The Pianist's Problems

Book excerpt: ”The reader must have noted in the favorite magazines of the practicing pianist how often the same troubled queries reappear: How can memorizing be made easier and more secure? How can the fourth and fifth fingers be strengthened? What produces musicianship? These and many others are perennial questions of the greatest practical importance to student, teacher, and performer. Strange, then, that adequate answers are so hard to find. With all the time and effort devoted to the study of the piano, with all the advances in the psychology of training, with all the special studies that have been conducted, there should be, by now, if not one right answer to each question, at least a preferred answer that will be right for the large majority of pianists. As a matter of fact, there are preferred answers in almost every instance. . . . The need is to bring these answers together, in one place, and to present them in nontechnical language as a concise, up-to-date, coordinated philosophy of piano playing. To meet this need, the present book has been written.”—from the Preface