The great accomplishment of
Bartók's was the same as that of the Anna Magdalena Bach Book: it was a set of pieces for student pianists that also compelled the attention of the adults in the room. And some of the declines in fortune experienced by classical music (and the novel) in recent decades are surely attributable in part to the low quality of works written for children during this period. This collection of works by German composer Bertold Hummel will help to rectify that problem, and they're a delight to listen to.
Bartók is certainly the model; Hummel writes little pieces, about a minute long, that are nearly all either descriptive or illustrative of basic musical forms. There is also a three-movement Sonatine for piano, Op. 56a, whose movements are more abstract but hardly longer or more complex. Like
Bartók, Hummel introduces specific modern techniques -- the Barcarole, track 29, from the Kleines Klavieralbum für meine Enkelkinder, Op. 103d (Little Piano Album for My Grandchildren), uses tone clusters, for example. As compared with
Bartók, the music here is generally more tonal, although Hummel feels free to abandon a tonal center when it makes intuitive sense to do so. As clearly and straightforwardly presented by pianist
Markus Bellheim, this is children's music for the twenty first century, not bound by orthodoxy of any kind and open to neo-tonal approaches, jazz and popular influences, and system-based techniques as the situation requires. Piano teachers and family members who want to encourage young people musically should definitely hear these pieces, which may well send them in search of the printed music.