This volume surveys American piano music over the last two centuries, providing biographical information on composers as well as performance notes. Pieces are presented in their original form and have been selected for late-intermediate to advanced pianists.

This consistent top-seller includes 65 works by these famous composers: C. P. E. Bach, J. S. Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Grieg, Handel, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Schubert , Schumann and Tchaikovsky. Excellent, motivating literature for the intermediate pianist.

"The Hinson" has been indispensable for performers, teachers, and students. Now updated and expanded, it's better than ever, with 120 more composers, expertly guiding pianists to solo literature and answering the vital questions: What's available? How difficult is it? What are its special features? How does one reach the publisher? The "new Hinson" includes solo compositions of nearly 2,000 composers, with biographical sketches of major composers. Every entry offers description, publisher, number of pages, performance time, style and characteristics, and level of difficulty. Extensively revised, this new edition is destined to become a trusted guide for years to come.

Guide to the Pianist's Repertoire continues to be the go-to source for piano performers, teachers, and students. Newly updated and expanded with more than 250 new composers, this incomparable resource expertly guides readers to solo piano literature and provides answers to common questions: What did a given composer write? What interesting work have I never heard of? How difficult is it? What are its special musical features? How can I reach the publisher? New to the fourth edition are enhanced indexes identifying black composers, women composers, and compositions for piano with live or recorded electronics; a thorough listing of anthologies and collections organized by time period and nationality, now including collections from Africa and Slovakia; and expanded entries to account for new material, works, and resources that have become available since the third edition, including websites and electronic resources. The "newest Hinson" will be an indispensible guide for many years to come.

A beautifully illustrated, totally engrossing celebration of the piano, and the composers and performers who have made it their own. With honed sensitivity and unquestioned expertise, Stuart Isacoff—pianist, critic, teacher, and author of Temperament: How Music Became a Battleground for the Great Minds of Western Civilization—unfolds the ongoing history and evolution of the piano and all its myriad wonders: how its very sound provides the basis for emotional expression and individual style, and why it has so powerfully entertained generation upon generation of listeners. He illuminates the groundbreaking music of Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, Schumann, and Debussy. He analyzes the breathtaking techniques of Glenn Gould, Oscar Peterson, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Arthur Rubinstein, and Van Cliburn, and he gives musicians including Alfred Brendel, Murray Perahia, Menahem Pressler, and Vladimir Horowitz the opportunity to discuss their approaches. Isacoff delineates how classical music and jazz influenced each other as the uniquely American art form progressed from ragtime, novelty, stride, boogie, bebop, and beyond, through Scott Joplin, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Bill Evans, Thelonious Monk, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Cecil Taylor, and Bill Charlap. A Natural History of the Piano distills a lifetime of research and passion into one brilliant narrative. We witness Mozart unveiling his monumental concertos in Vienna’s coffeehouses, using a special piano with one keyboard for the hands and another for the feet; European virtuoso Henri Herz entertaining rowdy miners during the California gold rush; Beethoven at his piano, conjuring healing angels to console a grieving mother who had lost her child; Liszt fainting in the arms of a page turner to spark an entire hall into hysterics. Here is the instrument in all its complexity and beauty. We learn of the incredible craftsmanship of a modern Steinway, the peculiarity of specialty pianos built for the Victorian household, the continuing innovation in keyboards including electronic ones. And most of all, we hear the music of the masters, from centuries ago and in our own age, brilliantly evoked and as marvelous as its most recent performance. With this wide-ranging volume, Isacoff gives us a must-have for music lovers, pianists, and the armchair musician.

Presents an overview of music in all the world's culture from prehistoric times to the present day.