Recorded live (with no patches or editing of any kind) in a variety of locations including New York’s Steinway Hall, Carol Montparker sparkles radiantly across a broad spectrum of repertoire. What immediately strikes the listener In Mozart’s K576 Sonata is the grace and sheer communicated warmth of Montparker’s playing, qualities that spill over into a small selection of The Well-Tempered Clavier preludes and fugues, and two Schubert favorites, the D 946 Klavierstück and the B flat major Impromptu. Finest of all is Ravel’s Sonatine, an enchanting reading that brims over with affection. Some tolerance is required with the changes in recorded ambiance, but this is still a most attractive recital.
Julian Haylock
INTERNATIONAL PIANO / CD Reviews
Carol Montparker, pianist and a vocational painter, writes with warm, subtle colors and lines of delicate precision. Her autobiographical stories sparkle with vignettes of people, places and pets, but their deeper subject is that of the woman pianist in a male-dominated world. The subject is not new, but Ms. Montparker brings to it a rewarding freshness of insight.
Jerome Lowenthal, pianist
Faculty Juilliard School
Although I confess not to have read every word of your manuscript, (as most of my spare time is occupied by my own scribbling or poetry readings) what I saw of your book is truly charming. You have the rare gift of engaging the reader, an effortless command of words, and an ingratiating turn of the phrase.
Alfred Brendel, pianist
Her sense of music as a spontaneous adventure and her reverence for the piano as a link to one’s inner life show through in this variegated collection of essays. Her explorations of the pianist’s predicament are like variegated preludes in such keys as memorizing, practicing, choice of instrument, performing, teaching, and child-rearing.
Keyboard Companion, 1999
Carol Montparker has enriched the lives of music teachers for many years through her work as an editor and regular columnist for Clavier, and her first two books. In her latest book she weaves together a collage of short vignettes concerning her multi-faceted life. This book’s 31 short chapters gracefully narrate a wide array of subjects reminiscences, reflections Montparker’s ability to bring matters of the heart to the printed page is evident throughout. Her craftsmanship as a wordsmith shines through. She willingly shares the highs and lows of her life, provoking joy at one moment and serious contemplation the next. Through her skillful writing, she draws the reader into her world and graciously recounts significant moments and experiences. A wonderful volume for vacation or leisure reading, this book is a perfect accompaniment to a day at the beach or an evening by the fireplace with a good cup of coffee. The stories will warm your heart and hopefully remind you of the profound joys of music-making, music teaching, and life.
Steve Betts
American Piano Teacher
Anyone who appreciates culture and nature will enjoy The Blue Piano and Other Stories by Carol Montparker. This book is almost therapeutic for teachers ..I was moved by many of the chapters, yet found myself laughing out loud in others. Her love of writing, traveling, watercolor painting, gardening and nature come through. For pianists and teachers the stories of her work with students are especially inspiring. Montparker is a wonderful storyteller, and her straightforward, open style is refreshing.
Lynette Zelis
Clavier
… [Carol Montparker] evokes a true sense of atmosphere in real life stories that are forthright and witty. … [Her] boundless enthusiasm for life far exceeds the parameters of a musician’s life and her responses to challenges and encounters along the way will ring true for all readers, not only pianists. Compelling and delightful reading.
Music Teacher Magazine
The Anatomy of a New York Debut Recital: A Chronicle
Probably the best book about music anywhere!
—Robert Silverman, The Piano QuarterlyI can sum up the pleasure your book gave me in one phrase: I wish I had written it!
—Gerald MooreI greatly admired your “Anatomy of–” when it first came out and have hunted it down in my library and found it to be just as good as I remembered it. Re-reading it gave me a flush of satisfaction. Over the years I have been impressed by your thoughtful and direct approach.
—Donal Henahan, The New York TimesPianist writes jewel of a journal! A delicious little book has floated in, full of quirky insights for anyone who is serious about playing the piano in public. Most refreshing about this memoir is the close relationship it reveals between the performer and the music itself.
—Robert Finn, Cleveland Plain DealerI read your book with delight. “The Anatomy” is prominent among subjects to be treated and joys to be shared with readers…. I plan to write about the pleasure, the enlightenment, the interest your book gave me.
—Andrew Porter, The New YorkerYour book is sincere, funny, very honest and very fresh. Congratulations!
—Vladimir FeltsmanCarol Montparker has written a warm, honest, and compelling account of what happens when a musician decides to make a New York debut recital. Here is wonderful and thought-provoking reading for both students and professionals. I found it absolutely delightful!
