"The Hungarian composer Bela Bartok (1881-1945) studied the piano with a pupil of Franz Liszt and was himself an outstanding pianist. He composed more than 300 pieces for the piano, many of which belong in the standard repertoire of most students and professional pianists. Yet this book is the first attempt to come to grips with his entire piano output from the perspective of the performer as distinct from that of the music historian, biographer, or analyst.

Pianist Barbara Nissman has made a close study of the works in the course of preparing a complete recording of them and offers her insights and suggestions for interpretation and performance. Paying particular attention to the piano sonata of 1926, the suite Out of Doors, and the three piano concertos, she looks at Bartok's other works in chapters on folk music, the composer as teacher, and juvenilia.

She includes a discography of Bartok's recordings, an annotated bibliography, and a CD containing her own recordings of selected works, including two movements of the little-known early sonata of 1898."--BOOK JACKET.