PIANISM by Aiko Onishi, CreateSpace, 2009, 134 pp.

Distinguished pianist and pedagogue Aiko Onishi sums up her wide-ranging knowledge about the piano and music-making in Piansim.
What other source describes the different physical gestures required to produce so many different kinds of sound? not just singing tones, but [...]]]>

PIANISM by Aiko Onishi, CreateSpace, 2009, 134 pp.

Distinguished pianist and pedagogue Aiko Onishi sums up her wide-ranging knowledge about the piano and music-making in Piansim.
What other source describes the different physical gestures required to produce so many different kinds of sound? not just singing tones, but also, for example, harmonious tones, colorless tones, rich chordal tones, and bell-like tones.

With imaginative metaphors and similes, Ms. Onishi suggests how to analyze a score for expressive musical communication. She supplies us with practical suggestions for learning repertoire, memorizing, and preparing for performance. Just her observations about pedaling make this book indispensable.

In my view, Aiko Onishis Pianism is a landmark in the literature about playing the piano. It is an invaluable resource for teachers and for students from the earliest years of study on through the artist level.
Nelita True Professor and Chair, Piano Faculty Eastman School of Music

Aiko Onishi has concertized and given lectures in over 60 cities in the United States, and has played in all the major cities in Japan. She was a professor for six years at the Toho School of Music in Japan and for twenty-one years at San Jose State University in California. As a teacher, Miss Onishi has produced many outstanding students, some of whom have won top prizes at international competitionsincluding Leeds, Busoni, Casadesus, Kapell, Chopin, Munich, University of Maryland, and the Washington International Competition. Aiko Onishi was born in Tokyo, Japan. She started learning the piano from her mother, Teiko, an accomplished pianist and a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music. She later studied with Mr. Motonari Iguchi and Miss Aiko Iguchi, his sister. Upon winning a Japan National Competition, she was invited to study at the Eastman School of Music with Madame Cecile Genhart, who gave her a real foundation as a pianist. After earning the B.M. with Distinction, Performers Certificate, and Artists diploma, she continued to study with Frank Mannheimer; with whom she coached on and off for the next sixteen years. During the winter of 1964-5, she had the great privilege of studying with Dame Myra Hess in London.

/patrick

Revealing, candid thoughts about themselves, their careers, music they play, life of a concert pianist. Machs interviews will enhance the pleasure of any concertgoer. People [...]]]> by Elyse Mach (Vols. 1 2, 1980, 1988, on Dover as a single volume 1991)
Introduction by Sir Georg Solti. Over 50 black and white photos are included.

Revealing, candid thoughts about themselves, their careers, music they play, life of a concert pianist. Machs interviews will enhance the pleasure of any concertgoer. People Magazine

This book is a collection of inspiring and fascinating interviews with 25 renowned pianists: Claudio Arrau, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Alfred Brendel, John Browning, Misha Dichter, Rudolf Firkusny, Glenn Gould, Vladimir Horowitz, Byron Janis, Rosalyn Tureck, Andre Watts, Paul Badura-Skoda, Jorge Bolet, Youri Egorov, Janina Fialkowska, Leon Fleisher, Emil Gilels, Stephen Hough, Zoltan Kocsis, Garrick Ohlsson, Cecile Ousset, Murray Perahia and Ivo Pogorelich.

Elyse Mach is a pianist and Professor of Music at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago. She has written nine books on piano and pianists and has been a contributing music critic for the Chicago Sun-Times.

The chapters including Alicia de Larrocha, Misha Dichter, Rudolf Firkusny and Glenn Gould are available for free in this Google Books preview:

This book at Amazon.com

/patrick

The premier was a one-off film event at the [...]]]> Being produced to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Chopins birthday, The Flying Machine takes the eternally fascinating and affecting tudes, and crafts a celebration of the role that music and dance play in our lives, especially in our first pre-teen steps into the adult world.

The premier was a one-off film event at the Royal Festival Hall in London on February 12th 13th with the sound track performed live by pianist Lang Lang.

The Flying Machine is the first 3-D film to be premiered inside a concert hall, and also the first film to combine live action and stop-motion in 3-D and not least has the first 3-D sequence in a feature where the audience is inside a painting.
It is crafted for a multi-platform world with a feature film, several independent short films, an online game, live show and CD all to be released over the course of this year.

The feature film The Flying Machine will air on Sky 3D (UK) in May 2011.

Watch sample:

Interview with producer Hugh Welchman:

Behind the scenes with Lang Lang:

/nilsjohan

In Piano Notes, (Free Press, 2002) he writes for a broader audience about an [...]]]> Charles Rosen is one of the worlds most talented pianists and one of musics most astute commentators. Known as a performer of Bach, Beethoven, Stravinsky, and Elliott Carter, he has also written highly acclaimed criticism for sophisticated students and professionals.

In Piano Notes, (Free Press, 2002) he writes for a broader audience about an old friend the piano itself. Drawing upon a lifetime of wisdom and the accumulated lore of many great performers of the past, Rosen shows why the instrument demands such a stark combination of mental and physical prowess. Readers will gather many little-known insights from how pianists vary their posture, to how splicings and microphone placements can ruin recordings, to how the history of composition was dominated by the piano for two centuries. Stories of many great musicians abound.

Rosen reveals Nadia Boulangers favorite way to avoid commenting on the performances of her friends (You know what I think, spoken with utmost earnestness), why Glenn Goulds recordings suffer from double-strike touches, and how even Vladimir Horowitz became enamored of splicing multiple performances into a single recording.

Rosens explanation of the pianos physical pleasures, demands, and discontents will delight and instruct anyone who has ever sat at a keyboard, as well as everyone who loves to listen to the instrument. In the end, he strikes a contemplative note.

