A Pianist's Landscape

by Carol Montparker

Overview

(Amadeus). These intensely personal and perceptive essays explore the author's life as a pianist practicing, performing, teaching, and writing but they could be the thoughts and reflections of any artist. They recount the challenges, rewards, and joys of her experiences in her chosen profession.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781574670738
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	03/01/2003
Series:	Amadeus
Pages:	298
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.86(d)

About the Author

Carol Montparker is a pianist and a writer. She was Senior Editor of _Clavier_ for 15 years, and is presently Senior Consulting Editor, continuing her column, “Carillon”, a personal view of music and how it relates to the other arts, nature, and to all of life. For more than 20 years she has interviewed world-famous artists for feature stories, and reviewed concerts and books. She has won four Awards for Excellence in Journalism from the Educational Press of America, and has published over 200 articles in numerous music periodicals as well as _The New York Times_ and _Newsday_. She has been an interview guest on several NPR programs across the country.In addition to her literary pursuit of music, Carol is an active recitalist in both solo and chamber music. In fact, her journalistic career emerged from her successful Carnegie Recital Hall debut in 1976. Her journal of the experience evolved into her first book, _The Anatomy of a New York Debut Recital: A Chronicle_, which in turn led to her appointment at _The Piano Quarterly_, and then _Clavier_. These two professions of playing music and writing about it are mutually nourishing, and provide bountiful and lively material for her frequent talks and lecture-recitals at piano festivals, universities, libraries, museums, and organizations. Her CD, _Pianogarden_, comprised of live performances of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and Chopin, has been praised by artists and critics including Harold C. Schonberg, Chief Music Critic Emeritus, of _The New York Times_.Carol also enjoys teaching piano in her private studio, and painting in watercolor (the illustrations in _A Pianist's Landscape_ are her work). She is a native New Yorker, and currently lives in Huntington, New York, with her husband Ernest. Carol's new collection of stories from a musical life will be published by Amadeus Press in 2004.

Editorial Reviews

In A Pianist's Landscape, Carol Montparker quotes Martha Argerich as saying, "I love to play the piano, but I hate being a pianist." Alone onstage and performing from memory, a piano soloist probably has the loneliest, most nerve-racking job in music. Boris Berman's Notes From the Pianist's Bench offers an illuminating program of technical tips culminating in advice on what he calls the "technique of the soul," a method of consciously learning a series of emotional responses that reliably situate the performer inside the spirit of a piece. Drawing on Stanislavsky's theories of acting, Berman explains that "during the emotional high of an inspired performance a pianist should never cease listening to an objective inner monitor that guided him through hours of preparatory work."

One contemporary pianist famous for listening to his inner monitor is Alfred Brendel. In his recently published conversations with Martin Meyer, Me of All People, translated from the German by Richard Stokes, Brendel recalls the enviable confidence of his early career: "I went on stage, played and did not realize what fear was." The main challenge, he says, lies in balancing fidelity to the work itself with personality and spontaneity. When things go well, "one has the impression that the work is playing itself." And, according to Charles Rosen's Piano Notes, a good performance occurs not in spite of technical trials but sometimes even because of them: "There has to be a genuine love simply of the mechanics and difficulties of playing, a physical need for contact with the keyboard, a love and a need which may be connected with a love of music but are not by any means totally coincident with it."

(Leo Carey)

The New Yorker

Montparker's appealing account of her life as a concert pianist--practicing, performing, teaching--contains insights that will enrich practitioners in all the creative arts. Her sense of music as a spontaneous adventure and her reverence for the piano as a link to one's inner life show through in this variegated collection of essays (many of them expanded from her "Carillon" column in Clavier magazine, where she is an editor). She improvises on sundry themes--e.g., parallels between music and painting, composers' letters, the spiritual highs of chamber music, musical tastes as a bond between family members--subjects that serve as a springboard for her deft exploration of the creative impulse and the artist's precarious existence. Her own clarity and enthusiasm is supplemented by relaxed interviews with famous pianists such as Alfred Brendel, Claudio Arrau, Radu Lupu, Rudolf Firkusny, as well as figures like jazz musician Dave Brubeck and baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Fans of Montparker's previous book, Anatomy of a New York Debut Recital, an exposition of her 1976 Carnegie Hall debut, will be amply rewarded by this graceful miscellany. Editor, Eve Goodman. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Thirty-three personal essays explore the author's life as a pianist--practicing, performing, teaching, and writing. They not only recount the challenge, rewards, disappointments, and joys of a career as a musician but, through interviews and conversations with other musicians, emphasize the universality of her own perceptions. Organized into four settings--at home, on the stage, in the studio, in the field--, the essays reveal the behind-the-scenes work and the thoughts and dreams that are part of the musical process. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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