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In this book, the pianist Barbara Nissman, herself an esteemed Bartókian at the keyboard, travels the same route as Dr. Yeomans (though embracing, as well, the concertos and chamber music), but from a different, more detailed, more penetrating, more intimate vantage-point. She is, by her own confession, neither a music theorist, nor an historian, nor a musicologist. Thus she starts her entirely artistic exploration of Bartók’s piano music with three strikes in her favour. One of the most valuable features of this book is the insight it gives into the way a performing artist thinks. It is not the only way. Others achieve great things by many other means. But an artist – a performer, an interpreter – is almost by definition an asker of questions, a seeker after truth. One of the great fascinations of art, as in religion, is the way in which different individuals by asking the same questions arrive at very different truths. It is one of Nissman’s many virtues as an artist-author that she eschews dogmatism. She is not out to convert or instruct us, but possibly, through sharing with us her own journey, to ease or enhance our own searches (the book is clearly addressed to the advanced pianist) on the road to quite other discoveries.

Perhaps that is it. An artist is a discoverer – which ironically is not the same, necessarily, as an explorer. Some explore without discovering. Some discover by pure chance. The successful artist does both. Bartók himself said as much, or anyway implied it, in the quotation which heads Nissman’s Introduction: ‘I must state that all my music is determined by instinct and sensibility; no one need ask me why I wrote this or that or did something in this rather than in that way. I could not give any explanation other than I felt this way, or I wrote it down this way. I never created new theories in advance. This attitude does not mean that I composed without set plans and without sufficient control. The plans were concerned with the spirit of the new work and with technical problems (for instance formal structure involved by the spirit of the work) all more or less instinctively felt.’ (And then there was Stravinsky: ‘I was guided by no system whatever in The Rite of Spring. I had only my ear to help me. I heard, and I wrote what I heard. I am the vessel through which The Rite passed.’)

By starting with that particular Bartók quotation, Nissman reveals at the outset, whether by design or not, that this is going to be more than a book about Bartók. The search is fascinating, her conclusions mostly stimulating and sometimes revelatory, and the portrait that emerges of Bartók the musician (he was as much a performer as a composer, and she converses with both) is both intriguing and compelling. Her treatment is neither as comprehensive nor as consistent as Yeoman’s (his book has different aims). Nor does it proceed chronologically. Her principal focus is on the major works, allotting a chapter each to Out of Doors, the Sonata (1926) and the three concertos. But each chapter also includes an overview and more general discussion of related minor works. Like Yeomans, but more extensively, she offers valuable guidance to the reader/learner/performer (interesting that her suggestions of additional repertoire to explore, at the end of the Out of Doors chapter include specific works by Couperin, Rameau, Scarlatti, Ravel and Debussy) and writes about Bartók’s recordings with characteristic perception. In one vital respect, however, the book’s production falls below the standard set by its author. The print quality in the many valuable musical illustrations is often barely more than adequate, and sometimes barely that. In a book with so much class, such sloppiness looks like sheer bad manners. On the other hand, the inclusion of a generously stocked CD of Nissman playing Bartók, superbly, more than compensates. But still. PIANO (UK) May 2006

"…Barbara Nissman gets very close to the music and to the attentive reader…hers is very much the performer’s viewpoint and Bartók is seen and heard throughout from the piano keyboard. This book is clearly the fruit of long and intensive study of the music but she has also steeped herself in Bartók’s voluminous writings. Richly detailed...welcome features include a CD on which the author gives some spruce performances of 80 minutes of the music she discusses so eloquently.”
MUSICAL OPINION

"[Nissman] offers the sort of insight that can only come from repeated performances of the music...Bartók and the Piano will undoubtedly find its main readership among pianists preparing this demanding but important repertoire for performance and teachers responsible for guiding students through it, but it also has much to offer to those interested more generally in Bartók. It undoubtedly deserves to become the standard work on its subject."
MUSIC TEACHER

"An excellent addition to the pianist's library."
AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE

