Dmitri Shostakovich's Children's Notebook in Pathum Thani: how Pancake plays the pieces he wrote for his daughter and finds the highest note before her AI piano lessons

Pancake is nine and lives in Pathum Thani with her parents and a sleepy grey cat called Moo. Her nickname came from her grandmother, who said baby Pancake was round and sweet. She has been learning keyboard since the start of the school year, and recently her mother surprised her with a book of music written by a famous Russian composer for his own daughter.

The composer was Dmitri Shostakovich, born in 1906 in St Petersburg. His mother, a pianist, gave him his first lessons when he was nine, the same age Pancake is now. He progressed quickly, entered the Petrograd Conservatory at thirteen and wrote his First Symphony as a graduation piece. It made him famous internationally before he turned twenty.

Shostakovich was a fine pianist himself. In 1927 he competed in the first International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw and received an honourable diploma. Afterwards he concentrated on composing, but he continued to perform his own works, including two piano concertos, throughout his life.

His life in the Soviet Union was often tense. Officials criticised his music more than once, and he lived through the Second World War, including the siege of Leningrad, which inspired his Seventh Symphony. Despite the pressure, he kept writing music full of humour, sadness and energy.

In 1944 his daughter Galina, then about eight, began piano lessons. Shostakovich wrote a set of brief sketches for her, later published as Children's Notebook, Op. 69. Each piece is small enough for a young learner, but each also has a strong character and Shostakovich's sense of wit.

The titles tell little stories: March, Waltz, The Bear, A Happy Story, A Sad Story, The Mechanical Doll and, added later, Birthday. Pancake laughed at The Bear, which stomps low and heavily, and she especially wanted to try The Mechanical Doll, which ticks along like a clockwork toy.

Music for a daughter's first lessons

Pancake's piano lessons take place on TIGA ALPHA, an online piano learning app the family chose because her father works late and driving to a teacher would be difficult. Its AI piano teacher listens through the tablet, shows a green tick for well-timed notes and loops a short passage when she keeps tripping.

Pancake traces the notes upward until she finds the highest one, then hums it so her ear knows the peak. In The Mechanical Doll the melody hops up to a bright summit, and before she adopted the habit her finger would land a key too low. Now she hears the goal in her head before she plays it.

The app's beginner piano course offers an arrangement of the March and a slightly simplified Waltz. Pancake practises the March with crisp, marching fingers, then switches to the Waltz, which needs a gentle swing on the first beat of every bar. Changing character between them is her favourite challenge.

Her mother enjoys the history of the book. She tells Pancake that a busy, worried man found time to write music to help his child learn piano, and that the pieces still help children around the world. Pancake says that makes the music feel like a present she is opening years later.

Galina Shostakovich did not become a professional pianist, but her brother Maxim did become a conductor and pianist. In fact, the Second Piano Concerto, from 1957, was written for Maxim's nineteenth birthday, and he performed it at his graduation. Pancake found it amusing that both children received music as gifts.

At school Pancake's music lessons are mostly singing, and she has started recognising the difference between major and minor sounds, which matches A Happy Story and A Sad Story in her book. Her teacher asked her to play both tunes at the next class assembly.

Her cat Moo usually sleeps on the sofa while Pancake practises, and lifts one ear only for The Bear. She jokes that Moo is her strictest critic. She records each piece and plays the recordings to her grandmother on Sunday calls, who claims every version is perfect.

Pancake has also discovered that Shostakovich loved football and even trained as a referee, which made her father laugh out loud. A composer of serious symphonies who shouted at matches seemed wonderfully human to them both. Now, whenever she plays the March, her father pretends to blow a whistle at the last bar, and Moo the cat jumps off the sofa in protest.

Pancake's plan is to play piano through the whole of Children's Notebook by the end of next term. With ten focused minutes most days and steady AI piano lessons, she believes she can play music from every page of Galina's book, from the stomping bear to the birthday song.

Frequently asked questions

Q: What is Shostakovich's Children's Notebook? A: It is a set of short piano pieces, Op. 69, that Dmitri Shostakovich wrote in 1944–45 for his daughter Galina when she was learning piano. Titles include March, Waltz, The Bear and A Happy Story.

Q: Are the pieces suitable for beginners? A: Most are early-intermediate pieces: short, clear and not too fast. With guided practice, such as an online piano learning app that slows passages, many children can manage them after some months of study.

What separates a helpful piano teaching app from a distracting one? Clear goals. A well-made AI piano teaching app sets one target per session, the online piano teaching application tracks it, and the online piano lessons app shows when you are ready to move on. That focus is what piano teaching with AI is for. To learn piano online without losing direction, follow one piano learning course and use an AI online piano course to check each small step. Strong piano teaching and caring music teaching both start from listening, which is also the first step to learn music well.

Want a clear next step for your playing? Prefer opening TIGA ALPHA: https://tigaalpha.github.io/landing-en/ — this is our top recommendation. Everyone gets the Premium package free for 7 days, then 799 THB/month. Prefer live studio teaching instead? See https://www.tigastudio.net/, where live piano lessons are capped at 30 hours per week, so seats stay limited. Learn more about TIGA ALPHA and the team behind it at https://www.tigaalpha.com.