Keyboard Masters Give a Piano Lesson

Set your VCR, make yourself comfortable, then watch, uninterrupted, “The Art of Piano” on KCET-TV from 9 to 11 tonight. Don’t leave your seat.

Whether you are a history-of-piano innocent or a longtime keyboard connoisseur, you do not want to miss any part of this thoroughly engrossing, endlessly delightful, wondrously informative show, the accomplishment of director Donald Sturrock, who co-wrote it with Christian Labrande.

The documentary’s high points are its cameo performances. In all, 18 major pianists of the 20th century are featured, among them Sviastoslav Richter, Artur Rubinstein, Glenn Gould, Myra Hess, Alfred Cortot and Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, and that’s a quick skim.

Without a doubt, for one listener, the peaks here are Josef Hofmann’s magisterial, musically heart-stopping yet tonally edgeless playing of Rachmaninoff’s once-ubiquitous C-sharp minor Prelude; Gyorgy Cziffra’s immaculate, appallingly fleet, blurringly virtuosic romp through Liszt’s “Grand Galop Chromatique”; and Claudio Arrau’s transcendental conclusion to Beethoven’s Opus 111.

Whole pieces and large sections of pieces are here played; the listener is never frustrated by mere snippets. In addition, truly expert musical commentators add colorful and historical information one could get only from them.

Schuyler Chapin remembers Vladimir Horowitz, backstage at Carnegie Hall, about to reenter the concert world after 12 years away. Gyorgy Sandor describes why Hofmann was the ideal and the standard for two generations of his peers. Stephen Kovacevich explains the Glenn Gould phenomenon. Daniel Barenboim probes the “normality” that made Rubinstein beloved of musicians and audiences alike. Not incidentally, the easygoing host is Artur’s son, actor John Rubinstein.

Was anyone left out? Of course. Naturally, those pianists still living or recently active, like Alicia de Larrocha. And some others. From the arguable historical periphery, players like Shura Cherkassky and Guiomar Novaes. From the mainstream: Rudolf Serkin and Walter Gieseking. Artur Schnabel is mentioned--once, and in passing. That seems parsimonious.

* “The Art of Piano” will be broadcast at 9 tonight on KCET and will be rebroadcast Sunday at 5 p.m.