No Moonlight Sonata or Heart and Soul, here.
The most frustrating part of learning any new skill is that period of time in which your taste and your abilities just don’t quite match up. You’d love to be playing Rachmaninoff etudes, fingers flying, but you’re just not there yet. In the meantime, don’t worry! There are plenty of beautiful, and beginner-friendly, compositions for piano out there.
Chopin: Prelude No. 4 in E minor, Op. 28
This piece requires a great deal of artistry in terms of colour, dynamic balance, and rubato, but in essence, consists of a simple right-hand melody above closely-shifting chromatic chords in the left-hand. As such, it can be played and enjoyed by intermediate pianists fairly quickly.
Philip Glass: Etude No. 2
Don’t let the alternating time signatures scare you – at the heart of this piece is a simple pattern that fits comfortably under the fingers, requiring only octaves of the accompanying hand. Although Philip Glass elaborates with trickier textures towards the end, the fundamentals of this piece can be mastered quickly.
Erik Satie: Gnossienne No. 1
Haunting and otherworldly, the most difficult aspect of this piece is nailing the bass leaps in the left hand. Once you’ve got this down, it becomes pleasant to maintain – and trains you for left-hand leaps in general.
Bach’s Prelude in C major, Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1
About as ubiquitous as a piece of classical music can get, this piece lives up to its reputation with its gorgeous harmonic inflections and hypnotic waves of figuration. The piece flows comfortably from one hand to the other throughout and progresses in familiar arpeggiated chord shapes, making it accessible for beginner and intermediate pianists alike.
Tchaikovsky: The Sick Doll, from Album for the Young
A composition intended for young people, this short piano piece is a serious tear-jerker, featuring a slow rhythmic build-up of each chord and simple but lovely harmonies. You might be able to sight-read the notes of this piece fairly quickly, leaving you plenty of time to focus on dynamics and expression.
Yann Tiersen: Comptine d’un autre été
This simple but romantic piece was composed for the film Amélie. Once you’ve wrapped your head around the left-hand’s arpeggiation, the melody is fairly straightforward – and very memorable.
MacDowell: To A Wild Rose
A lovely, lilting piece from Edward MacDowell’s Woodland Sketches, Op. 51, this piece will be sure to enchant and soothe. Slow and fairly chordal, with repeated melodic shapes, this music is within reach for intermediate pianists and yet doesn’t feel childish or overly simple.
Shostakovich: Waltz No. 2 from Suite for Jazz Orchestra No. 2
This composition requires some speed and confidence in its execution, and involves some broken chords being passed from hand to hand, but is still a fairly simple waltz at heart, with a (famous!) romping melody and predominantly standard harmonies.
Vladimir Rebikov: Evening in the Meadow
Late Romantic 20th-century Russian composer Rebikov is little recognised. He wrote operas, children’s music, and piano miniatures, as well as salon music. This particular piano work paints an impressionist scene with restraint, allowing the pianist plenty of space to breathe.
Schubert: Piano Sonata No. 20 in A Major, D 959 – II. ‘Andantino’
The heartbreaking and recognisable motif of this sonata movement has featured in many films and series, including Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Winter’s Sleep. With simplicity comes sophistication in this lovely solo piano piece by Schubert.
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