"The six pieces display a wide range of musical genres and styles which cannot fail to excite young pianists to explore these highly original works displaying grand pianistic effects without straining or stretching small hands."
While accompanying my daughter Eliška’s journey on the piano from a young beginner to a still young advanced player it became increasingly apparent that her fairly small hands were limiting the repertoire she could learn – not only the specific pieces but also the type of piano writing accessible to her. If an octave is not comfortably in reach there is a fairly small range of pieces that do not require too many notes to be left out, i.e. too many compromises that would make the piece less effective. There are certainly a fair number of baroque or earlier classical pieces that are feasible, although polyphonic writing can be very stretchy even without exceeding an octave. However the romantic, virtuoso type of piece that can utilize the huge tonal range of the modern piano is largely out of bounds.
The pieces in this volume were written specifically to help younger players with small hands enjoy those exciting pianistic effects that would otherwise elude them – the big crashing chords, the huge bass sonorities, the virtuoso style that normally comes with larger hand sizes. When a young player has spent years improving technique, speeding up those scales and getting a good grasp of the keyboard they deserve to be rewarded with pieces that are hard to learn but exciting, pieces that make the most of the instrument. The pieces in this book aim to bridge that gap until Chopin and Liszt, or Rachmaninov and Ravel become achievable.
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Review from EPTA Piano Journal
Review from Music Teacher Magazine