Volume One contains the fifteen sonatas from Beethoven's first period, including the popular Pathétique, Moonlight, and Pastorale sonatas. Volume Two contains the 17 sonatas from Beethoven's second and third periods, including the Waldstein, the Appassionata, and the Hammerklavier.The music is reproduced directly from the exemplary Universal Edition set edited by Heinrich Schenker. Combining scrupulous scholarship and profound artistic vision, Schenker achieved an edition which is universally admired by musicians and scholars. He used more autographs as sources than any previous editor of the sonatas, and he was the first to reproduce in print the visual impression of the autographs. For this Dover edition, Schenker's footnotes have been translated into English and his preface translated. A new introduction by Carl Schachter has also been included.Noteheads have been reproduced in a size large enough to be read easily at the keyboard. Margins and spaces between staves are generous, permitting insertion of written notes, analysis, fingerings, etc. Running measure numbers and many fingerings have already been included by the editor — the last a particularly unusual and valuable feature of this edition. This edition will be welcomed by all pianists, both professional and amateur, for its accuracy and reliability; it is highly desirable for instruction, study, reference, and enjoyment.

    Lhevinne was, with Rachmaninoff, Schnabel, and Hoffman, one of the great modern masters, and was the first artist invited to teach at the newly formed Julliard Graduate School of Music. Technique, through essential, must be subordinate to musical understanding. Complete knowledge of scales, apprehended not mechanically but musically; understanding of the uses of rests and silence, which Mozart considered the greatest effect in music; a feeling for rhythm and training of the ear; these are the basic elements of a thorough grounding in musicianship and are accordingly emphasized in the opening chapters. The heart of the book is devoted to the attainment of a beautiful tone. Anyone who has heard Lhevinne play or has listened to one of his recordings will know how great were his achievements in that area. The secret lay, at least in part, in the technique he called "the arm floating in air," and in the use of the wrists as natural shock absorbers. The achievement of varieties of tone, of the singing, ringing tone, of brilliancy, of delicacy, and of power are all explained in terms of a careful analysis of the ways in which the fingers, hand, wrist, arm, and indeed the whole body function in striking the keys. There are further remarks about how to get a clear staccato and an unblurred legato, about the dangers of undue emphasis on memorization and the need for variety in practicing, and special comments on the use of the pedal, which should be employed with as much precision as the keys. Throughout, specific musical examples are presented as illustrations. The author draws not only upon his own experiences and methods, but upon the examples of Anton Rubenstein and of his teacher, Safonoff, for this remarkably lucid and concise formulation of basic principles.

    This unique collection of documents, edited and annotated by Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, reveals Chopin as teacher and interpreter of his own music. Included in this study is extensive appendix material that presents annotated scores, and personal accounts of Chopin's playing by pupils, writers, and critics.

    A student of Anton Rubinstein and a leading exponent of the works of Chopin, Liszt, and Schumann, he always balanced his virtuoso playing with a firm adherence to the piece as written. It is this balanced approach to piano playing that he advocates in this highly regarded volume on piano technique.The first section of the book contains a discussion of the rules and tricks of correct piano playing: touch, methods of practicing, the use of the pedal, playing the piece as it is written, "How Rubinstein Taught Me to Play," and indispensables in pianistic success. The second, much longer, section contains Hofmann's answers to specific questions sent to him by piano students and amateurs: questions on positions of the body and hand, actions of the wrist and arm, stretching, staccato, legato, precision, fingering, octaves, the pedals, practice, marks and nomenclature, phrasing, rubato, theory, transposing, and much more.Full of important background information that is highly useful to every piano player, this book will set students on the right track in their studies and allow every amateur to measure the level of his commitment and the quality of the instruction he is receiving. For insight into many facets of playing the piano, there is no better guide than Josef Hofmann.

    Was he drunk to boot? He greeted his new assistant with "What are you drinking?" Yes, he was drunk.Charlie Harmon was hired to manage the day-to-day parts of Bernstein's life. There was one additional responsibility: make sure Bernstein met the deadline for an opera commission. But things kept getting in the way: the centenary of Igor Stravinsky, intestinal parasites picked up in Mexico, teaching all summer in Los Angeles, a baker's dozen of young men, plus depression, exhaustion, insomnia, and cut-throat games of anagrams. Did the opera get written?For four years, Charlie saw Bernstein every day, as his social director, gatekeeper, valet, music copyist, and itinerant orchestra librarian. He packed (and unpacked) Bernstein's umpteen pieces of luggage, got the Maestro to his concerts, kept him occupied changing planes in Zurich, Anchorage, Tokyo, or Madrid, and learned how to make small talk with mayors, ambassadors, a chancellor, a queen, and a Hollywood legend or two. How could anyone absorb all those people and places? Because there was music: late-night piano duets, or the Maestro's command to accompany an audition, or, by the way, the greatest orchestras in the world. Charlie did it, and this is what it was like, told for the first time.A celebratory, intimate, and detailed look at the public and private life of Leonard Bernstein written by his former assistant. Foreword by Broadway legend Harold Prince.

    This book encourages musicians to develop a broader understanding of the involvement of the entire body in playing—and the strains playing places on the body—by focusing on body mapping to increase awareness of the body’s function, size, and structure. Ways in which piano, organ, harpsichord, clavichord, and digital keyboard players can eliminate or prevent carpal tunnel syndrome and other debilitating conditions without traditional medical treatments are also explored.

