Mozart's Piano Music [Hardcover]

Mozart's emergence as a mature artist coincides with the rise to prominence of the piano, an instrument that came alive under his fingers and served as medium for many of his finest compositions. InMozart's Piano Music, William Kinderman reconsiders common assumptions about Mozart's life and art while offering comprehensive and incisive commentary on the solo music and concertos. After placing Mozart's pianistic legacy in its larger biographical and cultural context, Kinderman addresses the lively gestural and structural aspects of Mozart's musical language and explores the nature of his creative process. Incorporating the most recent research throughout this encompassing study, Kinderman expertly surveys each of the major genres of the keyboard music, including the four-hand and two-piano works. Beyond examining issues such as Mozart's earliest childhood compositions, his musical rhetoric and expression, the social context of his Viennese concertos, and affinities between his piano works and operas, Kinderman's main emphasis falls on detailed discussion of selected individual compositions.

Another remarkable offering from one of the most intelligent and musically gifted of musicologists. --Alfred Brendel

A detailed and thought-provoking account of a repertory that defies comprehensive elucidation by any scholar... and we should be immensely grateful to Kinderman. -John Irving,Music and Letters

Kinderman's great talents in piano playing as well as his impeccable and fascinating analysis make this book especially important for everyone who wants to get to know Mozart's piano music from the inside out. --Emanuel Ax

William Kinderman guides us marvelously through the specificities of Mozart's keyboard music. Particularly remarkable is the audibility of the trenchant analyses, which help make visceral the music's extraordinary complexities. --Garrick Ohlsson

If you are a music student, especially if ylC