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My Educations and Background:
I hold a Bachelor's Degree in Physics from Zhong
Shan (Dr. Sun Yet-Sen) University, Canton, China.
And a Master's Degree in Computer Science from
University of Houston, Houston, Texas, USA.
I play piano since my childhood, studied with a
renowned piano teacher Mak, Pik Har at the Music
Conservatory in Canton, China. She is over 80 year's
old now I am still in touch with her. When I grew
up, I am interested in reading piano literatures.
The first great book I read was "The Art of Piano
Playing" (by Heinrich Neuhaus) which I borrowed from
her. It was said that the book is the Russian
pianist's bible. I like the book a lot. In those
days during Culture Revolution in China, there was
no way to find this book to buy, neither a copier. I
had to copy the whole book with my own hand writing.
During the long years, I had dumped many books, by I
always keep this one.
I read some more books and literatures on piano.
Some of them are good, some of them are not. Of the
good books, Abby Whiteside's "Indispensable of Piano
Playing" impressed me a lot. She was a very
revolutionary teacher but her English is very hard
to read, you have to read and re-read again to catch
the point and a few viewpoints are very extreme.
Some readers at Amazon.com have the same feeling as
I did. The distinguished pianist Gyorgy Sandor's "On
Piano Playing" and Josef Lhevinne's "Basic
Principles in Pianoforte Playing" are good. Famous
pianist Vladimir Horowitz's "Technique the outgrowth
of Musical Thought" is excellent. Unfortunately, he
did not write down a lot.
I also like to collect CDs and DVDs , listen or
watch different pianists to play the same
composition. I found that the music is different in
different pianist's hands, especially the tone
quality. I grew with the thought that physics and
anatomy can and should be applied to piano playing
and I started thinking to organize my thought and
write it down.
Now I am retired, I have time to write little by
little. I am developing a web site to teach the
people to play piano with their brain not just the
hands or the body, to understand why you should play
in the nature's way not just mimic the teacher, to
know what you are going to play not just whatever
you can play.
For those who are interested please give me some
suggestions and advices. Thank you!
My web site address is:
www.modernpianoplaying.com
May M. Wu
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