Drill & Excel On the Piano Book 3 is a 145-page book for the early intermediate student. This includes everything a student will need for their lesson and learning the skill and concepts of playing the piano. It starts with 2 assignment pages for the week?s assignments. Followed by note pages for the student or the instructor to make. The first chapter starts with a recap for books 1 and 2, so no important foundational steps are missed if the intermediate student starts with this book. Then starting with chapter 2, Drill & Excel On the Piano Book 3 introduces new rhythms, the 16th notes and rests, and triplets. The exercises get more challenging for the intermediate student, with lots of special exercises for skills needed. Special exercises include dynamic training, finger independence, finger pedaling, and more. For the scales, playing them in multiple octaves are introduced, along with the 2 new scales, A and F. What?s new in Drill & Excel On the Piano book 3 is TONS of new theory! Diatonic intervals were introduced in the 3rd chapter of book 2, so chromatic (altered) intervals are introduced in the 2nd chapter, along with triads and triad numbers in the 3rd chapter. It doesn?t stop there; it also includes plenty of assignment worksheets, so the student has a repetitive written assignment for deeper learning! And the best part, 60 original songs beautifully written to teach what is taught in each chapter. Songs are melodic and fun to play, introducing a new style of music with each song. The author gives commentary for each song. Most method books merely offer songs with little information, but the ?Drill & Excel On the Piano? book series offers not only plenty of songs, but everything the student needs for all concepts, information, and skill needed to take the early intermediate student to the next level.

I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the celebrated pianist Nicolas Horvath for enthusiastically
bringing my Debussy works to public attention in their solo piano formats, both through his recent
recitals across France and through this Naxos Grand Piano release (GP822). In some cases these are
true piano pieces (like Toomai des �l�phants), in others they are piano reductions of orchestral scores
(like F�tes galantes), while in others they are piano solos in their own right that also exist in orchestral
versions (as in the incidental music for Le Roi Lear). Needless to say, most of these tracks are world
premi�re recordings, and this is certainly true of A Night in the House of Usher and its companion piece Un Jour affreux avec Le Diable dans le beffroi (?A Dreadful Day with the Devil in the Belfry?) which I arranged specially for Nicolas in November 2018 as a virtuosic, almost Lisztian paraphrase-fantasy. To remind us of the plot as the dramatic scenes unfold, Un Jour affreux avec le Diable dans le beffroi, like the start of No-ja-li) has a narrator (spoken in French by Florient Azoulay on the Grand Piano recording):

[After an overture rising from the underworld, with a polka and a citation of a chldren?s folksong Savez vous plantez les choux?, a carillon rings out]: Hearing it, the Dutch villagers start to count, with the bells of the belfry / 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 8, 9, 11, and 12 / Perfect! / 13!?!/ The bell rang 13 times / 13! / The Devil is here where the clock should be! / Damn! / The bells are cracked. / The Devil laughs fit to burst / He pulls from the pocket of his coat, a small dancing master?s violin / ?My God!? says the devil ? and he tunes his violin slowly / The Devil leads the villagers in a fantastic and relentless jig [making jokes at the expense of concertos by Beethoven, Brahms and Tchaikovsky] / The Devil directs the villagers towards the canal ? where he jumps to the other side, laughing all the time / The villagers try to imitate him, but they fall into the water. / [In Part 2] the villagers are transported to a hedonistic and lively Italian village. They are similarly transformed: the men have crooked hats ? the women have wide open bodices! They dance a mad Tarantella / 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 13 / shouting ?Hey there! (Hola?) / Jean, the young hero, makes a fervent prayer to God against the Devil / The prayer is answered and the bell again rings normally! / The expression of the Devil changes: he shudders! / Everything goes black / The devil disappears in a brief red glow ? / And the carillon and the bells chime as usual / 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 / Perfect! / But the Devil?s grinning face ap-
pears once again where the clock should be ? briefly