This book by Son Yeol-eum has three distinct features that set it apart from other introductory books to classical music.
First, it is an easy-to-read yet dense text that can be read by anyone who loves music, not just classical music enthusiasts.
Second, it introduces a way to look at music through the eyes of the performer, including the eyes of the audience.
And finally, the fact that he is honestly and candidly confessing about the secret area that the public has always been curious about, 'the life of a performer'.

On a piano, you just press a key once and it's done.
The ability to imagine the direction of a sound before pressing it, combined with the muscles trained over a long period of time, can only infinitely change its properties.
_Among the 'most musical and humane instruments, the piano'

Even among people who think they have absolute pitch, definitive absolute pitch is quite rare.
In my view, absolute pitch is when you can identify a note regardless of whether it is familiar or not, distinguish between harmonics, which are combinations of notes, and when you can imagine the note in your head without hearing it.
_'Absolute Pitch vs.
Among the 'relative pitch'

I think Schubert is somewhere in the middle between Beethoven and Mozart.
His music is so indescribable that it is impossible to describe it without using the keyword of sadness. Except for a very few songs, all of his works are imbued with a unique sadness._From 'Come, Sweet Sorrow'

The problem is that this encore performance is much more difficult for the performer than expected.
Of course, there is no performer who would not want to respond to an audience cheering for their performance.
But the main performance just ended, the tension was released, emotions were extremely high, and at the same time, the muscles were at their most tired.
This encore time is truly the time when the body, head, and mind all play separately.
_From 'Encore Time, the real concert starts now'

If you look at the seventh movement of this man's work, David's Alliance Dances, Op. 6, you will see that 'ritardando' appears a whopping fourteen times over two pages, but 'a tempo' is nowhere to be found.
(Omitted) His other love was children.
It's not a rash guess just because he and his wife Clara have eight children.


Traces of this are engraved in the album for children, Op. 68.
The 'three stars' mark, which he used to put only on his own songs that he had a special affection for, was put only on albums for children.
_From 'Ah Tempo, into that sweet dream I don't want to wake up from/Robert Schumann'

If I were to make those contents into a single 'keyword' from my own perspective... Beethoven would be 'the conquest of freedom', Schubert would be 'hope in despair', Schumann would be 'love', Chopin would be 'longing', Brahms would be 'deficiency', Tchaikovsky would be 'dream', and Shostakovich would be... 'accusation'.
They sublimated each of these keywords into art throughout their lives.
And I would say that the keyword of this composer, Sergei Sergeevich Prokofiev (1891-1953), is 'homing instinct'. _From 'Music of the Homing Instinct/Sergei Prokofiev'

I have yet to meet a single pianist or violinist who can play Schubert without his hands getting tangled.
The problem with these songs is that the scale is irregular, making it impossible to get used to them, and the harmonic progression is so strange that it's difficult to even remember them in your head. This is a completely different situation for the listener.
His music, which simply transcribes the rising thoughts into sheet music, cannot possibly sound difficult. _From 'A Man Too Difficult for Us/Franz Schubert'

Bruch's Concerto No. 1, which captures the live performance, is so vivid from the introduction that it is heartbreaking to the point of burning his artistic spirit to the end.
The vibrato, which has become even thicker than before, seems to squeeze out all the hardships of life that music can portray.
But despite these brilliant performances in his later years, he never blossomed again.
Instead, in 1972, he was found dead at the age of thirty-five.
The cause of death was speculated to be drug intoxication, suicide, concussion, shock, etc., but in the end, the exact cause was never determined.
_From 'My Eternal Prometheus/Michael Ravin'

It's been half a century since winning five or six of the world's most important competitions guaranteed a comfortable life as a professional musician.
Performance agencies are no longer interested in the one out of 300 contest winners, and competition organizers are having an increasingly difficult time persuading such agencies.
_From 'A Society That Risks Its Lives for Concours'

The law in South Korea that prohibits university professors from providing private tutoring is strictly applied to the music field as well.
Unfortunately, this is an issue that is even less realistic in the domestic music industry.
In Korea, where there are no professional musicians who only perform, and where top-level musicians usually teach at universities, this means that, in principle, all music students in Korea cannot access the highest level of education before entering university.
Since early education is a critical area, many young students who fail to overcome it end up going abroad to study. _From 'The Reality of Music Education in Korea'

The fact that I have no family, no friends, no phone, no sheet music, nothing by my side, and yet I have to keep going without stopping.
What makes this fact all the more brutal is that it is so similar to 'living'.
Everyone who is thrown onto the stage of life is alone.
So there's nothing we can do about it.
That was the title of a movie episode of an animation I used to like.
“You are (not) alone.”_From ‘The Pianist is Alone’

___From the text