With Spring on the horizon, I have been looking for some seasonally appropriate pieces for my students – and what better place to start than with this book by Kevin Costley – who also composed similar collections for the other three seasons with FJH Music Company. Published in 2023, this 6-song compilation is described as “An Artistic Intermediate Collection for Piano”.
I sat down and played through the six pieces:
The book starts with First Bloom, a very simple, yet beautiful lyrical piece in C Major. It’s easy to read because of the consistent use of 5ths throughout, but had enough harmonic interest to give it a mature sound. This feels like it would be very approachable for all of my early intermediate students.
This was followed by Island Noctune, a piece with wonderful built-in imagery – taking me on a peaceful island vacation. The use of rolled chords does force a Hawaiian feel, but it works. Composed in G Major, there are things that would make it fun to teach – a switch in time signature (from 4/4 to 3/4) and some chords to analyze that you don’t see everyday.
The 3rd and 4th solos – Come Spring and A Special Place to Dream, are both really lovely lyrical pieces composed in C Major. There are wonderful opportunities for rubato and shaping practice, as well as really nice contrasts in sections, making these pieces great teaching examples.
The Break of Dawn makes a unique departure, while still staying in the same vein as the previous songs. Composed in F Major, it uses varied rhythms and interesting candences to open the door for some great expressive practice, but in a way that’s still easy to read and analyze.
Lastly, we have Romance. While beautiful, it feels to me like the outcast of the group. It starts in E flat Major, and shifts to B flat Major, while also switching between 3/4 and 4/4 time. It’s a passionate and expressive piece that has a lot of seemingly great teaching moments, but feels like a large jump in skill from the previous pieces (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing). It was also the only one that didn’t evoke any Spring imagery for me.
The Break of Dawn:
Final Thoughts: I would recommend owning this book, along with Costley’s other season collections. I own all four, and have used the Autumn and Summer collections with several students – they are outstanding! There are a lot of lyrical collections to choose from, but I really like this group because of the easy accessability when it comes to direction of expression, contrast in sections (without being too formulaic), and harmonic structure.