E-books

Learning and refining the art of practicing piano is a life-long project, and there are a vast number of techniques and strategies you can evaluate and learn to apply in specific situations.
This short guide is not an attempt to cover detailed practice techniques but provides you with a few quick ways to immediately improve your practicing routines and get more out of your practice time.

There might be a number of reasons why you are reading this: perhaps you are facing a piano exam where you will have to perform a short piece at sight; perhaps you just want to be able to learn new repertoire more quickly; or perhaps you want to become a more competent accompanist or ensemble player, which often entails being handed a thick bunch of music to play through without much preparation.

What we have just outlined by mentioning these possible reasons is the three main situations where you will be required to sight-read. In this book you learn how improve your skills in these three different types of sight-reading.

This book devided into two parts begins with explanations of hand and finger positions and proceeds to discussions of the touch; diatonic and chromatic scales; trills, chords and arpeggios, double notes, thirds, sixths and octaves. The second part focuses mainly on musical performance, offering advice on playing Bach and Handel, rhythm, pedaling, melody, practice techniques and musical culture.

The Polish pianist, teacher and composer Theodor Leschetizky was from an early age recognized as a prodigy, and after studying in Vienna with Carl Czerny and Simon Sechter he became a teacher at fourteen. By the age of eighteen he was a well-known virtuoso in Viennese music circles. Besides performing, he became a very influential piano teacher, first at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, which he co-founded with Anton Rubinstein, and subsequently in Vienna.
Marie Prentner, a student of Leschetizky, has here collected the principles of the Leschetizky's piano technique and method. This legendary manual in both English and German promises to assist and enlighten a new generation of students and teachers.

"The more I play, the more I am thoroughly convinced that the pedal is the soul of the piano. There are cases where the pedal is everything."
-- Anton Rubinstein

This legendary guide appeared in Russia in 1896 originally written by Bukhovtsev, a student of Anton Rubinsteins brother Nikolay at the Moscow Conservatory.

One of the leading pianists of the late 19th century explores in a warm and non-academic style the subtle tone colorings made possible through combinations of touch and pedal. Many inspiring points of views and advanced special techniques such as "pedal-crescendo" and "pedal-diminuendo" are covered in detail.

Maria Teresa Carreño Garcia de Sena (1853 - 1917) was a Venezuelan pianist, singer, composer, and conductor. Born into a musical family, she was at first taught by her father and her talent was recognized at an early age. In 1866 Teresa moved to Europe, and began touring, making her debut as an opera-singer in 1876. It wasn't until 1885 that she returned to Venezuela, and then only for a short period. In 1889 she returned to Europe for more touring, settling in Berlin as her home base. She mounted two world tours in the early years of the twentieth century, but her health deteriorated and she died in 1917, in New York City.