Edvard Grieg

Grieg wrote almost nothing large and a great deal that is small and very good, which makes him unusually well suited to amateur players. The Lyric Pieces — ten volumes of short piano pieces written across his whole career — are the core of it.

Those pieces span a genuinely wide difficulty range, from things playable within two or three years of starting to concert repertoire, and they are published both complete and in selections. The Peer Gynt music exists in every arrangement imaginable, and the Piano Concerto is one of the most-played in the repertoire.

His harmonic language draws on Norwegian folk music, which is why the pieces sound distinctive without being difficult — a rare combination and the reason they have stayed in print for well over a century.