Customer Reviews

Piano Playing: With Piano Questions Answered (Dover Books on Music)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book, originally published as two separate volumes in 1906 and 1907, is a collection of articles Hofmann wrote as a regular feature of the LADIES HOME JOURNAL. Although Josef Hofmann was himself a phenominal talent, he offers thoughtful answers to the simplest of piano questions, and guides the reader with a practical, common sense approach. Most of the advise in this little book is timeless, and the pictures of Hofmann himself demonstrating correct and incorrect positions of the hand and body make this a pedagogical gem that his admirers will cherish.

I can't begin to tell you how many people make a poor attempt at learning very difficult piano pieces just so they can say "I can play this, and I can play that". However, if they're serious about piano, they will come to a point where they realize that, sure, they can "get through" the piece, but they can't actually "play" it. There is so much more to the piano that so many people are missing out on these days. Technique, dynamics, tempo, and even simple things such as how you are seated at the bench. Most teachers skip over teaching these key aspects of music because most students just want to be able to play what they want as fast as they want. This book covers all the things that many have missed out on. It covers nearly everything you need to know on how to be a great piano player. Combine this book with natural talent, and a desire to bring the piano to life, and you're set. Theres even over 160 pages of frequently asked questions that amatures sent to Hoffman over the years (and answers of couse).

If you're serious about playing the piano, get this book before your poor playing habbits are implanted in your head even further. If you're not serious, or just like to mess around... then skip it. It would be a waste of your money.

Probably the greatest pianist of our time telling us the secret of his success: how one should approach the piano and music, how Rubinstein taught him, what music to start with, the advantage and disadvantage of having a perfect pitch... a lot more. Most amusing as well as informative. It deserves more than 5 stars.

However, note that more often than not, a child prodigy wouldn't be able too tell you very much how he got there. And I dare say Mozart's father would be able to tell you more about it than himself.

Say, for instance, how would it be possible to avoid all but really good concerts as suggested by Hofmann? Without the benefit of both, how would we be able to differentiate the two? However, at a certain point of time this is so correct! Hofmann's insistence on the cleanliness of the keyboard, I suppose would carry different meaning for different pianists too. Likewise, soaking one's hands in warm water to warm them up may or may not work for all. And having a terrific memory, Hofmann is celebrated for his ability to learn, like Mozart, a piece by listening to it instead of sightreading any music. As such, Dohnanyi (the pianist), Richter, Gulda or even Nelson Freire might be in a better position to tell anything substantial about it...

All in all, this book is nothing like an anti-biotic that can cure your ailments within virtually a couple of days, but just some very general guidelines or principles which would, nevertheless, takes you years if not months of practice to accomplish, if at all. Nonetheless, there are some good suggestions that would lead you and guide you through some turning points, without which you may get easily lost or else need much more time to unlearn.

I was slightly disappointed in this book. I did not feel that I learned very much that I didn't already know. There were a few
answers to some problems that I have been experiencing on the piano, however, for the most part the answers to the questions were rather simple and common sense.
I also felt that this book, written in the early 1900's, was outdated. I did get a good chuckle though from some of the advice.
I felt that a beginner may have gleaned more usefull information from this book than I did.If you are looking for in depth answers, and advice on piano playing, etc. this didn't do it for me.

When buying a french cookbook, one can choose from wonderful derivative sources (for example, an American popularist of french cooking such as Julia Childs, or a Betty Crocker clone) or visit with a text written by a master native-born French chef for those who wish to learn how to cook authentic French cuisine from one of the top chefs in France. Interestingly, the same phenenomena exists with books on piano-playing. There are certainly Betty Crocker-style books written by marginally talented pianists who tailor their texts to aficionados who don't wish to think too much about piano-playing theories and methods. Then there are the books written by the real "chefs" or "chiefs" of piano-playing, like Josef Hofmann, who along with Rachmaninoff and a few others, ranked as the superlative pianists of the 20th Century. What Liszt was to the 19th Century, Hofmann was in the 20th Century. In Piano Playing the reader is treated to high-level advice on many of the most important aspects of piano playing. To be sure, unless the reader has had a high level teacher who has provided him/her a legitimately good foundation in piano-playing and piano knowledge, the book may feel less useful. But that's true only if the reader reads too hastily, and with an eye at being entertained instead of educated. Serious, that is "real" pianists, would not want to miss owning and reading this wonderful book.

I must concur with those other reviewers here who have objected to the superficialities of commentary in Hofmann's little book. Only occasionally here does he home in on a truly insightful point about piano playing in general or about how he in particular achieved his own highly singular tone colors and mechanism. These essays and questions and answers were drawn from the Ladies Home Journal, wherein Hofmann had to water down and generalize his responses somewhat to address the context of his audience. Here and there he betrays a flash of his brilliance and quirkiness or clarifies a startling mechanical detail, but these are exceptions, not consistently maintained through the platitudinous narrative.

This volume is less disclosing of an artist's piano secrets than other volumes in the Dover series by Gieseking, Lhevinne, etc. More's the pity because the truly fascinating inside story of Hofmann's life, career, and unique pianism is being held hostage by a self-professed scholar who has puffed smoke rings for thirty or more years about writing Hofmann's biography but has never actually done so, sitting on archival materials no one else has access to. The truly relevant information has to do with Hofmann's double life as a scientific inventor and physics and chemistry experimenter and how Hofmann's other identity inextricably informed his music making-- how Hofmann the mechanical engineer and acoustician made mechanical alterations to his pianos and to his manipulations of the piano that created the unique Hofmann sound. Until this material sees the light of day, the pianophile must resign himself to the tantalizing but inadequate glimpses of a unique artist stingily provided by this paltry volume.

I have to be honest. I do not like this book. I don't even think I got through the first chapter. I am a real nut about piano playing and piano theory, so if there is something good in the book I guess I just missed it. I was so bored reading it I just tossed it.

I gave it 2 stars just because there may be something good in the book I missed.