danielsanderson
04-25-2003, 01:16 PM
In my quest for non-EZ-play music disk-book combinations for the Clavinova, I bought Classical Masterpieces (http://www.yamahamusicsoft.com/product/detail.php?instrument=general&product_id=1000884) from YamahaMusicSoft.com (http://www.yamahamusicsoft.com/). This is a rather old Disk Orchestra Collection title, published in 1992, and I wonder if a newer version designed with the CVP 200-series in mind would sound better. It sounds OK to play around with, but no better than most MIDI files you can find for free elsewhere. It seems this title is $25 US (instead of the more typical $35) because it is older.
The set contains four pieces: Dvorak's Slavonic Dance Op.72-2, Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No.5 with clavichord part, Saint-Saens The Elephant from Carnival of the Animals, and Brahms's Hungarian Dance No.4. They're all nice pieces, with the Brandenberg being the longest and probably the hardest.
The Brandenburg doesn't sound too different from other MIDI arrangements I've found, though the instruments are scaled back a bit to meet the polyphony capabilities of pianos back in 1992. I can't say I noticed much of a difference. I bought this instead of using the MIDI because I wanted nicely printed sheet music that matched the track.
So I was quite disappointed that, at least for the first page or so, many of the notes of the clavichord part are missing from the printed page, making it impossible to play with the follow-along guide turned on! I could probably figure out the first page from the guide and write in the notes. But I would have been better off printing out the clavichord part from the MIDI file and just using that.
I'm not too disappointed otherwise. This book at least tells me that I'll probably be happy with titles at the "Intermediate" level-- if I can find any.
By the way, as an experiment, I paid $20 to download Molly Kiser Plays Ravel (http://www.yamahamusicsoft.com/product/detail.php?instrument=general&product_id=1019731). I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it's worth noting to those expecting otherwise that these titles are only meant for listening and do not work well for practice or guided play-along. The music and the performances are beautiful, but for $20, I'd rather have a CD of the artist performing on a real piano.
The set contains four pieces: Dvorak's Slavonic Dance Op.72-2, Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No.5 with clavichord part, Saint-Saens The Elephant from Carnival of the Animals, and Brahms's Hungarian Dance No.4. They're all nice pieces, with the Brandenberg being the longest and probably the hardest.
The Brandenburg doesn't sound too different from other MIDI arrangements I've found, though the instruments are scaled back a bit to meet the polyphony capabilities of pianos back in 1992. I can't say I noticed much of a difference. I bought this instead of using the MIDI because I wanted nicely printed sheet music that matched the track.
So I was quite disappointed that, at least for the first page or so, many of the notes of the clavichord part are missing from the printed page, making it impossible to play with the follow-along guide turned on! I could probably figure out the first page from the guide and write in the notes. But I would have been better off printing out the clavichord part from the MIDI file and just using that.
I'm not too disappointed otherwise. This book at least tells me that I'll probably be happy with titles at the "Intermediate" level-- if I can find any.
By the way, as an experiment, I paid $20 to download Molly Kiser Plays Ravel (http://www.yamahamusicsoft.com/product/detail.php?instrument=general&product_id=1019731). I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it's worth noting to those expecting otherwise that these titles are only meant for listening and do not work well for practice or guided play-along. The music and the performances are beautiful, but for $20, I'd rather have a CD of the artist performing on a real piano.