The success story of Diabelli's 'Melodic Exercises' Op. 149 for piano duet has lasted now for almost 200 years. They are beautiful melodies covering a range of only five tones, perfectly suitable for beginners, with refined and brilliantly designed accompanying settings in the Secondo part. To this day, the pieces are very popular among pupils, teachers and music lovers. Diabelli, born in 1781, was not only a respected piano teacher and composer in Vienna, but also a busy music publisher and friend of Ludwig van Beethoven who jokingly called him 'my diabolus' from time to time. Sometimes he sent themes composed by himself to the then famous composers, asking them to write and return to him some variations on these themes. This led to the creation of the famous Diabelli Variations by Beethoven, a demanding piano work which is performed in the concert halls all over the world still today.
Hopefully, Mr Diabelli .would not mind some of his wonderful five-tone melodies .being transported into the world of swing, samba and other forms of expression, as has been .done .in this volume. Apart from some arranged melodies from Opus 149, this volume also contains a few newly arranged pieces, all of them inspired by Diabelli's idea to make music with five fingers as varied as possible. The .original arrangement of the keys has been maintained. New .inspiration for piano lessons and four-handed piano playing!

The 'Old Viennese Dance Tunes', originally composed for violin and piano, are published in an arrangement for piano duet for the first time. It is thanks to the Viennese charm of this music that the pieces have become well-known all over the world. The three-four time typical of Vienna requires a certain, yet hardly noticeable liberty of tempo interpretation without metronomic constraints.

German - English - French.

Over the centuries, the music for piano duet, originally composed to the delight of 'connoisseurs and enthusiasts', has turned into a mature art form which is absolutely on par with the solo literature. This anthology offers piano four-hand pieces from the 18th to the 20th centuries and invites you to an exciting journey through time. The most beautiful and famous pieces of twenty different composers bring together a wonderful collection of piano duets - a treasure chest for playing in duet! In addition to classics by Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms and Grieg, rarely performed compositions by Robert Volkmann, Moritz Moszkowski, Paul Hindemith, Emile Naoumoff and others have been included.