Play It Again: An Amateur Against the Impossible (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780374232917)

As editor of the Guardian, one of the world's foremost newspapers, Alan Rusbridger abides by the relentless twenty-four-hour news cycle. But increasingly in midlife, he feels the gravitational pull of music--especially the piano. He sets himself a formidable challenge: to fluently learn Chopin's magnificent Ballade No. 1 in G minor, arguably one of the most difficult Romantic compositions in the repertory. With pyrotechnic passages that require feats of memory, dexterity, and power, the piece is one that causes alarm even in battle-hardened concert pianists. He gives himself a year.

Under ideal circumstances, this would have been a daunting task. But the particular year Rusbridger chooses turns out to be one of frenetic intensity. As he writes in his introduction, Perhaps if I'd known then what else would soon be happening in my day job, I might have had second thoughts. For it would transpire that, at the same time, I would be steering the Guardian through one of the most dramatic years in its history. It was a year that began with WikiLeaks' massive dump of state secrets and ended with the Guardian's revelations about widespread phone hacking at News of the World. In between, there were the Japanese tsunami, the Arab Spring, the English riots . . . and the death of Osama Bin Laden, writes Rusbridger. The test would be to nibble out twenty minutes per day to do something totally unrelated to the above.

Rusbridger's description of mastering the Ballade is hugely engaging, yet his subject is clearly larger than any one piece of classical music. Play It Again deals with focus, discipline, and desire but is, above all, about the sanctity of one's inner life in a world dominated by deadlines and distractions.

What will you do with your twenty minutes?

Author: Alan Rusbridger
ISBN-10: 0374232911
ISBN-13: 9780374232917
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Language: English
Published: 09/17/2013
Pages: 416
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.38lbs
Size: 9.26h x 6.38w x 1.44d

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 04/15/2013 pg. 58
Publishers Weekly 06/24/2013
Kirkus Reviews 07/01/2013
Booklist 08/01/2013 pg. 18
Shelf Awareness 09/24/2013
Library Journal 10/15/2013 pg. 103
New York Times Book Review 12/08/2013 pg. 72
New York Times Book Review 12/15/2013 pg. 38
New York Times Book Review 04/24/2014 pg. 26
Library Journal 04/15/2013

About the Author
Alan Rusbridger has been the editor of the Guardian since 1995. Born in Northern Rhodesia, he was educated at the University of Cambridge and lives in London.