USA TODAY BESTSELLER In 1962, in the Soviet Union, eight-year-old Katya is bequeathed what will become the love of her life: a Blüthner piano, on which she discovers an enrichening passion for music. Yet after she marries, her husband insists the family emigrate to America—and loses her piano in the process. In 2012, in Bakersfield, California, twenty-six-year-old Clara Lundy is burdened by the last gift her father gave her before he and her mother died in a terrible house fire: a Blüthner upright she has never learned to play. Now a talented and independent auto mechanic, Clara’s career is put on hold when she breaks her hand trying to move the piano, and in sudden frustration she decides to sell it. Only in discovering the identity of the buyer—and the secret history of her piano—will Clara be set free to live the life of her choosing.

"Emotions resonate across time in Chris Canders's absorbing tale." - Guardian "Intense and imaginative." - The New York Times "Cander grabs the reader in her bravura, thickly detailed opening pages." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "Impossible to put down and impossible to forget." - Library Journal (starred review) A dazzling exploration of how the human heart can both break and be restored Hidden in dense forests high in the Romanian mountains, where the winters were especially cold and long, were spruce trees that would be made into pianos: exquisite instruments famous for the warmth of their tone and beloved by the likes of Schumann and Liszt. One man alone knew how to choose them . . . The Weight of a Piano is a tour-de-force about two women and the piano that inexorably ties their lives together through time and across continents. In 1962, in the Soviet Union, eight-year-old Katya is bequeathed what will become the love of her life, a Blüthner piano built by a master piano-maker at the turn of the century in Germany. In 2012, in California, twenty-six-year-old Clara Lundy loses another boyfriend and again has to find a new apartment, a situation which is further complicated by the gift her father had given her for her twelfth birthday: a Blüthner piano. The mysterious—and tragic—connections between Katya and Clara unravel gradually yet thrillingly in Chris Cander's powerful novel about attraction, obsession, creative passion, love and loss. "This is a powerful tale of how we live with grief, with what we hang on to of the people we love and the joy and pain of memory...a riveting read." - Paul Burke NB Magazine

"White Piano holds an acute sense of what poetry is, its danger. . . . Brossard knows well that 'life is only good for living' and that living is incarnated in the material of language, that sounds, those carriers of sense, can propel it in front of the world."—Le Devoir Between the verbs quivering and streaming, White Piano unfolds its variations like musical scores. Pronouns and persons, poetry and prose: White Piano, superbly translated from the French, narrates a constellation of questions and offers a "language that cultivates its own craters of fire and savoir-vie." Nicole Brossard is one of North America's foremost practitioners of innovative writing.

Essential advice for buying and caring for a new or used piano. A '97-'98 supplement is available.

Eighty-three popular piano classics arranged for the beginning student are accompanied by a short history of each piece and advice on playing each arrangement.5NjBwBT

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.

A renowned concert pianist traces the instrument's design, manufacture, and music in a delightful "piano's eye-view" of the social history of Western Europe and the United States from the 16th to the 20th centuries.

Now you can master Bach’s most beautiful prelude—even if you’ve never sat down at a piano before! Do you have a piano (or keyboard) and forty-five spare minutes every day? Then spend the next six weeks with acclaimed concert pianist James Rhodes. By the end, you’ll be able to perform Bach’s Prelude No. 1 in C major—no prior musical experience required! Rhodes reveals How to Play the Piano step by step—how to read the treble and bass clefs as well as sharp and flat notes, and then how to practice—before teaching the Prelude in easy, bite-size segments. His method is free of tedious drills, and filled with inspiration: “If listening to music is soothing for the soul, then playing music is achieving enlightenment.” Before you know it, not only will you have learned how to play one of Bach’s most beloved masterpieces—you also will have unleashed your creativity, exercising your mind (and fingers) and accomplishing something you never thought possible. Bravo! Includes four instructional videos supported by select e-reader devices.

"Explosively passionate, this story of forbidden love and unmet potential is ... for anyone who’s ever felt the ineffable power of music." —Aja Gabel, author of The Ensemble The Piano Student is a novel about regret, secrecy, and music, involving an affair between one of the 20th century’s most celebrated pianists, Vladimir Horowitz, and his young male student, Nico Kaufmann, in the late 1930s. As Europe hurtles toward political catastrophe and Horowitz ascends to the pinnacle of artistic achievement, the great pianist hides his illicit passion from his wife Wanda, daughter of the renowned conductor Arturo Toscanini. Based on unpublished letters by Horowitz to Kaufmann that author Lea Singer discovered in Switzerland, this is a riveting and sensitive tale of musical perfection, love, and longing denied, with multiple historical layers and insights into artistic creativity.

Gillespie discusses 350 composers and their works for harpsichord and piano, including Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, and Debussy. Includes 116 musical examples, illustrations, and a glossary of musical terms.