The first part of this page contains mp3s of music that are in your piano books. Download them to listen. The second part of this page has links to performances at YouTube by great musicians and orchestras. Look for something you've been playing and have fun!
(This page will be frequently updated. Check back often!)
Beethoven: Fur Elise. This is perhaps the most popular of all student pieces. Many students play the abbreviated version in their early years of study and then graduate later to the full-length version. Here is Ivo Pogorelich playing the full-length version.
Bartok: Roumanian Folk Dances for piano. Played here by the great composer himself. There are six dances. Numbers five and six are played without a pause in between them.
Debussy: The Golliwogg's Cakewalk, from the collection, The Children's Corner by Claude Debussy. The recording here is of Debussy himself preserved on a piano roll.
Inspired by a poem of Goethe's, french composer Paul Dukas wrote "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" in 1897. It tells the story in music of what happens when a boy borrows the magic of his master, a powerful sorcerer, to do his chores. In the 1940 animated film "Fantasia" Walt Disney substituted Mickey Mouse as the "Apprentice" and one of the great movie musicals was born. Not to be missed!!
Dvorak: Largo from Symphony #9. Here are two different clips. The first is the original symphonic version. The famous "Largo" melody starts about 40 seconds into the video. It's first played by an instrument called the english horn (looks like a big oboe!). The performers here are the New York Philharmonic on their historic trip to North Korea.
The second clip is a song version made by taking Dvorak's "Largo" melody and adding words. It's sung here by Deanna Durbin, who was a movie star in the 1930's and 1940's.
Rossini: Overture to William Tell (finale), conducted by Ricardo Muti. Your parents or grandparents may know this as the theme music to the "Lone Ranger".
