Intermediate Piano

Nicholas Maw wrote these two cadenzas for Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K.491 for the American pianist Sarah Rothenberg in 1991. They are reproduced here in Maw’s manuscript.

Oliver Knussen’s Variations for piano were composed in 1989 and premiered by Peter Serkin. Although they are concise – the twelve variations play for a little more than six minutes in all – the compos...

Ophelia’s Last Dance (Ophelia Dances, Book 2) is based on a melody dating from early in 1974, which was among several ideas intended for - but ultimately excluded from – Oliver Knussen’s Third Symphon...

Callabonna, composed by Peter Sculthorpe, taken from 'Three Pieces for Piano'. Arranged for piano solo in digital sheet music format. A short 4-minute work in three parts, which takes its name from a...

Djilile, composed by Peter Sculthorpe, taken from 'Three Pieces for Piano'. Arranged for piano solo in digital sheet music format. Peter Sculthorpe's 6-minute Djilile (‘whistling-duck on a Billabong’)...

Simori, composed by Peter Sculthorpe, taken from 'Three Pieces for Piano'. Arranged for piano solo in digital sheet music format. Simori is a substantial 11-minute work which is based upon a series of...

Peter Sculthorpe’s evocative 7-minute Nocturnal originated in the central section of the composer’s Piano Concerto. Sculthorpe became obsessed with the music’s calm, flowing, toccata-like figurations...

Pianists looking for contemporary repertoire that showcases both dazzling virtuosity and musical insight should look no further than these short Études Nos. 1-3 by Julian Anderson. These three brillia...

Prayer Bell Sketch is a hauntingly beautiful study in weight and measure, resonance and reverberation composed by Oliver Knussen. Lasting 6-minutes, it recollects and rearranges a few clear, bell-like...

Premiered by Michael Kieran Harvey at the 1998 Sydney Festival, Carl Vine’s Piano Sonata No. 2 has gone on to become a work beloved by pianists internationally. The sonata is a veritable tour de force...

Sonatina, succinctly composed by Peter Sculthorpe, not only is one of Sculthorpe’s first overt acknowledgements of the influence of Aboriginal culture on his music, but, taking his cues from the spars...

This fiendish 6-minute toccata by Carl Vine is not for the faint-hearted. Commissioned by the 2012 Sydney International Piano Competition of Australia, Toccatissimo is a dazzling showcase of both tech...

This highly virtuosic 15-minute work from 1967 is based on Smalley’s own Missa Brevis. Material from that earlier work is deliberately pulverised and disintegrated, before being, in the composer’s on...

Thomas Adès, wrote this ingenious 9-minute piano work for himself to play at a 1993 Park Lane Group recital. Its title is an allusion to the John Dowland, whose ‘Semper Dowland semper dolens’ occasion...

Thomas Adès’s Darknesse Visible for piano solo (1992) is a 7-minute explosion of John Dowland’s lute song In Darknesse Let Me Dwell (1610). No notes have been added; indeed, some have been removed. Pa...

Toccata, Nocturne and Scherzo are a set of highly contrasting pieces from Colin Matthews’ suite of piano solo repertoire, which dates from the late 70s. From the percussive Toccata, the hushed Nocturn...

Britten composed this engaging set of Twelve Variations during his first year at the Royal College of Music, London in 1931, shortly before beginning work on his String Quartet in D Major. Like that q...

These two charming pieces – ‘Sea Chant’ and ‘The Left Bank Waltz –are dedicated in turn to the memory of Sculthorpe's housekeeper and mother. The pieces together last 4 minutes, and would make perfect...

With a duration of 10 minutes, these Five Waltzes for solo piano were part of a collection of '10 Walztes' composed when Britten was 12 years old.

Written for, and inspired by, the remarkable virtuosity of Roger Woodward – though actually left unheard for five years after its composition in 1981 – Anne Boyd’s Book of the Bells is a 20-minute tou...

Three Character Pieces, composed by Benjamin Britten. Arranged for piano solo in digital sheet music format. Written in 1930 and lasting 7 minutes in total, these pieces are portraits of three of Brit...

Colin Matthews’s Berceuse and Sarabande – together lasting 8 minutes – form the final two movements of his Suite for piano. Composed between 1976 and 1979 the five piece that make up the suite may be...

Although, as the title of these bold studies from 1987 implies, they are all fast, they are not in the first place studies in pianistic virtuosity, so much as studies in various ways of composing fast...

Composed in the mid-70s, these Five Studies for piano offer a fascinating insight into the early musical interests of Colin Matthews – the fifth, in particular, showing the influence of American minim...

In these three characterful and testing piano studies, composed in the autumn of 1985, Nicholas Maw sought to bypass many of the characteristics of post-war piano writing and take up where the ‘old’ p...