Synopses & Reviews
"[Wolff] is a remarkable pianist, an excellent theoretician, a learned teacher, a brilliant thinker and writer." --Artur Schnabel
"This collection of [Wolff's] writings and letters should bear ample testimony to a musician who happily combined the artist, the teacher, the musicologist, and the charm and integrity of a human being." --Alfred Brendel
"Konrad Wolff writes about music with the verve and enthusiasm of a great teacher who has never lost his sense of music as an adventure. To read him is to enter into a lively dialogue with a superior musical mind and a buoyant spirit." --Richard Goode
This collection provides elegant and thorough portraits of an important 20th-century performer and lover of music, as well as of his greatest influences.
About the Author
Ruth Gillen is a pianist who studied with the duo-pianists Vronsky and Babin, as well as with Konrad Wolff.
Table of Contents
Contents<\> (as printed in first-edition book from Greenwood Press)Prologue, Leon Fleisher
Foreword, Russell Sherman
Preface
Acknowledgements
Biographical Sketch
Part I: Composers
Frescobaldi (1583-1643)
Bach (1685-1750)
His Last Work
Spirit, Style, and Forms
Bach-Reger
Brandenburg Concertos for Piano Duet
Mozart (1756-1791)
Quintet in D Major, K. 593
Beethoven (1770-1827)
Several Perspectives
Mostly Beethoven
On Beethoven's Trills
Bagatelles, Op. 119
The Ninth Symphony, Op. 125
Schubert (1797-1828)
Schubert's Reaction to Beethoven
Schubert's "L'istesso Tempo"
Schubert's String Quintet in C: A Misplaced Repeat Sign?
Schumann (1810-1856)
On Titles and Verbal Descriptions in Music
Liszt (1811-1886)
Beethovenian Dissonances in Liszt's Piano Works
Liszt's Approach to Piano Technique
Stravinsky
A Modern Faust
Part II: Letters
From:
Paul Badura-Skoda; Review of Interpretation on the Piano - What We can Learn from Schnabel
Alfred Brendel
Paul Henry Lang
Rudof Serkin
To:
Leon Fleisher
Artur Schnabel
To and From:
A Colleague
Sviatoslav Richter
Part III: Miscellany
Christmas Music
Music Appreciation
Authenticity
The Beginnings of Cyclic Form
Bach's Dedication to King Frederick
August Halm
Observations
On Teaching
On Music an Musicians
A Lesson in Writing
Johann Christian Bach (1735-1782): Siciliano in F-Sharp Minor
Part IV: The Brendel-Wolff "Debate"
The "Debate"
Addendum by Alfred Brendel
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
A photographic essay follows