Here are books of classical duets from various composers that are begging to be performed by Pianovers:
a) A Book of Piano Duets
b) École de la mesure
c) Melodien-Album
d) Pianoforte-Album
e) Moore's Irish Melodies
f) Payne’s Album für Musik
g) Modernes Vortragsalbum ausgewählter neuzeitlicher Tonstücke

Of course, you can just go to IMSLP and pick a composer that you like and look up their list of duets or 4 hands piano pieces.

Jessieca Joplin here. I have 2 books i want to play with someone who loves baroque and classical repertoire. Books are "Piano duets baroque composers" and "Piano duets classical composers" Compiled and edited by Michael Aston. Particularly wanting someone to play Secondo for "Allegro con spirito" by J C F Bach (classical), and "Arrival of the queen of Sheba" by Handel (baroque). Want to play for fun and hope to perform. Anyone up to wanting to learn, let me know :D Best, Jess

Haha, can see that this can be a "war" between sight-reading and play-by-ear. But I think we can discuss with educational benefits.

One simple example that sight-reading will survive is because composers want their works to be reproduced correctly.

Maybe a piece played by a single instrument can be reproduced by a person with great ears, but a film music typically comprising many instruments would be better reproduced with scores.

I've always looked at scores with thick chords, maybe both hands playing about 8 notes together, and wonder how someone can pick these 8 individual notes out easily by ear. It's quite obvious which side I'm on.

Not really a "war" but more a "divide". In fact I was invited to delivery a talk on this topic at one of Pianovers's special meetup at the Bliss House some months ago. In the talk I mentioned each serves a different set of purposes, and the merits and shortcomings of each. If you are keen I can email you the slides.

Another vital insight to share with regard to play-by-ear is as follows. If we treat classical/art music as THE genre, then of course sight-reading carries heavy weight. Don't get me wrong, I'm a classical music specialist (among all genres) and I advocate all music learners go through at least the main classical repertoire.

However, the world of music is more than the classical genre. We have several other genres of music whereby "scores aren't available" for such pieces because of the nature/context of things. For example, traditional folk music of several countries/regions such as Greensleeves (England) and Sakura (Japan) - we can't really traced their original composer. And even if we are able to, most of them did not pen their works via the 5-lined stave. Many could be played/sung throughout the generations/eras. And if we need to rely on scores to play such pieces, we can only find specific score versions done by specific ARRANGERS. So we are playing someone's arrangement, instead of its original version (which has no score). Play-by-ear and improvising/arrangement skills of us (as pianists) are thus coming in handy for such purposes.

Even in the mege-genre of pop music, and also other genres like New Age music and Soundtrack music, many composers don't create the stave notations - they only produce the final product (the audio track). As such, music score transcribers start to earn some market share by notating these to various degrees (which again is subject to their own "arrangement"). So in this context, wouldn't it be better that we play by ear?

Black cat or white car, as long as it can catch the mouse, it's a good cat.

Using this philosophy, it doesn't matter the method to learn, as in the end, you achieve your aim. Of course, your aim might be different from me.

Yes, some of Clayderman's pieces are still appealing. But I got tired of the boring left-hand accompaniment styles from Olivier Toussaint and Paul de Seneville. See image for what I mean. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5e/54/f9/5e54f979f8f89c9a111a41e082b60be7...

I was just learning Harmonies du soir (Liszt). I have other pieces I am interested in, but will shelf them because of the stuff that I hear from our Meetups. For example, Asturias led me to Villanesca (Granados).

One thing that has helped greatly in improving my play by ear ability is to listen on Youtube hundreds of pieces that follow the score as a video. Now, when pieces are played, I start visualizing staves and notes and can more intuitively figure out how to play a piece just through listening.

Oh yes, to answer your question. I don't think this is an innate ability unless your parents have been exposing you to music ever since you are in the womb. Then maybe you would be more accepting of music in life.

Before I forget. There are quite a number of Ear Training software on the Android Play Store that may be of some use. I have used 'The Ear Gym', 'Functional Ear Trainer', and 'Perfect Ear' before. Quite simple but useful apps for training yourself to play by ear. I am pretty sure there are equivalent apps on iTunes too - like 'Play by Ear' and 'Ear for Life, Ear Training'