Welcome to Irini's Music Room!!!

I hope that you will find some useful information if you are an injured pianist, or just a curious researcher!

The following pages were prepared for my workshop that I presented at Butler University for my M.M. degree in Piano Pedagogy. I decided to make a small research on hand injuries that pianists have encountered for many years up until today, because I have been through hand surgery and several treatments for my hands. I hope that as you are reading this presentation you can find some answers to questions you might have.

We will start with an introduction of the history and reasons of hand injuries in reference to Robert Schumann, Garry Graffman, and Leon Fleisher and we will continue with the general psychological effects on pianists. Next we will cover body exercises provided by Dr. Richard Norris, M.D. and hand exercises by the Indiana Hand Rehabilitation Center.

On the second part we will see briefly some piano techniques, based on my video tape reviews, by Barbara Lister-Sink and Dorothy Taubman that will help to prevent injuries while practicing and playing at the piano. Various tips and suggestions on piano technique will also be introduced.

In the last part of this presentation you will also find an extensive one hand piano repertoire for beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels that will be followed by a quick short survey. I kindly request from the readers that they take a few minutes to participate in this survey, in order to share ideas and opinions that can be a great help to other musicians around the world.

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