SKU: HL.49045896

Barbara Heller opens a new world of etudes by combining finger technique with vocal quality. Pianist and teacher Irina Schwertfeger presents all these studies in progressive order from easy to difficult. This edition is a collection of different studies, containing both diatonic, chromatic and bitonal studies as well as studies using only black keys, and easy triad exercises and studies concerning unusual rhythmic figurations, touch technique, and hand postures. All studies are fairly short and designed to develop dexterity, strength and agility.

SKU: HL.49045179

ISBN 9790220136801. UPC: 841886027442. 9.0x12.0x0.115 inches.

Stolen Airs takes as its starting point an episode from Sylvie and the Songman, an opera I am writing in collaboration with the novelist Tim Binding. The Songman has developed the technique of stealing the voices and songs of birds and animals, and eventually humans. Slowly stealing Sylvie's voice, the Songman offers to give back her song if she will tell him the secret of a group of instruments invented by her father that have produced an all-powerful single sonority. Using this scenario, the music of Stolen Airsmoves from a dark place towards three simple airs, with a distant, different air as a quiet coda. -John Casken.