Rosalyn Tureck was the first twentieth-century artist to make the Goldberg Variations and all-Bach recitals popular, earning recognition and praise for bringing Bach to the world. Now we have an autobiography by Ms. Tureck(1913-2003), the renowned keyboard artist and scholar who dedicated her life to the works of Johann Sebastian Bach. The book, written with intelligence, candor, and wit, recounts her childhood in Chicago as a piano prodigy; her years at Juilliard -- where the seventeen-year-old Rosalyn blacked out in a rehearsal room and came round with a revelation that she needed to create a new and different type of keyboard technique geared specifically to the playingof Bach; her 1932 Carnegie Hall debut (performing Bach on a theremin!) and remarkable 1937 all-Bach Town Hall concerts; her studies with Arnold Schoenberg; and her galvanic career performing and lecturing on Bach in far-flung cities, along with her founding of several musical and research societies including the Tureck Bach Research Institute. There are vivid travelogues about her extensive work in Great Britain and tours to Russia, South Africa, and India, and richly rendered tales of her friendships with Myra Hess, Robert Oppenheimer, James T. Farrell, Saul Bellow, Dylan Thomas, Bertrand Russell, and Arnold Schoenberg, among others.

Rosalyn Tureck was a renowned twentieth-century keyboard artist, teacher, conductor, scholar, author, and lecturer, who was particularly associated with the music of J.S. Bach. She taught Juilliard, Mannes School of Music, Columbia University, and the University ofMaryland.

Rebecca Paller, a curator at the Paley Center for Media in New York, has written about the arts for publications including Opera News, Opera, Vogue, Playbill, Symphony, and American Theatre. Sheis the co-author of First and Lasting Impressions: Julius Rudel Looks Back on a Life in Music.