This has been last week's read, and what a good one it was! Not only is it informative and inspiring, it is written with a nice lively pace and humorous tone so rare in this specialized genre.

In case the photo is not good enough: Notes from the Pianist's Bench from Boris Berman. 

It distils passion and love for music and piano in every single page, talking from his perspective as a performer and as a teacher. Whilst he goes "technical" at times, it is easy to follow, and I would recommend it even to younger students. I definitely wish I had read this ten years ago. :) (As we always do, wishing things were done by yesterday!) 

Little blog post: check, diary update: check. Saturday piano practice.. here we go! 

Hope you all have a nice weekend, 
Maite

After about 6 months of neglect, I'm back into the blogging mode, at least I will try my best. There are always many topics to be discussed, musical and non musical alike. Specially now that the situation in my home country is getting so desperate and crying out loud through the internet seems to be the only thing one can do from the distance. At least to redeem a bit of guilt. 

However, after such a long time without writing a single line, I need a bit of time to get back to it con tutta forza and since I have thoroughly enjoyed this week's reading, I'm going to focus on that. 

I got out of the Royal Academy library  Harmony in Context A new approach to understanding harmony without conventional exercises, by Paul Steinitz and Stella Sterman. I have to say that it did not disappoint. The book is written in a concise but friendly manner, and it precisely does what it promises, contextualizing the use of the different harmonic devises through the scope of musical history. I found specially uplifting to see that it doesn't focus in mere nomenclature of chords, but in the functionality of harmony, revising it's real usage by the composers. The book inspires curiosity for harmonic syntax, rather than being an aseptic chord (-progression) list.

Apart from the examples provided in the book, there is a separate workbook with a set of very interesting exercises, based mostly on musical excerpts, that I think make of this method quite a hands on one. I fully recommend. 

M.