Chances are you've seen a film by Peter Rosen. From his award-winning documentaries of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition to biographical portraits of legends from Claudio Arrau to Van Cliburn and Leonard Bernstein to Yo-Yo Ma, he has produced a legacy of more than one-hundred feature length films. These films have brought a world of m...

As a faculty member at the East Carolina University School of Music, I frequently taught our Piano Literature sequence. The last time I led these classes, I decided to add a new component to the second-semester schedule: films about pianist-composers. Hollywood through the years has found the artistic life irresistible, and there are quite a f...

by Shirley Penzi The first piece of furniture my husband and I bought for our new home was a fine Mason & Hamlin piano. We placed it prominently in the sunset room and cared for it meticulously. But it sat mostly idle, beckoning to be played for several years. When our daughter, Summer, was three-and-a-half years old, we began to feel she was r...

Legendary for their ability to ignite the imagination in students, the Schnabel family has provided a rich musical heritage, including a teacher tree linking directly to Czerny and Beethoven through Artur's studies with Leschitizky. One of the Schnabels' most celebrated and influential students, Leon Fleisher, reflects back on his time with the Sch...

In my published books I have always devoted a great deal of attention to phrasing, because I believe that phrase marks, or slurs, provide syntactical clarity to music and thus serve as indispensable performance guidelines for the pianist.  Many writers and publishers omit slurs in printed music, especially music written for early-level pianist...

In 2012, we are so far removed from the so-called silent film era (ca. 1894-1929) that most of us have only a vague concept of what it was really like. Although the films of that period were silent, their presentation was not. In the small venues, films were accompanied by the local pianist (who was often the neighborhood piano teacher) or a small ...

In the Spring of 2012, Clavier Companion sponsored its fifth annual Collegiate Writing Contest. College students at any level from any country in the world were invited to submit 1,500 word essays on a pedagogical topic of their choice. The grand prize was publication of the winning essay in Clavier Companion. The esteemed panel of j...

In the Spring of 2012, Clavier Companion sponsored its fifth annual Collegiate Writing Contest. College students at any level from any country in the world were invited to submit 1,500 word essays on a pedagogical topic of their choice. The grand prize was publication of the winning essay in Clavier Companion. The esteemed panel of j...

​A funny thing happened on the way to writing this column: I started questioning everything about this profession of ours. Even more than I usually do.  In future columns I'll get at more of this, but let's start with the institution we call the piano recital. In fact, we'll begin at the very pinnacle of the art form, the height to which ...

​Music teachers are well acquainted with the positive effects of praise. Praise helps students feel that their work is acknowledged and appreciated, and it serves as an inspiration for further improvement of skills. There are, however, other possible and not infrequent reactions that may come from receiving praise, including anxiety, discomfort, an...

​ This century's technology provides many tools for keyboard teachers, students, and parents. Internet MIDI, Skype, blogs, YouTube, and many other innovations bring new ways of learning music at the keyboard. The University of Iowa Piano Pedagogy Project on YouTube is an ambitious undertaking Dr. Alan Huckleberry and Dr. Jason Sifford initiated in ...

​I have enjoyed playing, teaching, and listening to Spanish music throughout my musical life. The guitar effects, exotic rhythms and harmonies, and mesmerizing moods captured my imagination and emotions, as well as that of my students. I enjoyed playing Andaluza, Córdoba, Capriccio Catalano, Asturias, Granada, Sevilla, and The Jota Aragonese. One o...