Book Preface

This book is devoted to the art of piano fingering and is intended for anyone who plays the piano, from children to college students, from adult amateur pianists to professional piano teachers and performing pianists. The traditional basics are covered, but the book deals mainly with advanced and innovative fingering. In addition, there are suggestions about related piano playing techniques, useful exercises, phrasing, and interpretation.

The purpose of the book is to help piano players deal with the issue of fingering the music and to teach how to use effective and efficient fingering which will both serve the music and preserve healthy hands. This book is not by any means intended to replace piano lessons with a teacher. On the contrary, teachers can also use it as reference for their own advanced playing and for teaching their students.

Piano fingering is one of the most problematic and neglected parts of piano playing technique. In our modern times there is little academic material that is dedicated to this subject and that deals with it in detail and in depth. There are various booklets and charts that show fingering only for scales and arpeggios. Scales and arpeggios are a crucial part of piano playing, but these are just basics and there are all the other aspects of fingering that need equal or greater attention.

Choosing fingering is probably one of the first things a piano player does with a new piece. Some players rely on their own fingering ideas, some consult various editions that offer different fingerings of the same piece, and some rely on their teachers for good fingering. There may be second thoughts and back and forth changing of fingering until a final decision is made, at least for a while.

This book gives the tools and teaches in a detailed way how to create good and injury-free piano fingering utilizing traditional, advanced, and innovative fingering used by the great virtuosos. The book offers music examples, pictures, and diagrams, which illustrate the explanations and enable a better comprehension of the written text.

The author, Rami Bar-Niv, is an internationally acclaimed concert pianist and the book is based on his 50 years of experience concertizing, teaching, and lecturing all over the world.

For ordering information please write to: FingeringBook

PianoFingering@yahoo.com