—André WattsYour little book is a treasure and should be therapeutic reading for all performers. Its meditations are wonderfully on the mark
—Dick HymanYour “Chronicle” not only describes a tour de force, it IS one! It reads like a cross between a documentary and a suspense novel. I awaited the dénouement with bated breath. All performers can and do identify with your trial and triumph. Told so candidly and eloquently, it is invaluable to all of us. I shall make it “must” reading for all my students.
—David Bar-IllanI was on my way to do a recital on the West Coast when I read your book. Seeing how much it meant to you to have the privilege of playing great works, sharing the miracle of their creation with the public, and your humility throughout, awoke in me that which was temporarily dormant– my own feeling of being privileged to be a concert pianist. Thank you for your inspiring book.
—Horacio GutiérrezI loved it! I was fascinated by the Chronicle and vastly impressed by your ability (and willingness) to share such personal emotions. On top of everything else, you write beautifully, with an easy, honest flow, and delightful humor.
—Robert Sherman, WQXRAs recital day nears, we follow her ruminations, feel her self-doubts; with her we stare idly at her hands, and wonder at the mystery that moves them, –and we soar as she finally steps into the spotlight, her long trials now put to the test. In 90 short pages, Montparker takes us on a roller-coaster ride that begins with her own integrity and curiosity and ends wherever we want it to end inside our own souls.
—Keyboard Magazine
I have been listening to the recorded performances on your CD and send you a rapture of thanks for the elation and pleasure your playing gives me. The music making is wonderful! Your phrasing is so beautiful that I found myself constantly going back to re-hear the music several times. And you play with such fire and involvement, I never heard the Chopin Fantasy played with such abandon. Everything glows. It is clearly playing that comes from the heart — and it reaches the hearts of your audience, the spontaneity and warmth of your personality also shine in your playing.
Paul Schenly
Cleveland Institute of Music,
Piano Chair
The pianist’s latest book deserves to be read by anyone who plays or wishes to play or ever wished to play the piano, and by everyone else too. She writes about music in a sane, wise, humane voice in this charming, instructive, often moving collection.
Michael Kimmelman, Chief Art Critic, pianist
The New York Times
One of the chief delights of A Pianist’s Landscape is that it is so engagingly well written: it opens things up to the lay reader without the slightest hint of awkwardness or pretension. Montparker talks about what musicians think, how they interact, their foibles, joys and fears, with the ease of someone talking about what’s growing in her garden. The writing is direct, the expression of thoughts and feelings remarkably concrete. And yet there is great finesse as well. As an avid watercolorist, Montparker naturally knows that much can be suggested by a small gesture. She paints a picture of her own domestic life, surrounded by objets d’art and serenaded by avian songsters, that immediately invites the reader to share in her pleasure.
Ted Libbey
The Washington Post
I would like to tell you how much I enjoyed your book. It is beautiful, full of colour and vitality, moving forward, yet dwelling so lovingly over many significant details. You paint very touching portraits and know so well how to tell a story. You have insight and describe things with so much candor and sensitivity.
Radu Lupu, pianist
The unquenchable and world-straddling nature of [Montparker’s] interests, to which this book bears witness, … confirms why she is such an inspired interviewer…. Her sensitive antennae allow her to pick up all that is most characteristic in the musical culture of her era… Having spent so many years interviewing the great an the good of the musical profession-framing questions for others to answer it must be as much a relief for Carol Montparker as it is for us, her readers, to have her at last dealing herself with these same issues in the depth, eloquence and personal candor they deserve. In fact, one might describe the whole book at an interview conducted this time with herself.
Malcolm Troup
Piano Journal, U.K., Winter 1999
A prolific writer and renowned pianist, Carol Montparker is a familiar name to anyone interested in the piano as a literary subject. Her previous volumes received praise from critics and public alike. In fact, one particular endorsement of the Anatomy of a New York Debut Recital (1981) caught my attention: “This superb diary was, without question, one of the most up-put-downable bits of music journalism that I have come across in many years.” That endorsement was written by Glenn Gould. I immediately bought a copy and started reading.
