Stories, Images, and Magic from the Piano Literature will stimulate the imagination of pianists as they study and perform the great works of the piano literature.

"A true gold mine of information, this book is a mustread for every pianist, and for every music lover. Insight of this kind is priceless." Antonio Pompa-Baldi, Concert Pianist and Distinguished Professor of Piano, Cleveland Institute of Music "Neil Rutman is to be congratulated for his foresight in bringing to pianists, teachers, and aficionados alike a volume of indispensables of piano playing"- that of interpretive imagery. This book belongs in the hands of everyone who loves the piano." Nancy Lee Harper, EPTA JOURNAL Stories, Images, and Magic from the Piano Literature will stimulate the imagination of pianists as they study and perform the great works of the piano literature. This book brings together for the first time under one cover, for the delight and edification of the musician, a plethora of programmatic, poetic, or imaginative musical images and stories on piano works from the classical literature. Many images originate with the composers themselves, the pens of their acquaintances or contemporaries, while others derive from pianists and authors of distinction from later generations, as well as from translations of poetry on which a piano work is based.

From the writer adored by the likes of García Marquez, Calvino, and Francine Prose comes a collection of Hernández's classic tales Piano Stories presents fifteen wonderful works by the great Uruguayan author Felisberto Hernández, “a writer like no other,” as Italo Calvino declares in his introduction: “like no European or Latin American. He is an ‘irregular,’ who eludes all classifications and labellings — yet he is unmistakable on any page to which one might randomly open one of his books.” Piano Stories contains classic tales such as “The Daisy Dolls,” “The Usher,” and “The Flooded House.”

An enchanting new story from Akiko Miyakoshi. It’s Momo's first piano recital. As she nervously waits to play, she tells herself, “I’ll be okay … I’ll be okay …” Then she hears a voice nearby saying, “I’ll be okay … I’ll be okay …” It’s a mouseling, also nervous about her first performance! Momo follows her backstage, where she’s amazed to discover a miniature mouse theater. Momo accompanies her new friend on piano, and the mouse audience is so appreciative. Except, suddenly, she discovers — it’s not a mouse audience at all! Sometimes a bit of magic can make all the difference!

A beautifully illustrated, totally engrossing celebration of the piano, and the composers and performers who have made it their own. With honed sensitivity and unquestioned expertise, Stuart Isacoff—pianist, critic, teacher, and author of Temperament: How Music Became a Battleground for the Great Minds of Western Civilization—unfolds the ongoing history and evolution of the piano and all its myriad wonders: how its very sound provides the basis for emotional expression and individual style, and why it has so powerfully entertained generation upon generation of listeners. He illuminates the groundbreaking music of Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, Schumann, and Debussy. He analyzes the breathtaking techniques of Glenn Gould, Oscar Peterson, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Arthur Rubinstein, and Van Cliburn, and he gives musicians including Alfred Brendel, Murray Perahia, Menahem Pressler, and Vladimir Horowitz the opportunity to discuss their approaches. Isacoff delineates how classical music and jazz influenced each other as the uniquely American art form progressed from ragtime, novelty, stride, boogie, bebop, and beyond, through Scott Joplin, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Bill Evans, Thelonious Monk, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Cecil Taylor, and Bill Charlap. A Natural History of the Piano distills a lifetime of research and passion into one brilliant narrative. We witness Mozart unveiling his monumental concertos in Vienna’s coffeehouses, using a special piano with one keyboard for the hands and another for the feet; European virtuoso Henri Herz entertaining rowdy miners during the California gold rush; Beethoven at his piano, conjuring healing angels to console a grieving mother who had lost her child; Liszt fainting in the arms of a page turner to spark an entire hall into hysterics. Here is the instrument in all its complexity and beauty. We learn of the incredible craftsmanship of a modern Steinway, the peculiarity of specialty pianos built for the Victorian household, the continuing innovation in keyboards including electronic ones. And most of all, we hear the music of the masters, from centuries ago and in our own age, brilliantly evoked and as marvelous as its most recent performance. With this wide-ranging volume, Isacoff gives us a must-have for music lovers, pianists, and the armchair musician.

Nimira is a foreign music-hall girl forced to dance for pennies. When wealthy sorcerer Hollin Parry hires her to sing with a piano-playing automaton, Nimira believes it is the start of a new and better life. In Parry's world, however, buried secrets are beginning to stir. Unsettling below-stairs rumors swirl about ghosts, a madwoman roaming the halls, and Parry's involvement with a league of sorcerers who torture fairies for sport. Then Nimira discovers the spirit of a fairy gentleman named Erris is trapped inside the clockwork automaton, waiting for someone to break his curse. The two fall into a love that seems hopeless, and breaking the curse becomes a race against time, as not just their love, but the fate of the entire magical world may be in peril. Look out for the follow-up to this book, Magic Under Stone, out next year!

"Determined to save his friend the well-digger from the labyrinth on the second 'A,' Philemon returns to the parallel world of islands that form the words 'Atlantic Ocean.' He finds himself on the 'N' where he inadvertently breaks the law, goes on trial, and is sentenced to confront the wild piano"--

Marta Altes' empowering picture book Little Monkey shows that the smaller you are, the bigger your adventures can be!

A love story and a journey through music. The exquisite and perfectly pitched new novel from the bestselling author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Perfect and The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy. It's 1988. The CD has arrived. Sales of the shiny new disks are soaring on high streets in cities across the England. Meanwhile, down a dead-end street, Frank's music shop stands small and brightly lit, jam-packed with records of every kind. It attracts the lonely, the sleepless, the adrift. There is room for everyone. Frank has a gift for finding his customers the music they need. Into this shop arrives Ilse Brauchmann--practical, brave, well-heeled. Frank falls for this curious woman who always dresses in green. But Ilse's reasons for visiting the shop are not what they seem. Frank's passion for Ilse seems as misguided as his determination to save vinyl. How can a man so in tune with other people's needs be so incapable of helping himself? And what will it take to show he loves her? The Music Shop is a story about good, ordinary people who take on forces too big for them. It's about falling in love and how hard it can be. And it's about music--how it can bring us together when we are divided and save us when all seems lost.

A gothic retelling of the myth of Faust, set in Hungary in the 1970s and 1990s. Eighteen-year-old Sandor Esterhazy, rich and entitled, is descended from a long line of talented pianists, but he has no intention of following in their footsteps. One afternoon, in a fit of pique, he calls up the devil, using an old book of magic spells, and offers to exchange his soul for a life free to choose his own destiny. Afterwards Sandor laughs it off as a joke, but that night he sees the shape of a man approaching the house. He is dragging someone - or something - behind him through the snow. Sandor goes down to the piano room. The devil has delivered a bare-foot young man who Sandor instantly recognizes. But what is this creature? And what exactly is to be done with him