This intimate and idiosyncratic history of the piano and a view into the secret heart of Paris life is written by an American expatriate, who details his attempts to gain entry into a piano shop where locals gathered to discuss music, love, and life.
Read More
This intimate and idiosyncratic history of the piano and a view into the secret heart of Paris life is written by an American expatriate, who details his attempts to gain entry into a piano shop where locals gathered to discuss music, love, and life.
Read Less
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Pages and cover are intact. Used book in good and clean conditions. Limited notes marks and highlighting may be present. May show signs of normal shelf wear and bends on edges. Item may be missing CDs or access codes. May include library marks.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Fair. May contain writing notes highlighting bends or folds. Text is readable book is clean and pages and cover mostly intact. May show normal wear and tear. Item may be missing CD. May include library marks.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
This item shows signs of wear from consistent use, but it remains in good condition and works perfectly. All pages and cover are intact, but may have aesthetic issues such as small tears, bends, scratches, and scuffs. Spine may also show signs of wear. Pages may include some notes and highlighting. May include "From the library of" labels. Satisfaction Guaranteed.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Very Good. . All orders guaranteed and ship within 24 hours. Your purchase supports More Than Words, a nonprofit job training program for youth, empowering youth to take charge of their lives by taking charge of a business.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Very good. A well-cared-for item that has seen limited use but remains in great condition. The item is complete, unmarked, and undamaged, but may show some limited signs of wear. Item works perfectly. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine is undamaged.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
The item shows wear from consistent use, but it remains in good condition and works perfectly. All pages and cover are intact (including the dust cover, if applicable). Spine may show signs of wear. Pages may include limited notes and highlighting. May NOT include discs, access code or other supplemental materials.
In Thad Carhart's engaging memoir, "The Piano Shop on the Left Bank" (2001), Carhart, an American writer who lives in Paris, describes how his love for the piano was rekindled upon finding a quaint piano repair shop in Paris and its eccentric owner, Luc. At one point after Carhart purchases a used piano from Luc, a baby grand made by a defunct manufacturer called Stingl, Carhart learns that he needs to make a repair to the instrument's pedal mechanism. Luc encourages Carhart to do the repair himself and instructs him how. When the repair is not fully successful and Carhart returns to Luc for more advice, Luc delivers the line that is the title of this review. In the double-entendre, Luc was reminding his customer of the need to avoid too much tension in the pedal mechanism if it is to work properly. But the advice, and the words "play", "soul" and "machine" are at the heart of this book and speak volumes about the piano and about music. How has a large, heavy and clumsy instrument become the way to capture music, beauty and passion in the hearts of many pianists and music-lovers?
Carhart's story begins when he chances upon the piano shop and makes the acquaintance of its owners. He soon decides to take up the piano again, which he had studied as a child years before, and purchases the used Stingl baby grand. We learn a great deal about the author, about Luc and his circle, and about Paris and its customs as the Carhart's story unfolds.
But mostly we learn about the piano and its magic and about music. There are chapters in the book where the author recollects his youthful music lessons and the piano teachers he finds in Paris after beginning to play again. There are fascinating chapters involving the manufacture and tuning of the instrument, the way the mechanism works, and lore about past and present manufacturers of the piano in France, the United States, Germany, Japan, and elsewhere. An excellent chapter near the end of the book describes the manufacture of the Fazoli piano, probably the most expensive and best piano now made, in Italy. Carhart describes the schola cantorum, a small private music school in Paris where Claude Debussy once taught and where the author enrolled his children for music lessons. During one of the most enjoyable scenes of the book, an elderly tradesman at Luc's shop sits at the keyboard and enthralls his listeners with the performance of a Scarlatti sonata. In addition to Luc and Carhart, a host of characters come to life, including the alcoholic tuner Jos, Luc's ladyfriend, Mathilde, Carhart's teacher Anna, and the pianists Gygory Sebok and Peter Feuchtwangler who appear in the book as leaders of master classes. Luc himself, part hard-headed businessman and part lover of the piano, falls in love successively with many of the instruments that come through his shop, Steinways, Erards, Pleyels, Gaveaus, and others. As Luc evocatively says at the end of the book, "You can never have too many dream pianos".
I studied piano as a child, stopped during college and law school, and returned to the instrument when I went out on my own. I haven't left it since then. I took lessons for an initial few years and then, regrettably, have tried to learn the instrument by myself. The piano has meant a great deal to me over the years.
This book will appeal to any serious student of the piano or to lovers of the inexhaustible literature of the instrument. The book will also make a wonderful and unusual gift to those on your list who love or who work with the piano.