Montparker’s new book, The Composer’s Landscape, reflects the writer’s passion for the art of the piano, and inspires the reader to pursue further reading and listening. Especially helpful are the numberous quotations from a wide variety of experts in the field, including acclaimed concert pianists, celebrated teachers, and writers.The relaxed writing style makes reading Montparker’s books a very pleasant activity. Her many years as a senior editor of Clavier (forerunner to this magazine) provide deep insights into the world of piano, piano literature, pianists, and audiences. Each of the book’s eight essays, inspired by her lecture series The Composer’s Landscape, is dedicated to the works of one composer. A “page from any score,” she says in the introduction, “is a landscape, with its own countours and terrain… a kind of visual depiction of the language.” Throughout, Montparker uses creative metaphors to describe the works descussed, while at the same time engaging help from pianists she interviewed for Clavier.
The essays are filled with pianistic gems. In particular, the writer’s direct connection to Chopin (through her teacher Leopold Mittman, who studied with Alexander Michalowski, who in turn studied with Carl Mikuli, Chopin’s most famous student) makes the chapter about Chopin an especially rewarding one. In addition, the book’s two appendices are taken from two of Montparker’s Clavier articles about the Chopin Barcarolle and the fourth Ballade. In those articles, which appeared in the magazine in 1983 and 1994-5 respectively, great pianists share their ideas about these masterworks. Almost every sentence becomes an aphorism, and it is enlightening to observe occasionally opposite points of view about the same work.
Montparker’s combination of personal experience with the works and input from celebrated masters creates an insightful collection of articles that can be equally enjoyed by both professional musicians and amateur music lovers. The attached CD, which includes the author’s beautiful performances of works by Bach, Chopin, Mozart, Schubert, Brahms, Beethoven, and Schumann, is a great addition. Highly recommended. (Amadeus Press, 259 pages. $29.99.) Of course, it is deliciously apt that this unusual, well-written collection of 31 autobiographical stories by concert pianist, painter, music teacher, writer, editor, and gardener, Carol Montparker, should be published by a press called Amadeus, (the author’s favorite composer.) Although all the stories in The Blue Piano have music at the center, they radiate and resonate as a sustained creative narrative about “reckoning” with life, musically and personally. The collection sings with a lyrical beauty about the pleasures and pains of being a professional artist. Clearly Montparker has mastered the pitch, rhythms, and colors of good prose as well as those of the keyboard. Though basically chronological, the stories reflect a knowing sense of the elements of good story-telling selective structure and details, continuity of theme, and a diverse cast of secondary characters.
Alexandre Dossin
Professor of Piano
University of Oregon
Clavier Companion
March/April 2016
These short stories and essays are some of [Montparker’s] memories, ‘harvested’ from the life of an unusually widely talented, perceptive and sensitive artist . . . . It is her talent for communication that makes this book so totally engaging. . . . The charm of these stories will fascinate musicians and non-musicians alike.
Piano Professional UK
Montparker’s appealing account of her life as a concert pianist — practicing, performing, teaching, contains insights that will enrich practitioners of all creative arts. Her sense of music as a spontaneous link to one’s inner life show through in this variegated collection of essays. Her own clarity and enthusiasm are supplemented by relaxed interviews with famous artists.
Publisher’s Weekly
I found your book so enjoyable and so profoundly moving… Reading your book has clarified questions concerning aesthetic perceptions and their relationships to other functions of the ego. The delight of your writing, however, goes beyond just technical interests… Books such as your will point the way to the unique importance of the arts as precious symbols of the best of which human beings are capable.
Dr. Robert Roth
Diplomate in Clinical Psychology
I find [Montparker’s] playing to be unfailingly graceful and affecting… a real artist, also made clear by her book… It is a model of its kind, touching and clever and invaluable as a chronicle of musical self-exploration.
Michael Kimmelman
The New York Times
Carol Montparker has revealed the very nerve center of her inner life as a woman and musician. These thirty-one short stories are full of surprises, adventures, indeed, sensitivities of many kinds. They are tender-hearted and passionate, each polished in prose that rivets the reader—perfect cameos which linger long in the heart.
David Dubal, author, pianist
Host, Reflections from the Piano, WQXR radio
If you buy only one book this year, it should be this one. Many teachers may remember Carol Montparker from her column in Clavier magazine. Ms. Montparker is a Steinway Artist and performer of solo and chamber music. She is a teacher, visual artist, writer, and beautiful person. This book is a collection of stories from her life. They are written in such a way that I felt as if she were communicating them only to me, and, after reading them we became very close friends. The stories were inspiring, funny, poignant, and need to be read again and again. This is the book you buy and give to special friends. Carol Montparker has written a book that is a treasured glimpse into the life of an extraordinary person.
