This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book evaluates performance style from the evidence of recordings. It examines how concert pianists in the western classical tradition were trained, got started in the profession, then developed and sustained their careers. A study of English pianism in the central decades of the twentieth century reveals many interesting aspects of concert life as it was then, and this in itself is illuminating to the modern researcher. Concert pianists have often engaged in a variety of other related activities such as teaching, editing, composing, writing and interdisciplinary performance. Use of recordings as research documents has become standard practice over the last twenty years-or-so, and in the present case, recordings were employed in a dual capacity.