Recommended Reading

Club meetings and events are often an opportunity to share information about books and other resources which members might find useful.

A few items of interest that were recommended are:

From Alton Chan

The Great Pianists ( From Mozart to the present) by Harold C. Schonberg.

The Pianists Guide To Pedalling By Joseph Banowetz.

From Ann Grayburn

The House of Music by Kadiatu Kanneh- Mason.

A fascinating insight into this family, the lives of these amazing musicians, their background and what it takes to become a professional musician. 

From Mark Ware

Here’s a few I enjoyed and would recommend any of them

Piano-specific

  • The Perfect Wrong Note: Learning to Trust Your Musical Self by William Westney – most “how-to” books don’t work for me, but this is in a different class
  • Speaking the Piano, Susan Tomes. (Plus I liked two of her other books: Out of Silence: A Pianist’s Yearbook, and Sleeping in Temples. Some might also like her The Piano: A History in 100 Pieces, but it didn’t do a lot for me)
  • Playing the Piano for Pleasure: The Classic Guide to Improving Skills through Practice and Discipline by Charles Cooke – old-fashioned but still worth reading
  • Instrumental: A Memoir of Madness, Medication and Music by James Rhodes – I suppose more of a misery-lit memoir than anything, but focussed on how playing the piano saved his sanity
  • Piano Lessons: Music, Love, and True Adventures by Noah Adams
  • Play It Again, by Alan Rusbridger – brilliant account of an average Grade-8-ish amateur learning (and then performaing) the Chopin G Minor Ballade (oh, and doing a few other things at the same time, like editing the Guardian through one of its most stressful moments!). I suspect most members will already have read it or know about it, but it’s hard to imagine any amateur pianist not loving this one
  • The Piano Shop on the Left Bank: Discovering a Forgotten Passion in a Paris Atelier, by Thad Carhart 

Music more generally

  • The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, by Alex Ross – only my favourite ever book about music! (His follow-up book, Listen to This, is also good but not a patch on The Rest is Noise)
  • Beethoven for a Later Age: The Journey of a String Quartet by Edward Dusinberre – I suspect this is more interesting if you’ve ever played in a string quartet and/or have a particular thing about Beethoven quartets, but it’s very well written

From Simon S

After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance, by Kenneth Hamilton – superb discussion on performance characteristics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and their relevance to today’s pianists.

Hans von Bulow: A Life And Times, by Alan Walker – very positive and affectionate biography of one of the 19th centuries greatest pianists and conductors, friend of Liszt, Wagner, Brahms and Mahler, dedicatee of Tchaikovsky’s 1st piano concerto, whose waspish tongue often did him more harm than good unfortunately.

The Art Of The Piano: Its Performers, Literature And Recordings, by David Dubal – if you only buy one book on the piano and pianists buy this one! An encyclopedic book, wide ranging, highly readable and with lots of ‘opinion’.