[Piano Duets] Guaranteed to get the crowd excited! A roundup of recommended pieces
Piano duet is when two people sit side by side at the piano and, breathing together, perform with four hands.
With duets, you can enjoy a depth and opulence of sound that’s different from solo playing.
Another major attraction is the joy of ensemble—two people creating a single performance together.
This time, we’ve picked out guaranteed crowd-pleasing recommendations from among piano duet pieces!
We’ve gathered cool works that will captivate both players and listeners, so please enjoy to the end!
- [Intermediate] Recommended Piano Duets | A Curated Selection of Cool and Dazzling Pieces
- [Piano Duets] Perfect for recitals! A carefully curated selection of brilliant, crowd-pleasing works
- [Advanced] Piano Duet Works | Exquisite Masterpieces to Savor the Rich, Weighty Sonorities of Four Hands
- [Beginner] Recommended Piano Duets | A curated selection of pieces enjoyable for both adults and children
- [For Beginners] Enjoy Parent-Child Piano Duets! Recommended Songs Introduced
- [Piano Duet × J-POP] A showcase of insanely cool piano duet arrangements all at once
- [Intermediate Level] A curated selection of piano masterpieces featuring strikingly brilliant melodies!
- [Advanced] Super cool if you can play it! Selection of famous piano pieces
- [Piano Recital] Recommended for Boys! A Curated Selection of Cool, Impressive, and Popular Pieces
- [For Elementary School Students] Brilliant, Showy Masterpieces That Sound Impressive at Piano Recitals
- [Popular Piano] Capture the Audience’s Attention! Recommended Pop Songs That Shine at Piano Recitals
- [For Adults] Recommended for Piano Recitals! A Curated Selection of Impressively Sounding Masterpieces
- Piano Masterpieces: Surprisingly Easy Despite Sounding Difficult!? A Curated Selection Perfect for Recitals
[Piano Duets] Guaranteed to Get Everyone Excited! A Roundup of Recommended Pieces (11–20)
Piano Sonata in B-flat major, K. 381, for four handsWolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart produced countless masterpieces, and of course he also wrote outstanding works for four hands.
This time, I’d like to introduce his Piano Sonata for Four Hands in B-flat major, K.
381.
Among the pieces featured here, this one is particularly difficult: both the main melody and the accompaniment feature rapid passages, there are frequent octaves, and the hands often have to leap across the keyboard.
Precisely for that reason, it’s a piece that makes a strong impression in performance—be sure to check it out.
Friend Like Me from the movie AladdinAlan Menken
Friend Like Me from the Disney film Aladdin is hugely popular in Japan as well.
With the live-action reboot released a few years ago, many of you probably still remember it vividly.
The real charm of this piece is its jazzy melody.
It’s full of catchy phrases while also offering plenty of technical highlights; the player handling the main melody will likely struggle with some pretty big leaps on the keyboard.
There are lots of hand crossings too, making it a rewarding piece for piano duets.
Be sure to check it out.
From The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires: SpringÁstor Piazzolla
Argentine tango is a popular genre for piano duets.
In particular, the works of Astor Piazzolla, the father of Argentine tango, are very popular.
Among Piazzolla’s pieces, I especially recommend “Spring” from The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires.
In terms of difficulty, it’s on the higher end of intermediate, characterized by fairly large leaps on the keyboard.
Its dramatic dynamics also make it very impactful to listen to.
Be sure to check it out.
Slavonic Dances, Book I, Op. 46, No. 7Antonin Dvořák
Slavonic Dances by the Czech composer Antonín Dvořák is a staple for piano four hands.
It’s a collection of pieces for piano duet with eight dances in each of the two sets, and it is also frequently performed in the orchestral version arranged by Dvořák himself.
Although these works are widely loved, playing them beautifully in perfect sync is no easy feat.
No.
7 from Op.
46 in the First Set is a piece that demands advanced technique, and it takes substantial practice to internalize its strongly folk-inflected, distinctive rhythms.
That said, the exhilaration you feel when you carry the piece through with lively flair to the very end is second to none!
Rhapsody in BlueGeorge Gershwin
George Gershwin’s masterpiece Rhapsody in Blue, a brilliant fusion of classical and jazz.
While the original is written for solo piano and orchestra, it is frequently performed as a piano four-hands or two-piano arrangement.
Because the piece is concerto-like in form, recreating it on the piano naturally results in an enormous number of notes.
The difficulty is extremely high; it can be considered an iconic work for advanced piano four-hands.
But when the world of this piece is successfully captured with only four hands, the sense of fulfillment is beyond words.
Its dazzling, ever-changing character keeps audiences engaged, making it an ideal choice for concert and recital programs.
Electrical ParadeVarious Artists
The music from Disneyland’s famous parade, the “Electrical Parade,” has been arranged as a piano duet for four hands.
If you’re looking for duet pieces, Disney’s bright and cheerful songs will bring a delightful, dreamlike moment to listeners.
Beloved Disney tunes appear one after another in a medley.
In a four-hands piano duet, two people play together, so there are many sections to divide up: accompaniment, melody, interjecting countermelodies, and plenty of obbligato lines.
With an orchestral-like timbre and a high degree of fidelity to the originals, this duet arrangement is irresistible for Disney fans.
There are some difficult passages, but the charm of duets is playing together—let’s help each other and grow.
Because there are many notes, intermediate players might find it challenging, but that’s exactly why you improve when you love what you do.
Practice a lot and let’s make it playable!
Piano Duet Pieces: Guaranteed to Get the Crowd Going! A Roundup of Recommended Works (21–30)
A Town with an Ocean ViewHisaishi Joe
Composed by Joe Hisaishi, renowned as an exceptional composer, this piece was created as an insert song for Hayao Miyazaki’s animated film Kiki’s Delivery Service.
It portrays the fictional town of “Koriko,” the setting of the 1989 film.
Its lively melody and elegant atmosphere evoke the vastness of the sea and birds merrily flying above it.
When performing it as a piano duet, be mindful to let the melody stand out, and coordinate closely as a duo to transport the audience into the world of Kiki’s Delivery Service.