Pianos are more fun than climbing stairs
The Fun Theory (from VW!)
Pages
Tags
fun
Schroeder knew what he was talking about
Here’s a charming piece in the New York Times about the authenticity of the snips of Beethoven scores that Charles Schultz drew to illustrate Schroeder scenes in “Peanuts”. There were a “soundtrack” to the strip. Fun example: a strip showing Schroeder doing strength and stamina training before going to practice…the Hammerklavier.
Tagged books, fun, inspiration, writingHarriette Brower, Piano Mastery
Harriette Brower’s 1915 book, Piano Mastery, is online in a public domain Project Gutenberg edition. She recounts interviews she did with about 20 master pianists and teachers (e.g., Busoni, Paderewski, Goodson), includes essays on interpretation by William Mason and William Sherwood, and offers her own essay on technique (from hand position through practicing, memorizing, tone [...]
Tagged books, online, teachingNovels about pianists
I recently read two novels about pianists that my wife gave me for Christmas, and both were excellent. I will also briefly mention a third I read several years ago. I’m not going to try to write very thoughtful or complete book reviews here; I’ll briefly describe them and then point to reviews [...]
Tagged books, novels, performersRachmaninov had big hands!
I’m struggling currently with Rachmaninov’s Prelude in g sharp minor (Op 32, No 12). To cheer me up now and then I watch Igudesman and Joo. What a great idea!
For a quite nice performance of the g sharp minor, see Richard Pohl’s video.
Playing backwards
This is just for fun. The first video appears to be a guy who learned to play Beethoven’s Fur Elise backwards, recorded it, then played the recording backwards so the music comes out forwards, sort of. I haven’t completely figured out how much of this is just reverse video, and how much is [...]