Translation sample available

In the tradition of Balanchine’s Notes on Choreography or Stanislavski’s An Actor Prepares, Jean Fassina, one of the world’s great piano teachers, distills in this slim volume a lifetime of instruction and experience to profound effect. As accessible to the lay reader as to the aspiring pianist, its limpid prose proves a delightful essay to the former and, to the latter, a treasure trove of detailed counsel.

Fassina’s tone throughout is thoughtful and inspiring. Against grueling regimens of drills he proposes the education and refinement of the pianist’s ear: for only our understanding of music, unique to each individual, can inform our expression of it and translate our feelings, as we interpret a composition to the keyboard. Notable for his contempt of abstraction in teaching, Fassina fills his book with concrete, specific technical advice for achieving certain sounds and effects. Art, he asserts, lies in using suppleness and an economy of gesture to coax the most from one’s instrument. His chapters cover the most basic mechanical precepts—proper posture, hand position, scales—to the most advanced—finding one’s own voice.

The volume is prefaced by renowned pianist and former student Jacques Rouvier. For the Japanese edition, Seiji Ozawa contributed an introduction and consented to its use in all subsequent foreign editions. An English translation of the entire manuscript by former student Shawn Moreton is available.