Portraits in Style (Volumes 1-4). (Keyboard).

Portraits in Style (Volumes 1-4), by Marilyn Briant and Andrew Zatman. The Piano Teacher's Press/Manduca Music Publications, (P.O. Box 10550, Portland, ME 04104), 2001. 22-26pp. each, $8 each. Intermediate to moderately difficult.

The warm nostalgia of a sweet memory, the hardy spirit of a western barn-raising, the stylized and sultry motions of the habanera, the carefree shuffle of 1920s American popular dances. These are among the many images and moods evoked by selections from the four volumes of Portraits in Style by Marilyn Briant and Andrew Zatman, pianists, teachers, composers--and spouses--residing in Rockville, Maryland. As I spent an enjoyable afternoon reading through the pieces, it was easy to recognize the models of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century collections by Schumann, Heller, Mendelssohn and Debussy, together with the harmonic and rhythmic hallmarks of American popular song and dance.

The thirty-three character pieces found in this collection are grouped by themes that title the four volumes: Foreign Impressions, Imagination Bouquet, Piano Postcards and Treasured Traditions: New Music in Familiar Forms. Although there is no attempt at progression based on difficulty, the pieces fit well into the late intermediate to early advanced levels. Each of the four volumes includes easier and more challenging pieces in several styles, offering pleasures for almost any musical palate. The variety of musical idioms represented is probably most familiar--and therefore most appealing--to young and middle-aged adults who play recreationally and who have reached an advancing intermediate level of attainment at the piano.

Each page of score is spaciously laid out, meticulous and uncluttered. Dynamic markings, together with pedaling and fingering suggestions, offer expressive clues without being intrusive. The composers know that micromanaging the performer is unnecessary when-the effect of the music is communicated so clearly through the notes themselves. A few of the almost exclusively ternary form compositions have written-out A-section returns, but a great many include a D.C. al Coda, which necessitates several pesky page turns.

Pianists reading through a number of these pieces may be sure of a good workout in many keys; modulations abound, accidentals come thick and fast even in the context of already challenging keys. Temporary forays into other key areas not dignified by their own key signatures can be unearthed by the bushel. Some modulations achieve their effect a la Barry Manilow, while others are more subtle.

Although many selections are replete with the syncopations of popular music, and their attendant ties and reading hazards, most of the music is not difficult to execute rhythmically. In Samba Brasilia (Volume 1), a pervasive dotted-quarter, dotted quarter, quarter pattern common to several Latin dances dominates the composition; Saturday Stroll (Volume 2) "swings," and In Old Castile (Volume 3) meshes right-hand triplet quarters with a left-hand habanera pattern. Barnraising (Volume 2), contains the greatest density of rhythmic challenges and the greatest need to count and understand beat subdivisions and groupings. In most of these compositions the physical routine of executing difficult rhythms is amply reinforced by plenty of repetition.

In many pieces, one or both of the composers reveals an affinity for jazz-style chord extensions and voicings. Some thick-textured chords will challenge even the finest reader, though they might come more easily to one familiar with the jazz idiom. Wide-ranging, left-hand arpeggios appear frequently. A sensitive ear for voicing is needed to project the songful melodies effectively wherever they turn up in the texture. It is the rare exception when a melody hand goes for any stretch without simultaneously participating in the accompaniment.

Although Portraits in Style displays a wide variety of styles and idioms, these are character pieces in the rich romantic tradition of music that communicates feelings, paints scenes, tells stories and prods the body into motion. Briant and Zatman write with an expertise that allows these pieces to double as fine pedagogical tools for refining a sense of style, rhythmic control and melody projection. Teachers and students alike can take a journey with these pieces: around the world, into a nostalgic past, into the imagination or into music's own history.

Andrew Hisey, Cleveland, Ohio.