The Vengerova System of Piano Playing

For ten years Robert Schick sat in lessons with Isabelle Vengerova and wrote down what she taught. Her pupils at the Curtis Institute and Mannes included Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, Lukas Foss and Gary Graffman. After a short portrait of the woman herself, Schick sets out her method in practical terms: posture and hand position, accents, the singing tone, fingering and pedalling, with photographs and score excerpts to show the detail.

A closing chapter weighs the value of so strict a system and finds in it variety with an underlying unity, a view backed by a survey of her former students. The appendix traces her teaching at the St Petersburg Conservatory before the Revolution and her American years until her death in 1956. A clear, useful record for pianists and teachers curious about where a great tradition of tone and technique came from.