The Pianist

Author: Wladyslaw Szpilman
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1466837624
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 221

Book Description
The “striking” holocaust memoir that that inspired the Oscar-winning film “conveys with exceptional immediacy . . . the author’s desperate fight for survival” (Kirkus Reviews). On September 23, 1939, Wladyslaw Szpilman played Chopin’s Nocturne in C-sharp minor live on the radio as shells exploded outside—so loudly that he couldn’t hear his piano. It was the last live music broadcast from Warsaw: That day, a German bomb hit the station, and Polish Radio went off the air. Though he lost his entire family, Szpilman survived in hiding. In the end, his life was saved by a German officer who heard him play the same Chopin Nocturne on a piano found among the rubble. Written immediately after the war and suppressed for decades, The Pianist is a stunning testament to human endurance and the redemptive power of fellow feeling. “Szpilman’s memoir of life in the Warsaw ghetto is remarkable not only for the heroism of its protagonists but for the author’s lack of bitterness, even optimism, in recounting the events.” —Library Journal “Employing language that has more in common with the understatement of Primo Levi than with the moral urgency of Elie Wiesel, Szpilman is a remarkably lucid observer and chronicler of how, while his family perished, he survived thanks to a combination of resourcefulness and chance.” —Publishers Weekly “[Szpilman’s] account is hair-raising beyond anything Hollywood could invent . . . an altogether unforgettable book.” —The Daily Telegraph “[Szpilman’s] shock and ensuing numbness become ours, so that acts of ordinary kindness or humanity take on an aura of miracle.” —The Observer

The Pianist from Syria

Author: Aeham Ahmad
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501173502
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
"An astonishing yet true account of a pianist's life in war-torn Syria and his ultimate escape to Germany offers a deeply personal perspective on the most devastating refugee crisis of this century. Aeham Ahmad was born a second-generation refugee--the son of a blind violinist and carpenter who recognized Aeham's talent and taught him how to play piano and love music from an early age. When his grandparents and father were forced to flee Israel and seek refuge from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 1948, Aeham's family built a life in Yarmouk, an unofficial refugee camp to more than 160,000 Palestinians in Damascus. While waiting for the conflict to be resolved so that they could return to their homeland, they raised a new generation in Syria. But another fight overtook their asylum. Their only havens were in music and each other. In his escape from Syria, Aeham sought out a safe place for him and his family to call home and build a better future. Heart-wrenching though full of hope, and told in a raw and poignant voice, The Pianist from Syria is a gripping portrait of one man's search for a peaceful life and of a country being torn apart as the world watches in horror."--Jacket.

The Pianist's Guide to Pedaling

Author: Joseph Banowetz
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253066751
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Book Description
" . . . a most precious book which every serious pianist and teacher must own." —Journal of the American Liszt Society Joseph Banowetz and four distinguished contributors provide practical suggestions and musicological insights on the pedaling of keyboard works from the 18th to the 20th century.

Notes from the Pianist's Bench

Author: Boris Berman
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300221525
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Book Description
Berman addresses virtually every aspect of musical artistry and pedagogy. Ranging from such practical matters as sound, touch, and pedaling to the psychology of performing and teaching, this volume provides a master class for the performer, instructor, and student alike.

Beethoven the Pianist

Author: Tilman Skowroneck
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521119596
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 285

Book Description
This book offers an insight into Beethoven's career, showing in well-documented detail the rise and decline of his powers as a performer.

The Pianist in the Dark

Author: Michéle Halberstadt
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1605987646
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 112

Book Description
A stirring novel of love and music inspired by the life of pianist Maria-Theresa von Paradis, a blind virtuoso and contemporary of Mozart. Maria-Theresa von Paradis, the only daughter of the secretary of the empress of Austria, was an exceptionally gifted child. By the age of seventeen, she was a full-fledged virtuoso, playing for the royal family, acclaimed for her beauty and talent . . . and because she was blind. Her father, unable to accept her condition despite her soaring musical gifts, enlists the help of Franz Anton Mesmer, the forerunner of the modern practice of hypnotism, where Maria-Theresa discovers the passions and emotions from which her blindness had previously protected her. In the tradition of Sleeping with Schubert and The Cellist of Sarajevo, the novel is moving portrait of courage, loss, the elation of first love—and the pain of lost innocence.

