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A Pianist's A–Z: A piano lover's reader Kindle Edition
'This book distils what, at my advanced age, I feel able to say about music, musicians, and matters of my pianistic profession.'
Ever since Alfred Brendel bid farewell to the concert stage after six decades of performing, he has been passing on his insight and experience in the form of lectures, readings and master-classes. This reader for lovers of the piano distils his musical and linguistic eloquence and vast knowledge, and will prove invaluable to anyone with an interest in the technique, history and repertoire of the piano.
Erudite, witty, enlightening and deeply personal, A Pianist's A to Z is the ideal book for all piano lovers, musicians and music aficionados: rarely has the instrument been described in such an entertaining and intelligent fashion.
- Reading age8 years and up
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherFaber & Faber
- Publication dateSeptember 3, 2013
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Product details
- ASIN : B00DAJ59HM
- Publisher : Faber & Faber; Main edition (September 3, 2013)
- Publication date : September 3, 2013
- Language : English
- File size : 1618 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 124 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,578,401 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #822 in Piano Music
- #6,984 in Piano & Keyboards
- Customer Reviews:
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"It is easily forgotten that `arpeggio' derives from arpa (harp). The pianist should envisage a lady harpist controlling the rhythm and dynamics of her arpeggios with her gracious fingertips. Arpeggios need attentive care and acute ears. Where the arpeggiando sign is not indicated as spread across both hands, we should be hearing two simultaneous harps."
You see: what, as a pianist, Brendel will do to music is usually the full chord but here he lays it out in arpeggiando, one letter at a time.
So, by knowing all this, down through the alphabet, explained in lofty style, sometimes whimsically, as with the z, the book cannot fail but stimulate you to listening to special pieces with a renewed and ravenous gusto.
Brendel speaks with love of his piano: "The piano is an object of transformation. It permits, if the pianist so desires, the suggestion of the singing voice, the timbres of other instruments, of the orchestra. It might even conjure up the rainbow or the spheres. This propensity for metamorphosis, this alchemy, is our supreme treasure."
Repeatedly unusual recommendations are made such as this one that I followed with delight: "Mozart's relatively rare works in minor keys are particularly precious: the A-Minor Rondo K. 511 and the B-Minor Adagio K. 540 are soliloquies of the most personal kind. Stupendous in their chromatic boldness are the Minuet K. 355/576b and the Gigue K. 574. Wagner admired Mozart as a great chromaticist."
I found Brendel's book more interesting than Jonathan Biss Beethoven's Shadow (Kindle Single) for reasons of too much analysis in the latter. But the Brendel is perhaps a little expensive as it really is not a long text. To augment reading on the Vienna classics I recommend Charles Rosen Music and Sentiment , Hermes O Fresh Classical Music Guide/ Universe as Music , or Lawrence Kramer Why Classical Music Still Matters
Where Brendel deals with his own repertoire he is sometimes profound, sometimes skittish. I have enjoyed this book. It is not a reference book, but helpful in getting to know how he thinks. In the end I much prefer the way he PLAYS Schubert to the way he write about him.
I would have rated five stars but for wishing this little gem was graced with more entries.
Top reviews from other countries
su tanti aspetti della musica e non, in una formula molto semplice: dalla A alla Z.
Io ho preferito leggerlo in Inglese ma esiste anche la traduzione in italiano.






