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This classic is well worth reading for anyone who loves playing the piano.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crG_s... - Josef Hofmann plays Chopin: Andante Spianato e Grande Polonaise in Eb, Op.22
This is a very good book from 1908, for students of piano music. It's about the human mechanics involved, written by one of greatest pianists from the turn of the 19th century. Easily understood writing on a range of foundational pianistic topics that lesser authors get wrong, explain incompletely or overelaborate on, which is what I believe makes most books published on piano technique frustrating, often worthless reads.
Hofmann was prodigiously gifted, famous by six years old for dazzling even elite audiences, a veteran concert pianist who had to stop performing for a few years just to have some chance at a childhood. Sixteen years old, Josef Hofmann became Anton Rubinstein's only private student for two years.
The Saint Petersburg Conservatory, founded in 1862 by Anton Grigorevich Rubinstein, along with the Moscow Conservatory, founded by Anton's younger brother, Nikolai, these two schools *are* the Russian piano tradition. The Rubinstein brothers were around to attend (later on to host and promote) some of the first piano recitals ever given, by their inventor, Franz Liszt.
The tradition of the Russian piano school hasn't been bound to a geophysical location for decades. Over time, our world became interconnected and media flows so easily now that all (American, German, Russian, French) the major world schools' lessons and performances, by their artists, can be accessed from anywhere with internet access.
About the pictures...
Since I play piano, and I love this book: The pictures in this book show Hofmann demonstrating correct/incorrect ways to position ourselves at the piano, but should be understood as his method, his best attempt to be a reference for an audience that isn't uniformly going to agree. You have to incorporate knowledge like this through your own piano practice. Hofmann's "correct" is "correct". If you're a piano student, books cannot better having a living teacher, when it comes to communicating minutiae or to individualize the student-teacher relationship. These pictures from 1908 were probably the only place its reading audience, mostly hobbyists, would get learn from an artistic authority of Hofmann's stature.
Alternatively, if you love pictures and learning visually, or if you just don't like Hofmann's book, I suggest trying "On Piano Playing" by György Sándor. It's modern, neatly organized, less about important historical events and figures, nearly all about the nuts-and-bolts stuff; Sándor's book teaches through pictures about technique methodologies through connecting movements at the piano with music notation, stressing importance on efficiently visualizing the notation to perform at the piano without problems, so how you read, learn, and play music doesn't automatically set you up to have habitual technical problems.
This is a very good book from 1908, for students of piano music. It's about the human mechanics involved, written by one of greatest pianists from the turn of the 19th century. Easily understood writing on a range of foundational pianistic topics that lesser authors get wrong, explain incompletely or overelaborate on, which is what I believe makes most books published on piano technique frustrating, often worthless reads.
Hofmann was prodigiously gifted, famous by six years old for dazzling even elite audiences, a veteran concert pianist who had to stop performing for a few years just to have some chance at a childhood. Sixteen years old, Josef Hofmann became Anton Rubinstein's only private student for two years.
The Saint Petersburg Conservatory, founded in 1862 by Anton Grigorevich Rubinstein, along with the Moscow Conservatory, founded by Anton's younger brother, Nikolai, these two schools *are* the Russian piano tradition. The Rubinstein brothers were around to attend (later on to host and promote) some of the first piano recitals ever given, by their inventor, Franz Liszt.
The tradition of the Russian piano school hasn't been bound to a geophysical location for decades. Over time, our world became interconnected and media flows so easily now that all (American, German, Russian, French) the major world schools' lessons and performances, by their artists, can be accessed from anywhere with internet access.
About the pictures...
Since I play piano, and I love this book: The pictures in this book show Hofmann demonstrating correct/incorrect ways to position ourselves at the piano, but should be understood as his method, his best attempt to be a reference for an audience that isn't uniformly going to agree. You have to incorporate knowledge like this through your own piano practice. Hofmann's "correct" is "correct". If you're a piano student, books cannot better having a living teacher, when it comes to communicating minutiae or to individualize the student-teacher relationship. These pictures from 1908 were probably the only place its reading audience, mostly hobbyists, would get learn from an artistic authority of Hofmann's stature.
Alternatively, if you love pictures and learning visually, or if you just don't like Hofmann's book, I suggest trying "On Piano Playing" by György Sándor. It's modern, neatly organized, less about important historical events and figures, nearly all about the nuts-and-bolts stuff; Sándor's book teaches through pictures about technique methodologies through connecting movements at the piano with music notation, stressing importance on efficiently visualizing the notation to perform at the piano without problems, so how you read, learn, and play music doesn't automatically set you up to have habitual technical problems.
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