Great pianist

Listening to this... excellent...

 

This book, by Harold Schonberg, is an endless description of the pianists who made the piano what it is today. It's humorous, factual, entertaining and most of all informative to maximum level that we laymen can cope with. Well, done. I will certainly read other Schonberg books - in between practising my dim7 scales of course.

 

Welcome, Mark, but you totally lost me... I thought Bat was referring to a record?

 

Spambot, RDS!

 

"33 Tips For Becoming a Great Pianist!"
1 - Hand & Body Position -- Eye Flips
2 - The key to productive practice -- Spaced Repetition
3 - Attitude -- how it affects your learning
4 - How & when to pedal. Using explosive dynamics
5 - Exposure: why it's critically important
6 - Ear Training -- Intervals from 2nds to 13th
7 - Fingering -- which finger do you use when?
8 - Chord substitutions that create fantastic sounds
9 - Chord recognition -- how to recognize what chord is being used
10 - Musical vocabulary: tempo words, form words
11- Arranging: how's your "bag of tricks" coming along
12 - Melodic sense: how does the melody relate to the chords?
13 - Sight-reading: 7 fundamentals you can't ignore
14 - Key orientation: Can you think in the key you're playing in?
15 - Scanning the score before you start playing
16 - Mental practice -- how to learn music in bed
17 - Repertoire: Why you need one to be prepared
18 - Goal setting: How good can you get?
19 - Rhythm awareness -- samba, fox trot, etc.
20 - Why music history is important to you
21 - Idea stealing -- how and where
22 - 12-bar blues; creating a motif; "blue notes"
23 - Extended chords: 6th, 7th, 9th, 11th, 13th
24 - Technique acquisition: rubber balls, drills
25 - Harmonization: Using I, IV & V to harmonize
26 - Key identification: Recognizing key signatures
27 - Voicing: Open, closed, registers, color tones
28 - Improvisation: Making music right out of your head
29 - Harmony & theory: How much should you know?
30 - Stylistic devices: Western, boogie, jazz, etc.
31 - Analysis: How to understand what you're hearing
32 - Riffs & runs & fills: How to develop them
33 - Cross-pollination: The best of all worlds!

 

Wrong thread?

 

Little known in the West as a result of never having toured or recorded there, Sofronitsky was held in the highest regard in his native land. Sviatoslav Richter and Emil Gilels looked up to Sofronitsky as their master, and famously, when Sofronitsky once drunkenly proclaimed the former to be a genius, Richter toasted him and proclaimed him to be a god. Upon hearing of Sofronitsky's death, Gilels was reputed to have said that "the greatest pianist in the world has died."

 

The greatest pianist of all time, who has the creditials to prove it, is Frederic Chopin, hands down! There are others who are excellent, but the amount of books of compositions he wrote and could play are enormous! There is no other pianist with this kind of record. Not even Liszt! If you can also compare the theory in the compositions, it shows it!