I’m pleased to review a collection of teacher-student piano duets today called Fairyland in Treble by London-based Greek composer Nikolas Sideris.
I must first say, the book is gorgeous. The paper is heavy and a lovely creamy color. The cover design, as you can see from the photo here, is beautiful. The typography, layout, and notation is likewise top quality and pleasing to the eye throughout the book.
The book is a whopping 72 pages in length. There are eleven different pieces in the book, all written at a mid- to late-intermediate level and centered around a theme of fairy tales. As the Preface states, the duets are based on music the composer composed over the past eight years primarily for use in computer game soundtracks. Over the years, Nikolas adapted the music into teacher/student duets. To give you some idea, the titles include: A Playful Countess, The Bold Barber, The Duke and the Cook, Fifi on the Moon, and The Pirate Highsea Games.
Before each piece in the book, there is a written-out fairy tale story authored by Nefeli Tsipouridi. In addition, each piece is accompanied by a QR code which can be scanned using any QR code reader app to quickly pull up a recording of the secondo part (teacher’s part) for the student to practice along with.
The duets are of good length, making them a nice option for recitals or other performances.
On to the music! Here is a lovely video of the composer performing the duets with another pianist/teacher, Miriam Kornberg. The pieces are beautiful, expressive, and enjoyable to hear and play. I love the variety of modes and moods used throughout the book.
One of my intermediate students and I learned the first duet from the book, The King and the Dragon, and we really have enjoyed the piece! I would highly recommend this book for you and your intermediate students. Another possible use: I like to use duets for sight-reading. If you have have advanced students, they might enjoy this book for that purpose during lesson time.
Order your copy of the book here.
Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book for review. However, as always, I write honest reviews.
I have the Fairyland in Treble book. The pieces are so much fun! My students really love to play them. I highly recommend the book.
Where can you purchase it here in the US? I didn’t see it on Amazon.com, primamusic.com or the book depository. I imagine shipping from Greece is expensive?
Hi Elizabeth,
I’m Nikolas, the composer and publisher of this score.
At the moment we have just moved to London, so the score would be shipped from the UK, which unfortunately is a tiny bit more expensive than shipping from Greece. Still for the next couple of days and until I have the time to change the currency in the website, you could, potentially, save up a bit.
At the moment, as a small publisher without a massive catalog (around 80 scores and counting) as well as without a distributor, any option to ship to the States would result in the shipping costs added. I mean even if I decide to use a friend to ship scores from the US directly, I’d still have to pay shipping the scores to them in the US, and that fee would reflect in the price of the score.
Once I’m selling “lots” I”ll be able to ship massively in the US, thus saving in the shipping, or until I find a distributor (which shouldn’t be too long, but no promises).
Still, tens of orders have come through in the past couple of months from all over the world, so there isn’t any logistics issue to hinder the process. Payment is being handled by paypal, so it’s as secure as paypal gets.
In any case I hope this helps.
Nikolas
thank you they are lovely pieces. would you consider selling them digitally at some point? some composers sell a studio license and this is a great way to get music out there as well.
Hi Elizabeth,
I have mixed feelings about digital scores. I know about studio licenses, etc, but I’m not all for that. I find that it reduces the quality of what I’m doing.
You see I’ve been researching constantly in ways to make the score better: Better paper, better binding, better colors, etc. Taking a score like this and printing it off a PDF looses all of its charm.
Being aware of the need to spread the music further and also the requests for studio licensing, I had a sale last month which went up to 50% (according to what you spent, not straight away), but that’s done for almost a month now… :-/
I hope that soon (read in less than a year) there will be a distributor dealing with all these issues… 🙂 Until then…
A quick comment to anyone who has ordered the score from us. All the orders left our warehouse, in the UK, on the 22nd of September and should reach you shortly.
Normally the website will take care the re-confirmation of the parcels being sent out, but apparently it failed this time and our web designer is looking into it.
Nikolas
Nikolas, thanks for answering here as the composer! Much appreciated!!
Hey Joy
I just want to let you know, last year April I found your website and it completely revolutionised the way that I teach. I now have a full studio and a huge waiting list. Your ideas and links have also helped me to broaden my mind. Like this review, I loved the idea of this book so much that I told my boyfriend, and now he has ordered it for me for Christmas!
Thank you so much for this blog, and for not giving up like so many others do
A piano teacher in South Africa
Stacey, thanks so much for the kind comment and the encouragement to continue blogging! I so appreciate that. Best wishes with your thriving studio and I hope piano teaching is something that is always rewarding and fun for you!! Best wishes.