Western music was built around the piano from the classical era until recently, and for a good part of that time the instrument was an essential acquisition for every middle-class household. Music making was part of the fabric of social life. Yet those days have ended. Fewer people learn the instrument today. The rise of recorded music has homogenized performance styles and greatly reduced the frequency of public concerts. Music will undoubtedly survive, but will the supremely physical experience of playing the piano ever be the same?

Buy at Amazon.com

Google Books preview

/patrick

In 1834 Schumann founded the music journal Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik. For a decade, he edited and wrote music criticism for this publication. He championed the work of numerous young composers. (Read his first published article, a review on Chopins Opus 2) His writings [...]]]> Creativity measured in small and large form piano compositions

In 1834 Schumann founded the music journal Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik. For a decade, he edited and wrote music criticism for this publication. He championed the work of numerous young composers. (Read his first published article, a review on Chopins Opus 2) His writings embodied the most progressive artistic aesthetics of the time. In his journal Schumann often wrote under two pseudonyms Eusebius (his sensitive, lyrical side) and Florestan (his fiery, stormy side). These characters were members of Schumanns fictitious Band of David (along with Mozart, Chopin, Paganini and Berlioz among others) an artistic brotherhood sworn to battle against the Philistines, the purveyors of all that was antiquated, mediocre, and shallow in contemporary music and culture.

During this period Schumann composed primarily for the piano. Among these piano compositions were the Abegg Variations, Op. 1 (1830); Davidsbundlertanze (Dances of the Band of David), Op. 6 (1837); Carnaval, Op. 9 (1835) a portrait of a masked ball attended by his allies and his beloved Clara; Phantasiestucke, Op. 12 (1837) a series of mood pieces; Kreisleriana, Op. 16 (1838) a fantasy on the mad Kapellmeister Kreisler from a short story by E.T.A. Hoffman; and Kinderszenen, Op. 15 (1838) a poetic series of evocations of a childs world. The uncompromisingly lofty and elaborate pianistic demands of these works and their widely varied range of dynamic nuances and densely textured web of primary and secondary voices confounded audiences at their initial performances.

The Schumanns sonata form (or sonata form-like) compositions, little can be explained from the standpoint of tradition. Instead of classical dramatic contrasts, thematic action develops towards a definite goal. This type of musical narration often lasts to the end of the coda , in other cases the constant evolution of a thematic thought or the continual transformation of a motif receives the leading role. In order to obscure the essential events of the works or of the movements Schumann often employs traditional formal gestures. Hungarian musicologist Pl Richter argues that one of the most interesting compositional modi operandi is the repetition of a longer section in different keys, reminding of the exposition-recapitulation duality. The dj vu feeling was generally one of the starting-point in Schumanns workshop to move away from traditional sonata procedures. Influenced by the narrative content of the works, various strategies were elaborated by him to excite the dj vu, or to relive musical moments.

The Piano Sonata No. 2 in G minor, Op. 22 (1833-1838), was not, in fact, the composers second such work in order of composition. The so-called Sonata No. 3, really a reworking of the Concert sans orchestre of 1836, acquired its present identity only after Schumann revised the earlier work (including the restoration of a scherzo removed before publication) in 1853. The Second Sonata, Schumanns last large-scale work in the genre, is the most streamlined of the composers completed piano sonatas; within its very manageable and clearly organized confines one finds some of the composers most characteristic music for the keyboard.

Hear Martha Argerich play Sonata No. 2 in g minor Op. 22:

2nd mvt | 3rd mvt | 4th mvt

The Fantasie in C, Op. 17, composed in the summer of 1836, is a work of passion and deep pathos, imbued with the spirit of the late Beethoven. This is no doubt deliberate, since the proceeds from sales of the work were initially intended to be contributed towards the construction of a monument to Beethoven (who had died in 1827). The closing of the first movement of the Fantasie contains a musical quote from Beethovens song cycle, An die ferna Geliebte, Op. 98 (at the Adagio coda, taken from the last song of the cycle). The original titles of the movements were to be Ruins, Triumphal Arch and The Starry Crown. According to Liszt, who played the work for Schumann and to whom Schumann dedicated the work the Fantasie was apt to be played too heavily, and should have a dreamier (trumerisch) character than vigorous German pianists tended to impart. Liszt also said, It is a noble work, worthy of Beethoven, whose career, by the way, it is supposed to represent. According to Hutcheson: No words can describe the Phantasie, no quotations set forth the majesty of its genius. It must suffice to say that it is Schumanns greatest work in large form for piano solo.

Hear Sviatoslav Richter play Fantasie in C Op. 17:

Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

The Humoreske of 1839, far more serious-minded and substantial than its name might suggest, is built in five discrete sections. A name used as a title in the 19th century for a lively instrumental composition, often good-humoured rather than humorous. Schumann, Dvok and Grieg among others, used the French or the German title. Humoresques are generally short and in one movement, but Schumanns op. 20 is one of his largest piano works and is more like a suite. Mercurial in it shifts of mood, it reflects the composers report to his wife Clara that, while working on the piece, he was laughing and crying, all at once. Originally entitled Grosse Humoreske, this piece has been regarded by some musicologists as an ill-judged attempt by Schumann to take his formula in Kreisleriana a step further. This assessment is harsh, however, for these pieces, unified by their extremes (laughing and weeping) and generally in the key of B flat major, are colorful and imaginative, full of energy and depth, and if they do not strike out new territory, they are rife with ideas and never sound tiresome.

Hear Piotr Anderszewski play Humoresque Op. 20:

Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Related articles:
Robert Schumann A Musical and Literary Giant
Nicolas Economou Plays Schumann
The Grand Sonata Liszts Piano Sonata in B Minor

/patrick