A number of extracts form Charles Rosen’s book ‘Piano Notes’ (Penguin Books, 2002)
are set out, in slightly edited form:
‘Chapter 1 Body and Mind
There is no such thing as an ideal pianist’s hand. Not only the individual shape of the
hand counts, but even the whole corporal shape. That is why there is no optimum
position for sitting at the piano, in spite of what pedagogues think.
Setting the extraordinary technical difficulty of the music of Domenico Scarlatti and
Bach against the keyboard music of the later part of the century, one might think that
keyboard technique had deteriorated. In fact, the market for piano music had expanded.
Technical difficulty is often essentially expressive. The sense of difficulty increases the
intensity.
The unthinking, unplanned performance - and this is an incontrovertible fact of modern
concert life – is generally far less spontaneous, much more the prisoner of habit, than one
that questions the traditional point of view, in which the performer questions his own
instincts.
Chapter 2 - Listen to the Sound of the Piano
Although string and wind players are used to listening to themselves, pianists forget to do
so and have to be reminded.
The tone colour of the extreme bass and the tone colour of the extreme treble of the piano
are very different.
When performing Bach and Bartók, different muscles come into play. The legato touch
will not be the same in Beethoven and Debussy.
Chapter 4 – Conservatories and Contests
For amateur or professional, the life of a pianist is more rewarding the larger the
repertory.
Sight-reading comes more easily to some pianists than to others but it is an art that is
developed almost entirely by practising it.
Exploring repertoire: for a pianist who begins to play at the age of four, not to have done
all this by the age of twenty is to create a handicap that will last for the rest of life.
It is often effective and advantageous to play a work at the wrong tempo.