Serena – Dances of the Dolls

Many composers, especially from the nineteenth century on, have written piano music for children. Music for children can be of two kinds. It may be intended for children to play, in which case it must be not too difficult in musical content and not too demanding for the young pianist technically. The other category is music for children to hear, when it may make greater demands on a performer, without overtaxing the listener. Both kinds of music are characterized generally by brevity and ease of comprehension, and often by characteristic titles related to fairy tales or songs. The development of the pianoforte as a common domestic instrument, coupled with the literary tendencies of composers in the nineteenth century, led to the creation of a multitude of piano pieces for talented children or for their parents to play for them. Famous examples are Schumann’s Kinderszenen and Album fu?r die Jugend, Tchaikovsky’s Children’s Album and Debussy’s Children’s Corner. This cd offers old and new examples of this tradition, especially from the vast musical repertoire from China.