The Pianist's Dictionary

Author: Maurice Hinson
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253047358
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Book Description
From A to Z to middle C: An “essential reference” for piano students, teachers, players, and music lovers, with hundreds of definitions (E.L. Lancaster, Alfred Music). The Pianist’s Dictionary is a handy and practical reference dictionary aimed specifically at pianists, teachers, students, and concertgoers. Prepared by Maurice Hinson and Wesley Roberts, this revised and expanded edition is a compendium of information gleaned from a combined century of piano teaching. Users will find helpful and clear definitions of musical and pianistic terms, performance directions, composers, pianists, famous piano pieces, and piano makers. The authors’ succinct entries make The Pianist’s Dictionary the perfect reference for compiling program and liner notes, studying scores, and learning and teaching the instrument. “This new edition is a go-to source for piano scholars and students for quick information on musical terms, pianists, major works in the piano repertoire, piano manufacturers, and more . . . comprehensive, easy to use.” —Jane Magrath, University of Oklahoma

The Pianist's Craft

Author: Richard P. Anderson
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 0810882051
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Book Description
No pianist can experience the full flowering of her art without eventually grappling with those great musical minds who composed specifically for piano. In The Pianist's Craft, Richard Anderson collects from his fellow pianist-scholars 19 articles on the teaching, preparation, and performance of works by the greatest composers in the standard piano repertoire. This collection ranges in subject matter from Inge Rosar's meditation on playing Bach on the modern keyboard to Gary Amato's assessment of Haydn's sonatas, from Christie Skousen's review of tone production in Chopin to GwenolynMok's foray into recreating Ravel's works on an Erard piano, the same used by Ravel himself. Readers will find essays as well on Mozart's piano compositions, Beethoven's sonatas, the influence of Schubert's lieder on his piano works, and works by Schumann, Liszt, Brahms, Debussy, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Bart k, Gershwin, and Crumb. The contributors--all recognized nationally and internationally for their contributions as performing artists, teachers, recording artists, and clinicians--write thoughtfully about the composers whose work they have studied and played for years. Each author addresses issues unique to the individual composer they have chosen to explore, examining questions of phrasing, tempo, articulation, dynamics, rhythm, color, gesture, lyricism, instrumentation, and genre. Valuable insight is provided into teaching, performing, and preparing these great works. In The Pianist's Craft these great artists and teachers answer questions for readers that are otherwise only addressed in conferences, master classes, and private lessons. In this collection of essays, key points of information and instruction are offered with over 200 musical examples included as illustration. The Pianist's Craft is intended for teachers and students of the intermediate and advanced levels of piano, instructors and performers at the university level, and those who love piano and piano music generally.

The Pianist's Dictionary

Author: Maurice Hinson
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 025304734X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 161

The Pianist

Author: Władysław Szpilman
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN: 9780753808603
Category : Composers
Languages : en
Pages : 222

Book Description
The bestselling memoir of a Jewish pianist who survived the war in Warsaw against all odds. 'We are drawn in to share his surprise and then disbelief at the horrifying progress of events, all conveyed with an understated intimacy and dailiness that render them painfully close... riveting' OBSERVER On September 23, 1939, Wladyslaw Szpilman played Chopin's Nocturne in C-sharp minor live on the radio as shells exploded outside - so loudly that he couldn't hear his piano. It was the last live music broadcast from Warsaw: That day, a German bomb hit the station, and Polish Radio went off the air. Though he lost his entire family, Szpilman survived in hiding. In the end, his life was saved by a German officer who heard him play the same Chopin Nocturne on a piano found among the rubble. Written immediately after the war and suppressed for decades, THE PIANIST is a stunning testament to human endurance and the redemptive power of fellow feeling. 'The images drawn are unusually sharp and clear... but its moral tone is even more striking: Szpilman refuses to make a hero or a demon out of anyone' LITERARY REVIEW