Rating: 
Summary: Excellent content, TERRIBLE write-up; 2nd book better.
Review: The first book by Abbey uses unreadable English and convoluted sentences. Tho contents excellent, poor English makes learning unproductive. Example: Q: Can Weight-an inert pressure-help develop facility? A:It is exactly the inert pressure of weight which cannot be used for speed. Words are important in teaching. Words of action are needed to suggest the coordination for speed. Weight does not suggest the muscular activity which moves the weight of the arm. It does suggest an inert pressure. I don't think I completely agree with this; but with such biblical phraseology, how do I know exactly what she is saying? This example is average; some parts are even worse; she is also verbose. Second book covers similar material and is written in plain English, so you might read this first, but is not as complete and organized. It is a real pity that such good advice is jumbled and not communicated to us all. One of top 5 books on content for piano practice.
Rating: 
Summary: Revolutionary guide to piano technique
Review: The late Abby Whiteside was seen (and probably still is seen) as a heretic in the piano world. Yet, she was a truly dedicated teacher and a teacher devoted to developing tools and techniques so that all her students could advance. Her techniques are nothing short of revolutionary. I'm an organist, and I've been able to put many of her techniques at work with the organ. Abby Whiteside did not possess the gift of writing. Her books are difficult reading. You must read and re-read whole sections. So much of what she deals with centres around physical sensations. These things are difficult, in and of themselves, to put into words. I must take issue with a previous reviewer. A previous reviewer had stated that Abby Whiteside had not produced any major pianists. This is simply not true. The late pianist and composer Robert Helps was a student of hers. He specialised in 20th century music and he was particularly renowned for his skill at interpreting the thorny piano works of Roger Sessions. His technical were indeed formidable. The late Morton Gould studied with her. He posessed a fantastic technique, too. The composer David del Tredici is another Whiteside student.
Rating:
Summary: Revolutionary guide to piano technique
Review: The late Abby Whiteside was seen (and probably still is seen) as a heretic in the piano world. Yet, she was a truly dedicated teacher and a teacher devoted to developing tools and techniques so that all her students could advance. Her techniques are nothing short of revolutionary. I'm an organist, and I've been able to put many of her techniques at work with the organ. Abby Whiteside did not possess the gift of writing. Her books are difficult reading. You must read and re-read whole sections. So much of what she deals with centres around physical sensations. These things are difficult, in and of themselves, to put into words. I must take issue with a previous reviewer. A previous reviewer had stated that Abby Whiteside had not produced any major pianists. This is simply not true. The late pianist and composer Robert Helps was a student of hers. He specialised in 20th century music and he was particularly renowned for his skill at interpreting the thorny piano works of Roger Sessions. His technical were indeed formidable. The late Morton Gould studied with her. He posessed a fantastic technique, too. The composer David del Tredici is another Whiteside student.
Rating:
Summary: Pianoplaying with the complete body and mind well described.
Review: The most important aspect of this book is the author's opinion, that everything in pianoplaying involves the complete body and the complete mind. She starts with putting what she calls 'the basic rhythm'as a starting point for all improvement of piano technique. Her writing is not allways clear, and readers are advised to read some of the passages over and over again, to grasp the true meaning of what she writes. She has been searching to find the right approach to teaching, just as every teacher. That means that some of her earlier writngs seem to contradict the later ones. The extra information provided by her pupils is therefor "indispensable".
Rating: 
Summary: Lacks an extensive analysis of the scores
Review: There is in the most of the book an dissertative speech on piano playing, but few real scores, and just microscopical passages in the Chopin Estudes. If you want to submerge in the Estudes, buy the real scores, then there are several other books on the dynamics of playing it.
Rating:
Summary: Abby Whiteside Changed My Life
Review: You must understand that I descovered Abby Whiteside's books when I was only 15 (I am now 37). Back then the Abby Whiteside foundation distributed "Indespensibles of Piano Playing" to libraries across the U.S. Abby wasn't a great writer but she was an outstanding visionary. At the time I held the belief that piano teachers were inherently micro-manager archetypes and that most pedagogical notions in fact suffered from a trecherous lack of overview. What I found in Abby Whiteside's writings was nothing short of a revelation. She discovered through careful observation that action is intrinsically linked to perception. That to learn an action (piano playing for instance) one might best focus on our perceptual link to that action. In the case of music the perceptual link she rightly found to be all encompassing was rhythm. In any attempt to learn something we inevitably become bogged down in a plethora of disociated details and our minds, and especially our bodies become confused. Abby found that we could learn more effectively by embracing the visceral, organizing force behind those details - rhythm. Get the feel first, then fill in the details. This was quite backwards from the way most people teach a skill. Read Abby Whiteside. Roll with her images of the momentum felt when one ice skates. Remember that her ideas have much larger implications that her books imply. And please e-mail me if you know anything of the existence of remnants of the Abby Whiteside foundation or any other Whiteside diciple groups. After doing several research projects based on Whiteside's work I think I can adequately say that Abby Whiteside changed my life. - Andy Rinehart- Contamine@aol.com
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