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A Natural History Of The Piano
Stuart Isacoff
The Instrument, the Music, the Musicians--from Mozart to Modern Jazz and Everything in Between
Knopf
November 2011
On Sale: November 15, 2011
416 pages
ISBN: 0307266370
EAN: 9780307266378
Kindle: B004P8JPNG
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction
A beautifully illustrated, totally engrossing celebration of
the piano and the composer and performers who have made it
their own.
With honed sensitivity and unquestioned
expertise, Stuart Isacoff—pianist, critic, teacher and
author of Temperament: How Music Became a Battleground
for the Great Minds of Western Civilization—unfolds the
ongoing history and evolution of the piano and all its
myriad wonders: how its very sound provides the basis for
emotional expression and individual style, and why it has so
powerfully entertained generation upon generation of
listeners. He illuminates the groundbreaking music of
Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, Schumann, and Debussy; analyzes
the breathtaking techniques of Glenn Gould, Oscar Peterson,
Vladimir Ashkenazy, Art Tatum, Arthur Rubinstein, and Van
Cliburn; and gives musicians including Alfred Brendel,
Andras Schiff, Murray Perahia, Menahem Pressler, Vladimir
Horowitz, André Watts, Bill Charlap and Billy Joel the
opportunity to discuss their approaches. Isacoff delineates how classical music and jazz
influenced each other as the uniquely American art form
progress from ragtime, novelty, stride, boogie, bebop, and
beyond, through Scott Joplin, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington,
Bill Evans, Thelonious Monk, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock,
Cecil Taylor and Dave Brubeck.
A Natural History of the Piano distills
a lifetime of research and passion into one brilliant
narrative. We witness Mozart unveiling his monumental
concertos in Vienna's coffeehouses, using a special piano
with one keyboard for the hands and another for the feet;
European virtuoso Henri Herz entertaining rowdy miners
during the California gold rush; Beethoven at his piano,
conjuring healing angels to console a grieving mother; Liszt
fainting in the arms of a page turner to spark an entire
hall into hysterics.
Here is the instrument in all its complexity and
beauty, in a text that probes its innovations and its place
in social history. There has never been a piano book like it.
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