A collection of duos with piano for amateur musicians.

Nowadays, many young people learn to play an instrument- piano, flute, violin, cello…Some of them reach a quite satisfactory level of fluency. However, very few go on playing after they have left school. At best they have learnt to love music but they miss the opportunity of putting it into practice throughout their lives.
To avoid that kind of premature dropping out, the practice of ensemble music is essential. As evidence of this, one only needs to see how enthusiastic amateur singers persevere in the practice of choral music. But what about instrumental music?
The case of pianists is a special one: their repertoire is so huge that it seems they might have enough to be content playing on their own forever. However such is not the case: most of them give up at an early stage, probably for want of the emulation brought by ensemble music.

One way of solving this problem is to participate in an amateur orchestra. It is perfect for string players, save for the fact that an orchestra requires many violinists – while the number of good amateur fiddle players is rather limited. Wind players are a less lucky lot: orchestral music features few wind instruments – only two flutes, while there are many flutists amongst amateurs. As to the piano, undoubtedly the most widespread instrument amongst amateurs, there is hardly ever room for it in an orchestra.
Another way around the above problem is chamber music. From the duo sonata to the sextet with or without piano, its repertoire is vast, and the works are generally of high quality, but are often difficult to perform, while some instruments, like the viola, have almost no duo repertoire to speak of, and others, like the flute, are limited to the baroque period. This accounts for the fact that only very few amateur musicians are engaged in active chamber music practice.
Hence this « piano & co » proposition: a collection of duets with piano, made up of transcriptions from classical 17th, 18th, and 19th century pieces. We have intended those transcriptions for the purpose of good amateurs. Their level of difficulty for each of the two participants is reasonable. And we have distributed their parts in such a way that neither of the two should be subordinated to the other in terms of expression.

The works transcribed are:

~ concerning the baroque period: trio sonatas, organ works, Cantata, Oratorio and Opera arias by Corelli, Bach and Haendel…

~ concerning classical and romantic repertoire: chamber music pieces for strings or winds (without piano), Arias or Lieder by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Dvorak...
In terms of ensembles, we have focused primarily on:

~ two piano duets. Such an ensemble requiring the availability of two instruments obviously poses some serious logistic problems but it also offers the widest range of possibilities as regards quantity, variety and quality.

~ piano and flute duets (the flute being the most widespread instrument amongst amateurs). But most of these pieces can also be played on the violin or the oboe.

~ subsidiarily, that collection aiming at enabling amateurs to persevere in musical practice can also help the young to persevere in their musical studies by balancing off the practice of scales and arpeggios…and the opportunity thus offered to practice sight reading - this being one of the conditions for future perseverance.
Other transcriptions aimed at professional musicians

Those transcriptions are meant for concert performance; they sometimes involved substantial instrumental modifications of the original score. Here we are dealing with some major works from the 18th and 19th century chamber music (and occasionally orchestral) repertoire, with incursions into the 20th century. Most of them were originally written for string quartets, quintets or sextets. They were transcribed with the purpose of enlarging the somewhat slender concert repertoire for two pianos. Some other transcriptions were conversely originally conceived for the piano and adapted by us for string quartets or quintets (or possibly orchestra).