    Two generations of this remarkable family transformed and popularised the waltz, delighting all of Viennese society with their prolific compositions. But behind the melody lay a darker discord, as the Strausses tore themselves apart while Vienna itself struggled to secure its place in a rapidly changing world.In The Last Waltz John Suchet skilfully portrays this gripping story, capturing the family dramas, the tensions, triumphs and disasters, all set against the turbulent backdrop of Austria in the nineteenth century, from revolution to regicide.Discover the truth behind Vienna’s extraordinary musical dynasty.

    And in portraying the politics and inflated economics surrounding the podiums of today's international classical music scene, the author investigates the awesome power of superagents, the obstacles faced by blacks, women, and gays, and the mounting crisis in a profession where genuine talent grows ever scarcer.

    signed books

    This highly influential work is monumental in the history of Western music. It represents not only the culmination of Bach's own maturation process, but also the galvanization of the emerging style and structure of modern keyboard music.The grace and fecundity of The Well-Tempered Clavier have thrilled audiences, musicians, and composers for centuries. Mozart, when rapidly advancing to the height of his mastery, had but to read a manuscript copy of The Well-Tempered Clavier and his style developed a new polyphonic richness and depth of harmony. Beethoven studied all the accessible works of Bach profoundly (including The Well-Tempered Clavier) and frequently quoted them in his sketchbooks, often with direct bearing on his own works. Chopin is nowhere more characteristic than when he shows his love of The Well-Tempered Clavier in his Etudes and Preludes. It was Schumann who, in a series of maxims for young musicians, said "Make The Well-Tempered Clavier your daily bread."This remarkable volume contains all 48 preludes and fugues, from Books I and II, in all major keys, reproduced directly from the authoritative Bach-Gesellschaft edition. The fine engraving is beautiful, clear, and easy to read. These elegant pieces, which vary in difficulty, are available complete in one low-cost, convenient Dover edition.

    The composer brings the Imperial Russia of his childhood vividly into focus, at the same time scanning what were at the time the brave new horizons of Boulez and Stockhausen with extraordinary acuity.Stravinsky answers searching questions about his musical development and recalls his association with Diaghilev and the Russian Ballet. There are sympathetic and extraordinarily illuminating reminiscences of such composers as Debussy and Ravel ('the only musicians who immediately understood Le Sacre du Printemps'), while mischievous squibs are directed at others, most notably perhaps against Richard Strauss, all of whose operas Stravinsky wished 'to admit ... to whichever purgatory punishes triumphant banality'.The conversations are by no means confined to musical subjects, ranging uninhibitedly across all the arts: Stravinsky gives unforgettable sketches of Ibsen, Rodin, Proust, Giacometti, Dylan Thomas and T S Eliot.'The conversations between Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft are unique in musical history. The penetration of Craft's questions and the patience and detail of Stravinsky's answers combine to produce an intimate picture of a man who has sometimes puzzled, often delighted, and always intrigued ...' The Sunday Times

    But it sets the stage by looking into Mahler’s earlier career as a talented, ambitious, and often ruthless conductor.In her memoirs Alma drew Mahler as a sickly, cerebral recluse. Arnold Schoenberg called him a "saint." Leonard Bernstein, largely responsible for the Mahler "boom" in the Sixties, found a "secret shame" at the heart of Mahler’s music, "the shame of being a Jew and the shame of being ashamed." Jonathan Carr looks behind these myths, and using letters, diaries, and other material hitherto unavailable in English, he brilliantly challenges some of the most widely held assumptions about Mahler.

    Music for Silenced Voices looks at Shostakovich through the back door, as it were, of his fifteen quartets, the works which his widow characterized as a "diary, the story of his soul." The silences and the voices were of many kinds, including the political silencing of adventurous writers, artists, and musicians during the Stalin era; the lost voices of Shostakovich's operas (a form he abandoned just before turning to string quartets); and the death-silenced voices of his close friends, to whom he dedicated many of these chamber works.Wendy Lesser has constructed a fascinating narrative in which the fifteen quartets, considered one at a time in chronological order, lead the reader through the personal, political, and professional events that shaped Shostakovich's singular, emblematic twentieth-century life. Weaving together interviews with the composer's friends, family, and colleagues, as well as conversations with present-day musicians who have played the quartets, Lesser sheds new light on the man and the musician. One of the very few books about Shostakovich that is aimed at a general rather than an academic audience, Music for Silenced Voices is a pleasure to read; at the same time, it is rigorously faithful to the known facts in this notoriously complicated life. It will fill readers with the desire to hear the quartets, which are among the most compelling and emotionally powerful monuments of the past century's music.

    Schirmer edition of 24 Italian Songs & Arias of the 17th and 18th Centuries has introduced millions of beginning singers to serious Italian vocal literature. Offered in two accessible keys suitable for all singers, it is likely to be the first publication a voice teacher will ask a first-time student to purchase. The classic Parisotti realizations result in rich, satisfying accompaniments which allow singers pure musical enjoyment. For ease of practice, carefully prepared accompaniments are also recorded on CD by John Keene, a New York-based concert accompanist and vocal coach who has performed throughout the United States for radio and television. Educated at the University of Southern California, Keene has taught accompanying at the university level and collaborated with Gian Carlo Menotti and Thea Musgrave on productions of their operas.

    Here is a book that will be enjoyed by all pianists not only for the stimulating advice it provides, but also for the style with which it is written.