Music at Your Fingertips: Advice for the Artist and Amateur on Playing the Piano

Intended for the aspiring artist as well as the enthusiastic amateur, this invaluable guide to piano practice and performance covers every major aspect of pianistic technique. Drawing from more than forty years experience as a teacher and highly acclaimed performer--as well as from her studies with Rachmaninoff, Schnabel, and Cortot--Slenczynska clearly demonstrates such basics as the proper use of hand positions, fingering, pedaling, ornamentation, various fingering touches, and counting. She also gives detailed instructions on the art of program building, carefully analyzing the concert programs of Horowitz, Rubinstein, and Serkin and pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of their program construction. She includes repertoire lists for performance at various levels of ability, a complete chart of ornament interpretation, and authoritative advice on posture, sight-reading, rhythm, note-learning, and memorization. Her book is essential reading for all who enjoy in the piano-beginners, serious students, teachers, and listeners.