by Stuart M. Isacoff ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 17, 2011
Informative fun for every variety of music lover.
The subtitle accurately states the range of this lively, virtually all-inclusive survey of all things pianistic by Piano Today founder Isacoff (Temperament: How Music Became a Battleground for the Great Minds of Western Civilization, 2001).
The piano supplanted the harpsichord because the action of its hammers on the strings could create sounds both “piano e forte" (soft and loud)—hence the name pianoforte, eventually shortened to piano. Medici protégé Bartolomeo Cristofori came up with the design in the late 17th century, but it was the playing and compositions of Mozart in the 1780s, writes Isacoff, that first made the instrument popular. By the 19th century, a piano was a necessary accessory in middle-class homes across Europe and America, sparking a boom in their manufacture and a flood of touring performers. Isacoff divides the pianists who dazzled the cognoscenti and the masses alike into four categories: the Combustibles, turbulent artists ranging from Beethoven to Jerry Lee Lewis; the Alchemists, atmospheric musicians such as Claude Debussy and jazzman Bill Evans; Rhythmitizers like Fats Waller, who stress the instrument’s percussive qualities; and Melodists from Schubert to Gershwin, who give us the tunes we love to hum. Sidebars on everything from pedal technique to digital pianos further broaden the book’s scope, as do short contributions from celebrity pianists (Emmanuel Ax, Billy Joel). Isacoff also exhaustively surveys the two great pianistic “schools”: the flamboyant Russian style and the more intellectual German approach. Stuffing so much material into a single narrative occasionally leads to a loss of focus, particularly when dealing with composers, none of whom wrote exclusively for the piano. Nonetheless, the author's ability to convey his formidable erudition in the most engaging terms, coupled with his infectious enthusiasm for music of all kinds, make this a charming and highly readable potpourri.
Informative fun for every variety of music lover.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-26637-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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