Playing Beyond the Notes

Playing Beyond the Notes: A Pianist's Guide to Musical Interpretation demystifies the complex concepts of musical interpretation in Western tonal piano music by boiling it down to basic principles in an accessible writing style. Author and veteran piano instructor Deborah Rambo Sinn tackles a different interpretive principle, explaining clearly, for example, how to play effective ornaments and rubatos. As a whole, the book helps pianists understand concrete ways to apply interpretive concepts to their own playing and gives teachers practical ways to teach interpretation to their students. The book is illustrated with over 200 repertoire excerpts and supplemented by a companion website with over 100 audio recordings. Playing Beyond the Notes is essential reading for all performing pianists, independent piano teachers, and piano pedagogy students.

Deborah Rambo Sinn taught for two decades at colleges and universities and has performed classical concerts on four continents. She lived in Germany for five years where she also played keyboards for professional musical productions and coached opera singers and instrumentalists in music interpretation. Sinn currently resides in Washington State, where she is active as a private teacher, coach, and performer.

About the Companion Website Musical Examples and Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction
1. The Score 2. Getting Started 3. The End 4. Boxes and Beams 5. Voicing from the Bottom Up 6. Messy Basses 7. Ornamentation: Understanding the Small Print 8. Rubato: Stealing as an Art 9. Deconstructing Phrases 10. Transitions: Getting from Here to There 11. "Staccato Means Short" and Other Myths 12. Pedaling
Afterword Glossary Common Stylized Dances or Dance-Related Forms Further Reading Index