ABBA for Classical Piano: The Phillip Keveren Series

Even Phillips Keveren's arranging genius could not rescue the paucity of ABBA's original music. Sadly not a volume I will be spending much time on....in sharp contrast to the other excellent volumes in PK's series of musical arrangements.

I’m quite surprised by the less than positive reviews for this collection, so thought I’d chuck my opinion into the mix. I really enjoy playing these pieces. They are not meant to be “straight” reproductions of the original ABBA songs, but are arrangements for piano solo (hence no lyrics). I like the fusing of a Bach 2-part invention with Chiquitita in particular.If I have a couple of minor criticisms these would be as follows. Keveren does not always signal an upcoming key change as you might expect by using an accidental leading to it, so you sometimes find yourself missing it and playing on in the old one. Opps! Also, there was no real need to put The Winner Takes It All in G flat major (6 flats in the sig) when G (1 sharp) would have done fine. It makes this piece out of keeping with the level required to play the rest of the collection, IMV.That said, altogether I think this is a most enjoyable book of pieces.

i have most of philips classical series and this is by far the worst. it lacks imagination with arrangements just jumping between keys to provide diversity. very lazy. the queen and elton john entries in the series are by far the best with coldplay coming in around 3rd or maybe 4th. overall im deeply disappointed with this book and im a big abba fan.a lot of the arrangements lack the main hooks to the original songs such as sos fernando knowing me knowing you. all of the memorable intros are missing from the arrangements. come on philip this is way below what we would expect from you.

So so disappointed with this!If you want to hear Abba with an Alberti bass (clearly a great favourite of this arranger), then this is for you!If you want arrangements of Abba songs that actually sound like Abba, steer well clear.If you are still interested, it averages out at about grade 5 standard, but seriously, I wouldn't bother.Going back by return post...