Volume 50, Number 16 · October 23, 2003
Piano Man
By Robert Winter
Piano Notes: The World of the Pianist
by Charles Rosen
Free Press, 246 pp., $25.00
I first heard Charles Rosen performing around 1970 at Symphony Hall in Chicago. If my memory is correct, he substituted at the last minute for a more widely known pianist. What good fortune for the nearly packed house. For me it was my first exposure to the intoxicating world of Liszt's transcriptions and paraphrases (free arrangements rather than literal renditions) of other composers. His playing was singular—muscular yet poetic, hedonistic yet deeply spiritual, spontaneous yet meticulously thought out. Only a few years later, I found in a bookstore his equally virtuosic exploration, The Classical Style.
Review, 3773 words
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