From the start, this book brings light to many questions and uncertainties about nineteenth-century piano performance practice, addressing, in addition to dynamics, pedalling, tone and touch, issues such as dislocation, unnotated arpeggiation, rubato and tempo modification. The book features in-depth analysis of early- to mid-twentieth-century piano performances, using piano rolls and recordings of renowned pianists and pedagogues as guidance. There are five main chapters, plus an introduction, a conclusion, bibliography, discography and index. In addition, the book offers a foreword, preface, acknowledgements and explanation of its companion website.

Although the use of additional information on companion websites has been commonly used in academic textbooks, it is innovative for musicological research like this. As an important addition to the book, the website takes readers on a journey through great performances with extracts of rare recordings and score examples. There are audio samples and illustrations for Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5, with a total of 230 tracks and 158 examples of passages and annotated scores. Landon Ronald's interpretations of Grieg's Bridal Procession and Dance Caprice, op. 28 no. 3, are the oldest gramophone recordings available, recorded by the English pianist in 1900. Other treasures include Johannes Brahms's and Joseph Joachim's performance of the composer's Hungarian Dance No. 1, originally recorded on wax cylinder in 1889. On the same website, the author includes six bonus tracks and five extra appendices with 35 illustrations. Lastly, the bibliography and discography are brilliantly put together, offering 14 pages of written and audio resources.

One of the many questions addressed at the beginning of the book is that of what is considered correct and acceptable when performing music from before the mid nineteenth century. The twentieth- and now twenty-first-century quest for perfection almost always emphasizes correct notes, rigid rhythms, accurate dynamics and expression marks, leaving the recording or performance lifeless and stiff. In his introduction, Peres da Costa states that ‘Frequently we, the recording artists, strive for and insist upon an almost unattainable perfection’ (p. xxx). The impressive clarity, accuracy and dexterity of modern performances, with the output of clear sound recordings available, leave any contemporary listener thirsty for more spontaneous execution. Chapter 1 examines early recorded performances preserved with acoustic recording devices and piano rolls. The author highlights the mechanical differences between phonographs, gramophones and graphophones, and explains the different mechanisms of three distinctive piano rolls companies: Welte-Mignon, Duo-Art and Ampico. His explanation of the different reproduction systems shows an insightful understanding of their length limitations, acoustic capability and frequency-recording limitations. Though some recordings lack clarity, they are still important sources of early piano playing, preserving general performance practices and early interpretations of renowned artists. But we learn that Arnold Schoenberg was reluctant to accept these recordings as reflective of true performance, as Peres da Costa notes ‘he [Schoenberg] singles out Ampico as having inserted expression marks, evened out scales and altered dynamics on their rolls’ (p. 28). Arguments against the validity of the recordings notwithstanding, most of them are invaluable sources of historical performance practice, though less accurate for dynamics and pedalling, since these were difficult to encode in recording sessions.

In Chapter 2 Peres da Costa describes at length the use of dislocation – an unsynchronized way of playing right and left hands.Footnote ¹ The chapter includes four useful charts: the first defines the different types of dislocation preserved in early recordings, the second offers an explanatory guide about dislocation in earlier recordings, and the last two are comparisons of Chopin's Nocturne op. 27 no. 2, performed by different pianists using dislocation in different bars (pp. 46–50, 76–6). The charts all confirm that dislocation was used for the purpose of timing and shaping of phrases, especially in music with a slow tempo. One of the most interesting charts appears in Table 2.2, ‘Dislocation Preserved in Early Recordings’, where it is divided into three columns giving pianists’ names, titles of compositions with frequent dislocations, and compositions with infrequent or no dislocation (pp. 47–50). Though the table shows priceless and rare recordings – such as Adelina de Lara's 1951 recording of Robert Schumann's Fantasiestücke op. 12 nos. 1 and 2, Kinderszenen op. 15 no. 1, and Arabeske op. 18 – there is no indication of where the recordings are located on the companion website. Malwine Brée, Theodor Leschetizky's student and teaching assistant, wrote ‘word for word’ his advice about dislocation: ‘Neither should bass tone and melody-note always be taken precisely together, but the melody-tone may be struck an instant after the bass, which gives it more relief and a softer effect. However, this can be done only at the beginning of a phrase, and usually only on important notes and strong beats’ (p. 52). This technique, now rarely used, was once a very popular expressive tool.

