Krystyna Gowik: Fives for Piano: Solo de Piano

Fives for piano comprises music for beginners – miniature pieces for five successive notes of a particular scale. However, those notes can be written in different octaves, with the following aims in mind: • to teach the quick recognition of how notes are written on the stave, • to teach how to move around the keyboard and to recognise the sounds of the instrument’s registers, • to make the music more interesting. There are always five notes, one for each finger, so the fingerings are not numbered and we do not introduce any techniques for crossing fingers. We assign particular fingers to specific notes – with the help of an insert included with the edition – and we play. Thanks to the systematic use of all five fingers, we can develop all the fingers evenly and at the same time, which is particularly important with regard to the fourth and fifth fingers. These works may touch on five-finger exercises to a limited extent, but not entirely, as in that method there are different notes in the right and left hands, while here they are the same for both hands. In my works, we learn different keys and modal scales. Each work is preceded by information about the key or scale employed and about the notes that are used. I have also taken care over articulation and dynamics. The budding pianists might try playing some of the works with pedal. I hope you enjoy working with Fives! Krystyna Gowik translated by John Comber