The Intermediate Pianist Book 3, PianoTrainer Series: An Intermediate-Level Piano Course Incorporating Repertoire, Technique, and Musicianship

A great book, haven’t started it yet but have bought the other books in the series and am thoroughly enjoying them

A fantastic collection of technical development, musical skill and key contextual information. The pieces are structured in a way that is educational and enjoyable and as a classroom music teacher the content is great for GCSE and A Level tasks too. The books are creatively presented and have proved popular with my students - a great resource for teachers!

This whole series is a much needed addition to the market! Book 3 includes pieces in an appealing range of styles from Latin, impressionism, minimalism and fugues and music for television, film and music theatre. Pupils love the regular ‘Quick learn’ pieces which are included at regular intervals which they learn with ease. Theory is included as well as useful information needed for aural tests, GCSE and A-level music. Very highly recommended!

My reviewing credentials: not much. I'm a self-taught adult learner. I'm currently on the last unit of Piano Adventures Level 4, which according to the piano method book correlation chart on the Faber website, puts me at RCM level 3, or early intermediate. I haven't actually used or played any of the songs in The Intermediate Pianist Book 3 as I'm not at this level yet. The following is just what I could glean from a pretty thorough perusal.This is the 3rd of 3 intermediate books in the Piano Trainer series, so I think it's safe to assume that this is the late intermediate level. It says it's for Grade 5, which I assume is GCSE Grade 5, since they mention GCSE in the intro. I know nothing of GCSE or what this means, as I'm not from the UK.The book is quite thin - 64 pgs. There's 10 chps, and each chp is supposed to take about a month to finish. There's 24 songs, and half of them are either original compositions or arrangements by Heather Hammond, one of which is a duet. The remaining 12 songs I tried my best to categorize by grade level. I couldn't find info for all of them, but this is what I found:Andantino by Haydn is AMEB 2.Mazurka from Children's Album Op. 39 by Tchaikovsky is RCM 5.Gymnopedie No. 3 by Satie is RCM 8, although it's considered 6 by Trinity, and 5 by AMEB.The Fall of the Leafe by Martin Peerson is Trinity 6.Prelude in C minor Op. 28 No. 20 is RCM 6.There's not a whole lot of theory. There's a pg on riffs, another on modes. Half a pg on augmented and diminished intervals. Half a pg on keys with 5 sharps and flats. Half a pg on dominant and diminshed 7ths. A pg on "Chords, Cadences and Figured Bass" and "The Cadential 6/4 Progression". A paragraph on modulation, with a small flow chart. That's about it for theory.All the songs in the chp on Latin dance music are composed by Heather Hammond, and only very short descriptions on each style. The rest of the chps/songs are mostly from or inspired by the typical Baroque/Classical/Romantic/Modern canon.There's a word scramble and 3 word searches, which strike me as oddly childish for a book of this level.Composing/Improvising Exercises: write your own 1 line riff, improvise your own 2 line ostinato accompaniment using the intervals D-A & C-G, compose 8 measures featuring either an Alberti bass or arpeggio bass line and your own variation of the preceding piece.Etude-type pieces: a short flat-key study, 4 short ornament exercises.I only know of 2 other series of method books for intermediate and/or advanced students (Drill & Excel on the Piano Books 3 & 4 by Kathi Kerr, and the First Impressions series by M'Lou Dietzer, which is out of print and hard to come by, although I was able to get all the books from that series that I was interested in, which I'll review here on Amazon after they arrive if you'd like to come back for my opinion on those), so there's not much for us autodidacts who'd like the guidance and reliability of a method book series.By the way, I just realized that this book is twice as much on Amazon as elsewhere.