"Whether you are a pianist who performs and teaches Béla Bartok's music or simply a lover of piano music, you will find this book a valuable new resource. What makes this book such a treasure-trove are Nissman's insights into the music from a performer's point of view. This book would be an outstanding acquisition for music libraries and is worthy of inclusion in pianists' personal resource collections.”
AMERICAN MUSIC TEACHER

"An admirable volume...It is heartwarming to see an accomplished, virtuoso performer such as Barbara Nissman equally at home in the scholarly activity of writing a book. There is an engaging quality to her writing, at times refreshingly colloquial, that will certainly appeal to the proper audience—that is, to pianists in practice rooms around the world ." NOTES

“Bartók and the Piano is a well-researched edition by pianist Barbara Nissman who presents the composer’s music in an engaging and informative style.”
CLAVIER

"The book teems with music examples .The accompanying CD offers admirable performances by Nissman of 16 titles.of interest to pianists at the learning and teaching levels."
CHOICE

"It always lends a definitive veracity to a book when it is written by an internationally acclaimed concert pianist like Barbara Nissman who’s been there, done it; moreso when it shows a keen analytic mind on matters of style, form and structure of Bartók’s music. Barbara Nissman’s credentials as a Bartók pianist are pedigree. She studied under Hungarian pianist György Sandor, himself a pupil of Bartók.
     The book’s sub-title A Performer’s View, reveals its original purpose as a manual for pianists on how to tackle technical and interpretative aspects of Bartók’s piano music. For that purpose the accompanying CD of excerpts played splendidly by Nissman herself is a crucial extra.
     But what’s in it for the music lover? Plenty, provided you can read music, as Nissman’s book has copious music examples. For a book covering all Bartók’s works and life, my well thumbed Halsey Stevens classic The Life and Music of Béla Bartók is the one I keep returning to.
     However Nissman’s more specialised monograph delves deeper and more thoroughly into some of the piano works. Her coverage is wider and includes the unpublished Piano Sonata of 1898. Also her chapter 11 on Bartók the pianist includes all the piano recordings he made, much of it now restored to CD. This all makes Nissman’s book a very different proposition to the Stevens one.
     As a guide to the piano repertoire it’s as thorough as one could hope for. Naturally it includes all solo piano works, and all the piano concertos including Bartók’s transcription of his Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion into Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra (I heard it performed here by the Kontarsky brothers with the NZSO. It works well). She even fits in little known arrangements such as his piano version of the orchestral Dance Suite. She has briefer notes on all chamber works with piano such as Contrasts and the two sonatas for violin and piano.
     Rather than discussing works in strict chronological order, she offers a better semi-chronological alternative of grouping them into related chapters. That’s in line with her approach which is not just about fingers, but embraces heart and intellect to guide pianists deeply into the core of each piece.
     The Mikrokosmos works for instance, you’ll find tucked into the chapter Bartók as Teacher. Most of his folk-inspired works are in Folk Music, thePerfect Union. That’s the chapter I’d kick off with if teaching pianists. Nissman’s thorough description of all those tiny key points such as modes, rhythmic patterns, meter, and intervals graphically show pianists and listeners Bartok’s essentially East European dialect.
      Then the next chapter Form and the Sonata shows how the microcosm of Bartók’s language is synthesized into the macrocosm of West European form and counterpoint – that East-West fusion which makes him the greatest nationalist composer of all time. These sorts of insights reveal the quality of this ebulliently written book and its worth for pianists and music lovers alike."
                                      Ian Dando, New Zealand Listener.

"Her imposing book on Bartók's piano music confirms Barbara Nissman's communicative skills in words as at the keyboard (the book includes a CD to illustrate the text). There are insights on every page and it is notable for its practical perspective by a pianist who has studied and performed the whole corpus of this great composer's piano music. To sample it, look at the thorough analysis of Mikrokosmos, the teaching pieces begun for Bartók's son Peter, and often composed quickly during his lessons. We can all manage at least some pieces from the earlier books, designed to cover progressively the succession of musical and technical pianistic problems faced by the beginning student."
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