In Recital® with Christmas Favorites, Book 3: Late Elementary Piano Book

Warm and nostalgic without being simplistic. These arrangements honor the melodies everyone knows while giving students room to grow into legit artistic choices about pedal and phrasing.

Late elementary pianists preparing for holiday recitals who have solidified basic technique and are ready to expand their range of motion and expressive control. Students benefit from studying arrangements of familiar carols because they can focus on the musical and technical challenges rather than learning melodies from scratch.

• Balance pedal use with clarity. Since these pieces expand pedal application, experiment during practice with lifting the pedal on beat changes to avoid muddiness while still achieving the fuller sound the arrangements call for.
• Shape legato passages with intention. The contrast between legato and staccato articulations becomes more pronounced at this level; make sure students hear the difference in their own playing before performing.
• Let chromatic passages breathe. When scale patterns extend beyond the five-finger position, practice hands separately to anchor the new reach, then layer them in slowly.

Build your December recital around this book as your core repertoire, then supplement with pieces from other FJH publications at similar or slightly different levels depending on your students' strengths. The familiar titles make strong program bookends or anchor points between newer, less-known works.

• Legato and staccato articulation with musical intention
• Extended five-finger and chromatic scale patterns beyond the initial five notes
• Pedal technique for both sonority and artistic effect
• Scale patterns that expand the student's range on the keyboard
• Performance stamina for multi-phrase holiday arrangements