Rating: 
Summary: Goes beyond playing notes!
Review: This is a book I have read several times over, highlighted important text and applied to my everyday practicing. It is a excellent read on how to play beyond notes - touch and feel.
Rating: 
Summary: Predictably unhelpful
Review: This is not a helpful book. It says nothing new and offers very little in the way of practical advice. It tells us that we should concentrate on touch and on producing a singing tone. Did I need to buy a book to find that out? How exactly does one produce a singing tone? Well Mr. Lhevinne had it (as his sister continually reminds us) and basically one must spend hours developing touch and listening carefully to the sounds you produce. How novel! I'm sure no one thought of that before. Need any more specific advice than that? Sorry, this book won't give it to you. Why not enrol at the Juillard School where the fabulous, marvellous Mr. Lhevinne taught?Why didn't Mr. Lhevinne and his sister write out some practical examples? They could have taken, say, an extract from a Chopin study or from a Beethoven sonata or from a Liszt transcription and talked us through some suggested phrasing, perhaps discussed different ways of using touch to bring out certain notes in the extract. (See for example Joan Last's excellent little book on piano playing which does exactly this). No, Mr. Lhevinne guarded his secrets a little more jealously than that. What of pedalling? What insights are offered there? Well, to be frank, very little. Now, Joseph Banowetz's book on pedalling, there's a useful book full of practical information and suggestions. But this Lhevinne book..? No, nothing to be learned there, just the usual exhortation to practice and the constant reminder that Mr. Lhevinne knew how to pedal, Mr. Lhevinne knew how to play the piano. Funny that Mr. Lhevinne's recordings aren't as stupendous as one might expect. His playing sounds a little cold and yes his rendition of the Chopin study in thirds is technically very proficient (the book tells us ad nauseam about how well he played this piece) but musically uninteresting. I didn't even bother finishing this book. If I had never read any other piano books in my life, maybe I would have found this interesting. But there are so many better books on offer out there, why bother with this pompous, uninformative little volume?
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