Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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42 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Entertaining and educational, May 26, 2003
This is one of those rare books that educates you on a subject and yet is highly entertaining at the same time. The author was a highly respected music critic for the New York Times for many years and was in fact the first music critic ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. He knows his subject inside out and is a wealth of information. In this book he presents the story of the piano, from Bach to the present day, and he does it by describing and discussing the personalities of the many pianists who contributed to the history of the instrument.It is a wonderful book, full of memorable descriptions, amusing anecdotes and telling insights. Mr. Schonberg writes with a great deal of humour and a dose of healthy scepticism as to some of the more abstruse utterings of the piano community. He brings to light not only Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin and Rachmaninoff, but also all the lesser known figures active at the time as well as the great pianists of the 20th century. It is fascinating. You'll learn all about Thalberg (remembered now only for losing a piano "duel" with Liszt) but who must have been a tremendous musician, you'll read about Leopold de Meyer, who wasn't averse to playing the keyboard with his knee or elbow. You'll laugh at the antics of de Pachmann, learn how Beethoven played his own sonatas, be touched by the life story of Josef Hoffmann. Above all, this book will open your mind about the piano and pianism. Today everyone concentrates on a handful of composers and pianists, a bit like looking only at a fragment of a painting. Mr. Schonberg brings the whole canvas to light in a clear, fluent, refreshing and readable way and does not confuse the reader with esoteric mumbo-jumbo. This is an accessible book, readable by lay person and musician alike. The same author has also written a number of other books which I highly recommend, especially Lives of the Great Composers and Horowitz, His Life and Music.
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26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
AN ALL-TIME GREAT BOOK, July 29, 2003
Mr. Schonberg has passed away this week. He will be missed, but he will live on for us through his wonderful glorification of pianism and its history. I originally reviewed this book last December, but with his passing I felt compelled to revisit it.As a follower of the piano scene for many years, I must say that this book is THE one that you need to have. Its approach and tone reflect a glorification, awe, and love of pianism and its history. Some have alleged that the facts aren't always quite right, and for sure questionable opinions are sometimes presented as though they were clear fact; but the thrust and the narrative are so great that it hardly matters. Some reviews on this site complain that certain subjects should have been given more space; but, INSTEAD OF WHAT?? There's no wasted space in this book, either the original version or the update. If the reviewers mean that the book should have been LONGER, well, I would love it to have been longer, and I bet that Mr. Schonberg would have been glad to oblige. Much of the book consists of the author's commentary on recordings by pianists of yesteryear. I always had the idea that his initial inspiration for the book may have been his love of listening to old recordings and the wish to share his impressions of them. In my first Amazon review of this book, I wondered whether anybody knows if this is true. Secretly I hoped that Mr. Schonberg himself might see that, and give us the answer. Well, the time for that is past. Anyway, wouldn't we ALL love to have spent a few months (or years) just listening to those old 78's? Ruht wohl, Mr. Schonberg.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An extraordinarily informative account, March 29, 1999
By A Customer
This book, by Harold Schonberg, is an endless description of the pianists who made the piano what it is today. It's humurous, factual, entertaining and most of all informative to maximum level that we laymen can cope with. Well, done. I will certainly read other Schonberg books - in between practicing my dim7 scales of course.
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