This book provides an understanding of how virtuosic piano playing works from an evidence-based, scientific perspective. Using accessible language, this wealth of information will help readers steer away from uncertainty, suboptimal performance, and injury.

Drawing from experience in the fields of piano instruction, medicine, and Body Mapping, author Lisa Marsh presents a detailed discussion--complete with anatomical drawings and music examples--about the types of movement that contribute to a healthy, fluid, and versatile piano technique. This resource is divided into three parts: foundational concepts, development of piano technique, and wellness discussions.

Drawing on his many years as a performer and teacher, his long-standing collaborations with pedagogue Phil Cohen and virtuoso Kemal Gekich, and his professional training in the Feldenkrais Method, Fraser introduces his truly innovative piano technique by - Teaching how to move your hands with greater sensitivity, power, and accuracy, and honing the skeletal alignments to help you access your innate, structural potency; - Linking your physical technique to musical expression, creating an "absolutely natural way of moving at the piano that is powerful, flexible, and musical" (Piano News, Germany); and - Keeping your hands healthy while avoiding the threats of tendonitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, focal dystonia, and RSI.

An awesome contribution, says William F. Buckley, Jr.. In playing the piano, the thumbs act not in opposition to other fingers, but together with them. This book teaches you to improve the way your thumbs are used.

Techniques on how to gain greater fluidity of movement while playing to improve the quality of the experience are offered in this manual for serious piano players. This book encourages musicians to develop a broader understanding of the involvement of the entire body in playing--and the strains playing places on the body--by focusing on body mapping to increase awareness of the body's function, size, and structure. Ways in which piano, organ, harpsichord, clavichord, and digital keyboard players can eliminate or prevent carpal tunnel syndrome and other debilitating conditions without traditional medical treatments are also explored.

Keyboard methods--systematic approaches to training, touch, and interpretation--did not evolve until the nineteenth century, and written methodologies are few. Drawing on primary sources, the author has compiled a detailed analysis of such keyboard methods as existed in Europe in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Most were developed by Couperin, C.P.E. Bach, Turk, J.S. Bach, Mozart, Chopin and Liszt.