Splendid and absorbing. Sending me back to the piano! ( )

I play the piano so I raced through this book at (for me) breakneck speed, because there was so much I could relate to that mirrors my own studies. For example, that it’s simply impossible to play challenging pieces with any sort of fluency without huge chunks of memorization. You simply have to look at your hands and not the score to have any hope of executing the tricky bits. Also, the endless decision/indecision about what is the best fingering. Then there is the fact that Alan, like myself, never learned scales properly as a kid, which is a real hindrance to technical progress.

On the other hand, I came away from the story as a whole with conflicted feelings. Yes, it is admirable to attempt to learn an extremely difficult and canonical piece (Chopin's Ballade #1, G Minor), but why set an arbitrary time deadline? This is music that demands time and attention to bring to performance level, particularly for an “amateur”. Would it have been all that bad to take an extra year or two, or five? Yes, he’s in his mid-fifties, at the time of writing, but come on. And it must be nice to own both a Steinway and a Fazioli, and have easy access to some of the finest pianists in the world so that he can pick their brains about the Ballade. Actually, these parts were pretty interesting. As is Alan’s chronicles of his day job - Editor in Chief of one of the UK’s premier newspapers, the Guardian. Suffice it to say he is extremely busy in his day job and doesn’t have a lot of time to spend practicing. All the more reason to take more time.

I definitely felt for him when he relates the story of his first attempt to perform the Ballade at “piano camp”, precisely one year after resolving to play it. It’s a disaster, and I couldn’t help thinking of all the easier (and perhaps no less beautiful) Chopin repertoire he could have learned and played very well at the camp, during that time period. He did get some great advice from the guest teacher however, which sets him on the path of his TRIUMPHANT performance of the Ballade for selected family and friends some four months later. Spoiler - he gets through it pretty well. So very good for him, and the inspiration he may be giving to anyone who really wants to go for something really, really hard, but I won't be doing what he did because:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSFNl4roGlI
( )

I picked up this book in the library thinking it was by a famous pianist. After realizing my mistake, I decided to check it out anyway since the subtitle is “an amateur against the impossible”, which is how I often feel as I try to get my playing to an acceptable level.

The book is quite engrossing with him giving himself a year to learn a ballade that even professionals find difficult to play and interpret. Then his “day" job becomes even more of a day and night job that it used to be. That year he was in the middle of Wikileaks and phone hacking news releases. The story alternates between three settings:
- Him trying to learn the Chopin Ballade #1 on only 20 minutes a day, and days when he couldn’t play at all.
- As an editor (and amateur pianist) he interviews famous pianists. (Whether this was part of his job or a privilege he gained by being an editor was not obvious.)
- He had to manage the onslaught of complications with news involving powerful people in high places who like to destroy anyone who opposes them.

In an interview with Daniel Barenboim “He announces one ‘fact’: “That we’ve all … experienced the difficulties of marrying passion and Discipline. When you get passionate about anything, about a woman or the job or about something that you're into and you lose complete sense of discipline. They have to coexist." (Page 210)

A very engrossing book. It was so engrossing that instead of taking notes of interesting parts, I just read on to see what happened next. ( )

Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief of the Guardian and keen amateur pianist, sets himself the challenge of learning Chopin’s Ballade No. 1 in g, op. 23 in one year. Meanwhile, it is one of the most important and busiest years for the Guardian – breaking the phone hacking scandal and WikiLeaks, and covering the events of the Arab Spring, the Japanese tsunami and the English riots. Despite his crowded timetable, he manages to squeeze in time to practice the piano – playing chamber music as well as working on his goal of performing the Ballade.

The book is quite personal, reflecting his doubts if he will be able to achieve his goal, as the Ballade demands quite a lot of memorizing (at the age of 57 maybe more difficult than in younger years?) and requires good technique as well as a lot of emotion in playing it. During his self-set objective, Rusbridger interviews various concert pianists and amateurs about their experiences with the Ballade, which makes quite interesting reading. Also included in the book is his score with commentary by himself, his teachers and professional pianists.

I am myself a keen amateur pianist and found this book very inspiring to read. In my opinion, in this work he captures exactly what is neccessary to learn a piece really by heart. ( )

Deeply impressive, inspiring. The editor of the Guardian stuggles to learn to play Chopin's Ballade No. 1 over 18 months whilst dealing with Wikileaks and the phone hacking scandal. ( )