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Hi Everyone,
I started taking piano lessons about 2 years ago, I am 37.
I stopped taking lessons about 6 months ago as we decided to immigrate and life is in absolute chaos finishing work off at work and getting the immigration stuff sorted.

I bought a Kawai Grand from a church, started paying them prior to our life changing decision.
I received it this week.

I really love playing.
I will ship the grand over to the UK .

I am looking for some interesting pieces to practice.
I can play all the songs in my books Gr1 and Gr2 I was about half way through Gr3.
I don’t know if this gives an indication on skill or ability, but it hopefully gives some indication.

My piano teacher was always happy with my scales etc.

Once we are settled I will look for a piano teacher, but would prefer to keep playing.

I have started working on Fur Elise today, I know everyone plays it but everyone plays or tries to play it because it’s a well known piece. It doesn’t look very difficult, but only time will tell if I can manage.

All advice welcome, I am looking ideally for a list or resource of Music I should be able to play, arranged from easy to more difficult.
Is there something like this available?


Thank you,

ABRSM or RCM? Either way you could look back over the previous years respective syllabus' to get a list of pieces at G1-3 levels. There's also the previous years books that include several of those pieces. I think the RCM syllabus has a much larger list of grade pieces you can look over and the 1-3 levels roughly (but not quite) line up with ABRSM 1-3.

There's also https://www.henle.de/en/ that have a ton of graded music, although their system differs from what ABRSM/RCM use, not sure how closely the levels match up but it should give you some indication as to the difficulty.

If you're looking for books, then have a watch of the Grade 1-3 videos from PianoTV on youtube. She goes through a variety of books with pieces relevant to those grades.

I appears your are in the UK now, which probably means you are interested in ABRSM or Trinity grades.
For Music with ABRSM grades, as an example, look for pieces on Piano Syllabus for their ABRSM grade. For example, If you check Fur Elise, it doesn't show an ABRSM grade, but the consensus among the other grade systems seems to be that it is about a grade 5.

Also, totally unclear how these are graded, but you might find this list interesting.

Some good collections I enjoy pulling from;

Classics to Moderns - Agay. Broad mix of pieces up to contemporary pieces for various grade levels.
Masterworks Classics - McGrath and O'reilly. These are great as they have graded levels 1-9 with nicely curated pieces. In early levels 1-2 I worked through these whole books as part of my lessons.
Schirmers Library of Musical Classics - Early Intermediate. This is jammed with classical pieces, Intermediate is great too.

Is Grade 5 for the full version of Fur Elise or just the first movement?

JacoV, I think this is your best bet for finding level-appropriate pieces to play until you find a new teacher. (Although I do think the Henle grading system is more useful for advanced level pieces than for beginner level ones.)

Thank you for the reply,
I think it’s ABRSM , it’s a South African system.
I have ordered a recommended book from the Pianotv link you shared.
Thank you again.

Not yet in the UK, but hope to be over in January.

Thank you,
This is exactly what I was looking for.
I will just start at the top and work my way down.
Thank you again.

Are you talking about this piece? Because it is a bagatelle without separate movements. The entire piece is grade 5. What measures are you referring to specifically, as the "first movement"?

Are you playing the original bagatelle, or a simpler arrangement from a beginners book?

Thank you,
This also looks great.
However I cannot find it locally, will have to look when in the UK.
Thank you

All of Fur Elise is Grade 7 in RCM, so I guess that is around grade 5 ABRSM. I think Gary is referring to Section A.

The piece I am looking at is linked in the fundamentals of piano practice.

Actually, these are all available on Amazon.co.uk: Agay, McGrath, and Schirmers.

Yes, sorry if my incorrect word choice confused matters.

Often when people learn Fur Elise, at least beginner/earlier grade level players. They learn just the first section of it and skip the section with the faster runs. In some cases the sheet music doesn't even include that section. Which makes the piece appear easier grade wise, at least for the pov of getting the notes under your fingers. So I was curious as to whether Grade 5 was the entire piece or if they'd reproduced a version of it with just the first section and classed that as Grade 5.

Aha. Yes, all of Fur Elise is graded as grade 5 (except RCM is level 7).

And I checked and JacoV's version is the full version of Fur Elise with all of the turns explicitly written out such as in m.31.

Yes, Thank you,
I am still in South Africa.

Ah, you are pre-immigration. I thought from your first post that you were post-immigration. Gotcha.

Yes, I hope to be over in January.
I have ordered, I see the expected delivery is not too far,
I didn’t want to order in case the arrive after we leave.

Good luck on moving to your new home!

Thank you,