Description: Jeremy Siepmann has treated his subject, the piano, in two ways: as an instrument with its place in the development of musical style and as a social phenomenon with a profound influence on the spread of musical culture. The alternating development of these two themes, supported by perceptive observations on compositional procedure and richly illustrated with anecdotes and biographical sketches from a stunning gallery of virtuoso pianists, offers an unrivalled survey of what is probably the single most influential instrument in the history of Western music, and of the many geniuses, eccentrics, and drawing-room amateurs who helped to make it so. The immense riches of the EMI archive have been enthusiastically raided to provide classic recordings by Schnabel, Fischer, Solomon, Cortot, Gieseking, Horowitz, Moiseiwitsch, Rubinstein, Lipatti, and Michelangeli, as well as more recent giants of the keyboard.

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