Customer Reviews

The Leschetizky Method: A Guide to Fine and Correct Piano Playing (Dover Books on Music)

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The Leschetizky Method is by Malwine Bree, who was Leschetizky's pupil and later, his assistant. Leschetizky was a student of Czerny, who studied with Beethoven. There is a charming dedication to Leschetizky--a bit of history--where Bree thanks him for all he has taught her and asks him to ensure that she has accurately recorded his teachings. His response glowingly praises her book as having faithfully followed his methods, and he adds that he recognizes the sketches of his hands on the keyboard.

The book is a quality paperback that will take a lot of spreading open at the piano without falling apart. As a student of the Russian Technical Regimen, a method directly derived from Leschetizky's teachings, I found the book to be an excellent supplement. Its 92 pages are crammed full of piano technique, including finger dexterity and independence, timing, use of the metronome, scales, chord playing, arpeggios, embellisments (such as grace notes), use of the pedal, performance tips, suggestions for memorizing, and a lot more, and has either exercises for or examples of each, with sketches of Leschetizky's hands on the keyboard demonstrating hand position for the chords and exercises. The editor offers a few tips that inject just a bit of modern theory.

The text was easy to read, the exercises easy to understand and apply, and both are thoroughly enjoyable as well as helpful for the pianist.

This book was actually written not by the famous Leschetizky himself, but by his student Bree, and then later endorsed by the master. In any event, it is solid in the sense that it provides some basic finger exercises that are still useful and presents some basic good advice. The commentary is probably quite correct but generally does not really reveal anything new, neither in content nor in presentation. Perhaps the best part of the book are the illustrations of various hand positions. At the end there is also a perhaps historically interesting article by Paderewski. For finger exercises, I think Hanon is better and more complete, and for a method as such, have a look at Seymour Bernstein's '20 Lessons in Keyboard Choreography'.

This book is full of notations that I think are for advance students in music education or for piano players looking improve their skills. Enlarging the front cover shows the type of notation and fingering that will be found. It's not obvious from the title of this book that this book might not be for beginners who are trying learn on their own.

Reading this book was informative to some extent, but disappointing in gereral. The exercises are very boring, and are pretty useless for the beginner. Relatively advanced pianists (Grade 8 and above) will find little in the book. The pictures are of an excellent quality, and are a definite guide, especially the ones about passing the thumb.

A more well written book is "Basic Principles in Pianoforte Playing" by Josef Lhevinne (ISBN: 0486228207). This book offers superior advice on improving one's playing, and can be used by all but the most competent pianist.

The pedagogue himself said in this book "I have no method"...

Anyway, this book was NOT prepared by Leschetizky himself. To be exact, neither was it prepared for the pedagogue's students; rather, it was prepared for those students who were not yet ready for lessons by the pedagogue himself.

It is more a method as remembered by one of his particular pupils --the pedagogue taught according to the individual need of his pupil-- who later also became one of his mistresses and assistants, to be applied to those intermediates under her only.

Few of this padagogue's great pupils, in any, had gone through such "method" , for most of them were child prodigies themselves. The pedagogue's real method instead concentrated on phrasing, interpretation and musicality and his ability to explore and draw from the potentials of these already great pupils-- as explained by his pupils like Moiseiwitsch and Horszowski.

There are however some pictures of hand positions and some finger excercises that are of some value. There are dozens of them showing the "correct" hand positions for various chords etc (without much elaboration on what effects such hand positions could achieve), presumably they were Lechetizsky's hands. Note that, however, not even Moiseiwitsch played with such curved fingers and that even one of his most favoured pupils Horszowski -- whom he presented as the Mozart of the day, just like he hailed Schnabel as Schubert-- who followed him for 6 years, changed the weight of his arms and hand position in the middle of his career!

For an alternative, we can listen directly to his pupils, particularly Ignaz Friedman who later became his assistant, someone the pedagogue himself observed to be technically better than himself. Or even Moiseiwitsch and Horszowski, or perhaps Paderewski. For those who are really interesteed, we still have some fine historic recording of the padagogue on the piano avaiblable which could tell us more than any words by one of his many so-called assistants!

I'm always suspicious of any book about piano technique, because it isn't something that is easily learned without an experienced teacher at your side. That being said, this book was quite interesting: he starts with the basic mechanics of dropping into the keys and works forward from there. Some of the pictures (black and white) could have been more concise, but overall a great addition to any pianist's library.

This book is useful, but for a much fuller and far more effective treatment of this school of playing, I recommend the "Russian Technical Regimen" books by Alexander Peskanov, and the companion video, "In Search of Sound," which demonstrates the techniques employed. I know the books are available on Amazon but I'm not sure about the video. Classical Video Concepts does handle the video. Peskanov studied in the Ukraine under teachers who were lineal "student descendants" of Leschetizky. I'd also suggest Googling Peskanov, and becoming familiar with the work of this wonderful concert artist who has a real heart for developing young talent. I've had several opportunities to observe him both performing and working with students in master classes and in private lessons, and he is a genuis with a heart of gold.