic.

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List C · C major · 132 bpm

Way Out West

Pete Letanka

Letanka is a British jazz pianist, composer and educator (Trinity Laban; Royal Academy of Music) whose teaching writing brings the jazz vocabulary onto the page in a way Grade 2 hands can actually deliver.

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List C · C major · 72 bpm

Šípková Ruženka (No. 7 from Pohádky na dobrou noc)

Ivana Loudová

Loudová was a Czech composer (a pupil of Miloslav Kabeláč and a presence at IRCAM in the 1970s) whose teaching collection *Pohádky na dobrou noc* (*Bedtime Fairy Tales*) takes Czech folk-tale subjects and gives each one a short pianistic miniature.

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