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Staff Picks: September 2026
- 21 Sept 2026
Welcome to Schott Staff Picks, a monthly roundup where our ragtag team of musicians, music lovers, and afficionados pick out their favourite sheet music titles, both old and new. Whether it's beloved classics, contemporary soundtracks from our film fans, jazz standards from icons, or folk tunes from all sorts of composers and artists, our selection aims to cover every style, instrument, and difficult level.
So have a look at our picks for September 2026 below, and expect our honest, personal takes, including anecdotes, historical context, tips, and whatever else we think of as we recommend whatever might be piquing our interest!
Grade 6 Piano Anthology
Examination Pieces for 2027/28
If you’re looking to explore alternative repertoire on the new ABRSM 2027/2028 syllabus list, I cannot recommend Edition Peters’ Graded Piano Anthology series enough!
Many students never stray from the core syllabus books, and it is a great shame when so much golden repertoire is there for them to try out and choose from, as this book allows them to do. My pick is the Grade 6 book, due to some personal favourites in there, e.g. Allegretto by Anna Severine Lindeman, Lavender Field by Karen Tanaka, and Spiderwebs of Clouds by Olivia Belli.
Not to mention the fact that quite a few of ABRSM’s syllabus picks can be hard to get hold of by themselves — getting them all in one volume like this saves the trouble (and money) of getting lots of different publications.
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RECOMMENDED BY ELLE
La Valse
Maurice Ravel
This haunting waltz tells the story of a surreal, shimmering ballroom in Vienna. Dancers swirl around a golden hall, laughter spilling from their mouths as they spin past. We are trying to remember a rose-tinted past from before the first world war, piecing together shards of memories now shattered by 'shell shock'. The music becomes more twisted and manic; champagne sloshes, glasses break, screams of laughter turn vile. And the last bar of this 3/4 waltz time signature is a sudden 4/4, announcing the 'death' of the waltz and Europe as it once was.
Reading this score, you can see Ravel's intelligence for orchestration. Specific instruments represent different characters and dances. As the music surges, he simply brings in more instruments, and the music's unsettling feeling comes from instruments secretly misleading the normally anchoring down beats. I reccomend reading the score as you listen, you get to see Ravel weaving these emotional threads through the staves.
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Boosey & Hawkes Music Diary 2027
Edited by Richard Whitehouse
If you're like me, each year it's imperative that you get a new diary to keep track of the chaos of another trip around the sun...
Boosey & Hawkes have upped their game! Returning for 2027 with a new and improved diary, this time sized to a more journal-like A5 format, with a page for each day of the year.
It also has all the excellent fare of previous years, including information for both musicians and music lovers, alongside sections covering Anniversaries, Competitions, In Memoriams, Musical Terms, Awards, and so much more.
This new diary makes for a perfect Christmas gift for the musician in your life, and that includes you!
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