Dr. Vicki King
Piano Guild Notes
A Pianist’s Landscape reveals the interior world of a total musician. Carol Montparker writes with courage, grace, wit, and passion about the mundane as well as the sublime aspects of being a pianist. From the magically inspiring song of the thrush to the amusing anxieties of concert hall disasters–this landscape is filled with riches for the reader’s pleasure. Professionals, non-musicians, and all the degrees between the two will be captivated by the musical heart and mind revealed in this book.
Andre Watts, pianist
Thoroughly engaging….Her essays will be enjoyed not by musicians only, but by all music lovers who want to be swept away by an honest and warm description of an artist’s life and its trials and rewards.
Alan Hirsch
Booklist
Thoroughly engaging…. Her essays will be enjoyed not by musicians only, but by all music lovers who want to be swept away. This collection by Carol Montparker, providing 31 short stories covering musicianship and adventures in the music world, is hard to easily categorize: the stories represent very real insights into the music world and sensibility, yet contain the passion and vivid descriptions of fiction. Suffice it to say that musicians in general, and pianists in particular will relish these lyrical first-person insights. by an honest and warm description of an artist’s life and its trials and rewards.
The Midwest Book Review
The author’s ability to balance the tragic consequences of human frailty with an erudite if obstinate optimism gives this book the rare quality of being untiringly readable. . . . The Blue Piano powerfully conveys the endogenous talent, hard work and self-discipline required to succeed as a professional artist. Yet the author communicates the positive value of all her experiences so entertainingly that it’s not so much her success as a concert pianist the reader admires as her understanding, her talent for witty observation and her enviable peace of mind.
Good Reading Magazine
Carol Montparker, a leading authority in the piano world is a superb teacher, an in-depth interviewer, the author of dozens of revelatory articles and books, including her admirable short story collection, The Blue Piano and Other Stories; but above all she is a distinguished concert pianist. Her first book, The Anatomy of a New York Debut Recital, has become a classic.In her latest excursion, published by Amadeus Press, titled The Composer’s Landscape; the Pianist as Explorer she has written an indispensable volume of pianistic and musical wisdom. Her prose is clarity itself, but every page spells passion. This is hardly a volume for just pianists, but for anyone that cherishes the Art of Music. It is divided into eight chapters exploring in depth, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Chopin, and Mendelssohn. In each chapter of The Composer’s Landscape Carol Montparker roams far and wide, indeed revealing new vistas. The book contains an important bonus, a CD of her own beautiful playing of these composers she loves so well.
David Dubal
Author, Pianist, radio host Professor at Juilliard School of Music
Readers will be moved to both tears and laughter as they work their way through these clever and intriguing stories that are torn from real life. It is a real treat.
Alan Caruba www.bookviews.com
… The stories represent very real insights into the music world and sensibility yet contain the passion and vivid descriptions of fiction. Suffice it to say that musicians in general and pianists in particular will relish these lyrical first-person insights.
The Bookwatch
If you buy one book this year, it should be this one. Many teachers may remember Carol Montparker from her column in Clavier magazine. Ms. Montparker is a Steinway Artist and performer of solo and chamber music. She is a teacher, visual artist, writer, and beautiful person. This book is a collection of stories from her life. They are written in such a way that I felt as if she were communicating them only to me, and, after reading them, we became close friends. The stories were inspiring, funny, poignant, and need to be read again and again and again.
Joan Baum
Of course, it is deliciously apt that this unusual, well-written collection of 31 autobiographical stories by concert pianist, painter, music teacher, writer, editor, and gardener, Carol Montparker, should be published by a press called Amadeus, (the author’s favorite composer.) Although all the stories in The Blue Piano have music at their center, they radiate and resonate as a sustained creative narrative about “reckoning” with, life, musically and personally. The collection sings with a lyrical beauty about the pleasures and pains of being a professional artist…Clearly, Montparker has mastered the pitch, rhythms, and colors of good prose as well as those of the keyboard.
Though basically chronological, the stories reflect a knowing sense of the elements of good story-telling–selective structure and details, continuity of theme, and a diverse cast of secondary characters.
The Independent
(The Hamptons and North Fork)
Listening to Montparker play Bach, hearing the sense and emotion she brings to the score, one can understand how making music may be its own reward.
Peter Goodman
Newsday
Your superb diary [The Anatomy of a New York Debut], was without question one of the most un-put-downable bits of music journalism that I have come across in many years.
Glenn Gould
composer and pianist