"In his autobiographical "Notes of a Pianist," nineteenth-century New Orleans piano virtuoso and composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk shares with us his impressions as he travels through North and South America. His concert schedule and the number of cities he visits in a year during the age of locomotive and steamship would be daunting to even the most travel-hardened jet-age road warrior. Whether at a railroad siding worrying about the fate of his precious Chickering concert grand pianos before the Civil War battle of Gettysburg, fleeing San Francisco for South America because of a concocted scandal, or tending the wounded during the revolution in Lima, Peru, Gottschalk puts the reader in the middle of the action. His writing style is like his music--bold, colorful, romantic, virtuosic, and dramatic."--Lambert Orkis, Grammy Award-winning pianist

"Having grown up in opera-mad New Orleans in a household in which Creole tunes were probably common currency, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, after finishing school in Paris, gave free rein to his captivating and spontaneous fantasy and melodic charm. As Frederick Starr convincingly shows, his music was brilliant and original. And it leaves, when sympathetically presented, an indelible impression of his genius."--Lawrence Gushee, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, author of "Pioneers of Jazz: The Story of the Creole Band"

"Over and above all [the] purely sensuous aspects of [Gottschalk's] pianism . . . Was the presence of a genuinely musical soul. This was what most commanded the admiration of his friend and mentor Hector Berlioz: his musicianship, his taste, and his fine sense of proportion."--From the editor's Prelude