Monday Book: Missing the keyboard by a mile

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO THE PIANO EDITED BY DAVID ROWLAND, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, pounds 14.95

WITH SHINE a success first in the cinema and recently on prime- time television, it's clear that there are now big bucks to be made from shooting the pianist. As with Gary Oldman's glowering Beethoven in Immortal Beloved, so with Geoffrey Rush's portrayal of David Helfgott - the preferred mode is swooning fades and reverential tracking-shots, as befits such epic musical heroes.

It was not ever thus. The keyboard gods of the 18th century were esteemed for their stillness. Clementi made his pupils practise with a coin on the back of their hands; Mozart, who prided himself on making his music "flow like oil", believed the fingers should always be in close contact with the keys. Machines were invented to clamp arms and hands in the "correct" horizontal position. It was a long while before audiences tumbled to the poten- tial poetry of the pianistic spectacle.

They were given a nudge by Ladislav Dussek, possessor of a strikingly noble profile, who was the first pianist to insist on being seen side- on. Then they began to appreciate digital athletics: the Russian composer Glinka went into ecstasies over John Field's fingers, which "poured over the keys as pearls on velvet".

One observer described the way Chopin's hands "would suddenly expand and cover a third of the keyboard. It was like the opening of the mouth of a serpent, about to swallow a rabbit whole." Then came the eye-rolling, mane-tossing, mesmeric Liszt, and the game was raised for good.

I learned none of this, alas, from the sober essayists in The Cambridge Companion to the Piano, but I am indebted to one for a thought-provoking account of 19th-century concert life. Pianistic duels were not uncommon, with the winner literally playing the loser out of the auditorium. Solo recitals - the term was first used by Liszt - were rare, with most concerts being variety acts in which several artists shared the stage. Virtuoso pianists doubled as accompanists for comics.

In contrast to their mute modern counterparts, 19th-century players introduced their own programmes, wandering among the audience to gauge the reaction. At a recital in 1848, Liszt "burst two bass strings, and personally fetched a second... After breaking yet another two strings, he loudly informed the public that, since it didn't satisfy him, he would play it again. As he began, he vehemently threw his gloves and handkerchief on the floor."

Audiences behaved like modern rock fans, shouting out the pieces they wanted, interrupting works which bored them. It sounds a great deal healthier than the strait-laced concert culture of today.

We have lost something, moreover, through our disdain for improvisation and our rigid distinction between "classical" and "new" music. In the Romantic era virtually all pianists were composers, and routinely played their own works. They improvised and took liberties which would now be anathema, rewriting Chopin and Schumann to display their keyboard talents to more flattering effect.

Now, textual fidelity is a fetish, and we are the poorer for it.

Throughout its 300-year history, the piano has inspired the greatest composers to their highest flights of creativity. In the hands of Alfred Brendel, it's an orchestra; in the hands of Cecil Taylor, it's 88 tuned drums; when "prepared" by Lou Harrison, it's a Balinese gamelan.

In the 19th century, the piano was the focal point of every bourgeois home; in our century, it's the glue for social gatherings. And, as a piece of engineering, it has scarcely changed at all. It is, in sum, well suited to critical circumambulation.

Yet this book misses the mark by a mile. It was a mistake to imagine so compendious a subject could be jammed into 240 pages, and a worse one to entrust it to an editor who does not seem to understand what editing means, and whose prose is as leaden as David Rowland's. The chronological structure implies that it should be read, rather than consulted, yet to read it through is to be hit over the head by clonking repetitions. Was this august publisher unable to afford an in-house editor, or did he or she fall asleep on the job?

If the latter, I can quite see why.

To divide the story into two parallel sections - "Pianos and pianists" and "Repertory" - was not a bad idea, but with the strands so inextricably intertwined the job needed great editorial skill. Some chapters feel curiously arbitrary, others hopelessly cramped. Only Brian Priestley - dispatching "Ragtime, blues, jazz, and popular music" in 16 pages - manages to make sense of his near-impossible brief.

I'm still glad to have read this book, if only for the incidental insights along the way. But for the history of pianism in all its variegated glory, read Harold Schonberg's The Great Pianists. For a history of the repertory, consult F E Kirby's exhaustive Music for Piano. And for pianism in the classical period, look into the superb Mozart Compendium or its Beethoven sibling (Thames & Hudson), both of which - Cambridge nota bene! - are exemplary works of reference.