Posted by J.Baker:
I agree with EllaCat that it is not an either/or situation. All of us who teach know too well that there is a gap in the piano repertoire of really decent music for the piano student who is between the late-beginner to early-intermediate stage. The great composers left us very little to work with in that category. And not all students adore Bartok and Kabalevsky. The Faber book series helps fill this gap with arrangements not only of classical compositions, but some excellent arrangements of American standards from the mid-twentieth century. I regard these as good teaching material because the arrangements are elegantly laid out for the keyboard (unlike most other 'Easy Piano' books that are badly arranged) and provide an opportunity to teach the student how to shape melodic phrases, as in, for example, Misty and other 'pop' songs. This is good preparation for the much longer melodic lines of Chopin, Liszt, Schubert, etc. when they reach that level. Once the student is well into intermediate stage then compositions like the sonatinas of Diabelli, Clementi, Mozart are accessible, as well as the easier works of Bach (Inventions) Beethoven (Fur Elise) Debussy (Cakewalk) and so forth.
I agree with EllaCat that it is not an either/or situation. All of us who teach know too well that there is a gap in the piano repertoire of really decent music for the piano student who is between the late-beginner to early-intermediate stage. The great composers left us very little to work with in that category. And not all students adore Bartok and Kabalevsky. The Faber book series helps fill this gap with arrangements not only of classical compositions, but some excellent arrangements of American standards from the mid-twentieth century. I regard these as good teaching material because the arrangements are elegantly laid out for the keyboard (unlike most other 'Easy Piano' books that are badly arranged) and provide an opportunity to teach the student how to shape melodic phrases, as in, for example, Misty and other 'pop' songs. This is good preparation for the much longer melodic lines of Chopin, Liszt, Schubert, etc. when they reach that level. Once the student is well into intermediate stage then compositions like the sonatinas of Diabelli, Clementi, Mozart are accessible, as well as the easier works of Bach (Inventions) Beethoven (Fur Elise) Debussy (Cakewalk) and so forth.