In Chapter 3, Peres da Costa explores the use of unnotated arpeggios, added by pianists to enrich a passage and bring to light certain harmonies. Unnotated chordal arpeggiation, a common practice among pianists before the mid twentieth century, is a form of dislocation when notes of a chord are played out of alignment. Legendary pianists such as Carl Reinecke, Camille Saint-Säens, Theodor Leschetizky, Raoul Pugno, Vladimir de Pachmann, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Moriz Rosenthal and others, used this practice frequently, to emphasize or to support the melodic line, to enhance or minimize the harmony, to accent an important pitch, to enrich a musical texture, or to separate overlapping melodic lines and/or to delineate phrase structure. Due to the scarcity of written explanation, present-day pianists rely on earlier recordings of great pianists to make decisions on how to play a chord and when to arpeggiate it. Today, arpeggiation is often seen as a method of prolonging the sound of earlier keyboard instruments – such as harpsichords and fortepianos – or as a way to play large chords with a hand too small for the reach. But there is a plethora of written texts with detailed rules for arpeggiation. One that is discussed in some detail by Peres da Costa is Ignaz Moscheles’ Studies for the Pianoforte, op. 70 (1827),Footnote ² in which the expression mark portato is identified as indicating arpeggiation (p. 112). Peres da Costa also notes that, although Carl Czerny added an arpeggio sign to the first chord of Beethoven's Piano Concerto op. 58 in his Theoretical and Practical Pianoforte School op. 500 (1839),Footnote ³ Czerny expresses dissatisfaction with the indiscriminate use of arpeggiation: ‘many players accustom themselves so much to Arpeggio chords that they at last become quite unable to strike full chords or even double notes firmly and at once; though this latter way is the general rule, while the former constitutes the exception’ (p. 117). Further, we learn that Johann Cramer's treatise, Instructions for the Pianoforte (1812),Footnote ⁴ relies on earlier keyboard practices when an accompanist improvised on a given figured bass and used signs as guidance for when and how to play an arpeggio, though Cramer also writes that the performer had the final decision of what and how to play. Peres da Costa concludes the discussion by saying that listening to earlier recordings and studying contemporary treatises has led him to use unnotated arpeggiation more often, as a means of varying expression and texture, and of making phrases breathe with more ease. He concludes: ‘Although early recordings reveal a widespread employment of unnotated arpeggiation, contemporaneous written texts fail to document clearly its importance and characteristics. Indeed, the impression of the practice from written texts alone do not correspond to, and in some cases is completely divergent with, reality’ (p. 187).

Chapter 4 is entitled ‘Metrical Rubato and Other Forms of Rhythmic Alteration’. Rubato, which the author describes as the rhythmic alteration of the melodic line while the accompaniment stays within the metrical regularity (p. 189), was considered by Adolph Christiani ‘the truly artistic rubato’ (p. 193).Footnote ⁵ Though some authors do not distinguish metrical rubato from tempo rubato (or just rubato), Peres da Costa makes a clear distinction between the terms, the first one referring to Chopin's cantabile style of pianism – where the accompaniment is steady and the melodic line free; and the second term, where both hands slow down and speed up together. The chapter also describes other forms of rhythmic alteration, including small-scale alteration (when adjacent equal notes become unequal and vice versa), dotting and ‘tripletizing’ (to give and to take emphasis of certain passages or notes to make them uneven or even), inequality (a type of small-scale alteration where equal note values become unequal, also called notes inégales), and large-scale alteration (the same principle as small-scale alteration but over extended sequences in a bar). Such rhythmic alterations are almost impossible to write in a text or to mark on a score, though the lack of visual resources is counterbalanced by a fair number of notable pianists’ recordings. While Peres da Costa is the first author to detail each kind of rhythmic alteration, the first acknowledgement of the notion of metrical rubato appeared already in an early-nineteenth-century British monthly music journal: ‘Writing in the Harmonicon in 1823, an anonymous author mentioned the many “delicate shades in music” that cannot be described in writing and must “be learnt and felt by the genius and practise [sic] of a performer.” Among these are “the tempo rubato, or occasional retardation of the time for the purpose of enforcing the expression.” Such shades are only effective in “the hand of a master”‘ (p. 234).Footnote ⁶

The last chapter addresses tempo modification, also sometimes described as tempo rubato or rubato. The difference between this concept and that described in the previous chapter is that the speeding and slowing down of a phrase happens in both hands in more than one bar; the use of accelerando in counterpart with ritardando, ‘suggesting a musical compensation for time gained or lost’ (p. 267). Peres da Costa goes into technical detail, using 20 charts to show bar to bar performance lengths. Charts 5.2 to 5.15 offer a comparative compendium of performances including work titles, pianists’ names, bar numbers, timing (in seconds), and percentage change between bar (pp. 254–61). Peres da Costa observes that earlier pianists performed with more noticeable nuances than do modern pianists, who are more consistent with tempo. Besides providing precise written information, each chart has links to online audio tracks, helping readers/listeners understand his annotation. Peres da Costa's detailed comparisons show how the understanding of tempo and interpretation has changed over the years, as tastes have changed. But they also show that different pianists from the same era can perform the same piece differently according to each understanding of what is beautiful and acceptable. The earliest recordings provided in this chapter date from 1903, and include Grieg's performance of several of his own works and Pugno's performance of Chopin's Nocturne, op. 15, no. 2, and there are a total of 51 tracks for illustration in this chapter alone. The questions explored here are: Is it possible to replicate an era? Is it possible to perform the same piece the same way? Is it possible to replicate a performance? The author even mentions that his own taste has changed (p. 207), when referring to acceptance of the ritardandos and accelerandos of earlier performances. He concludes the chapter by admitting that ‘we may never know just how much Brahms, Chopin, or Mozart really modified tempo in their performances. What is certain though is that they did so and in very individual ways that could not be encapsulated in their scores’ (p. 308).

This book offers thorough and detailed research on nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century piano performance practice. Undoubtedly, concepts of performance practice have changed throughout the years, and what once was essential may now be considered alien or pedantic. It is also evident that not everything intended by the composer is written in the score, and such will always be the case. Earlier recordings can serve as guides to the modern pianist, but they can never serve as fixed templates for successful interpretation. They should serve only as examples of long-established traditions. A good performance is still based on following the score with additional agogic interpretation, coupled with historical guidance. Peres da Costa sums it all in his last paragraph: ‘To come to an understanding about what musical notation meant to composers and performers of the late nineteenth century, we must accept that the most admired musicians of the era approached the aesthetics of performance from a very different perspective than musicians today. Such knowledge suggests that a historically informed style of performance for any repertoire, time, or place requires more than just playing by the book’ (p. 310).