Piano two feet - extracted from Sydney Grew's masterly work "The Art of the Player-Piano":

"Pedalling is for the player-pianist what breathing is for the singer and bowing for the violinist, or - to draw illustration from the instrument out of which the player arose - what finger-touch is for the pianist. The pedalling, indeed, is the touch, "direct" when unmodified by any mechanical appliance, "controlled" when modified by the Touch-buttons or Control-levers. The various appliances manipulated by the fingers are vital in the organism of the player, and the use of them is essential in performance; but these are all secondary to the Pedals, and the effects derived from the appliances (except perhaps from the Sustaining-lever) are all secondary to the effects derived from the Pedals, and if your pedalling is wrong, your manipulation of the appliances cannot put matters right. At base the Art of the Player is pedalling, whether the detail under consideration be the marking of metre, the production of tone, the individualising of parts, phrasing, the emphasising of accents, or the presentation of music in vast rhythmic proportion.

"The player-pianist caresses the pedals. He controls them as a driver controls high-spirited horses. He transmits to them the subtle spirit of the movement which music sets dancing through his soul. He employs them with the delicacy with which the sculptor employs his tools; he also hews with them, as the woodsman drives into the tree with his axe. He treats them as the conductor treats his bâton, marking not only the beats, but the rhythm also, and effecting phrasing, tone contrast and quality, climax, and the thousand-and-one details of effect - objective and subjective - which go to the making of musical performance. The Pedals are as the centre of a nerve system, from which are radiated commands to every part of the instrument - the most delicately intimate, as well as broadest and most sweeping."

Ravel Frontispice - for five hands (lots of fives throughout it actually)

This excerpt from Sydney Grew work "The Art of the Player-Piano" is interesting. This work is new to me.

While his description of piano playing useful it is not complete. There is some interesting points for me in the excerpt.
I never saw anybody speak so well about pedal playing. I myself am not half or quarter pedal player. Push it all the way I think could be my moto. I like late pedal too which I am not sure is good or bad. I guess it depends on the piece.
There could be even direct pedal (in waltz for example). May be I am using the wrong word in my translation from my own language. How do you call that on the beat pedal?
I never saw anybody explain to me what they mean by sensitive pedal. Caressing the keys is an expression that I like, but I never thought about caressing pedal.
I want to thank Mr Sydney Grew for his interesting post.

Member autoharp posted an interesting site.
I still find the description about how to use (or love) pedals and all mechanics of the piano very interesting.
One can listen to the piano as the sound make its way on to the string (through so many layers).
Pedals should be working properly and no sqeeks should be heard. But imagine how the pedals move and open dampers and how the piano breathes like a person or an animal. That could be useful.
I think the pianola is the piano that can play from rolls. Also I have seen some instruments that can play rolls and be played by pianists too. I hope other mamebers write something on this matter. j
We all know what Chopin said about pedal I think he was talkin gabout right pedal). I can not quote him, but he said that pedals are the soul of the piano. May be the honorable members can correct me if I am wrong.

I notice that many students drop the right pedal to quickly. May be it is important to develop sensetivity in the foot by listening carefully what comes out from the belly of the beast (piano). I find the discussion about pedal very useful.
There was a good book in Russian language by Golubovskaya on Pedal. The whole book (paper back) devoted to problems of pedaling and musical examples from piano repertoire.

Many of the composers you mention report the habit of reading books and periodicals while playing their studies. I presume this means that none of them were Buddhists, practicing mindfully.

I personally think how useful an exercise is depends on your attitude towards it.
 
If you don't find it interesting then it won't be of much use. However, if you engage with it intelligently (and enthusiatically) as you seem to be, I think it can be a useful way of isolating and working on a particular technical aspect.

I suppose what I am talking about there is things like the Hanon studies, but things like the Moskowski are proper pieces of music, which to me makes a big difference as you have a musical context. You are not just doing musical press-ups, which are to me slightly meaningless (and sometimes harmful), as I think piano technique is less about muscle power than muscle use.

That's one reason I'm very sceptical about exercises, at least when practised in large quantities - they encourage mechanical, unthinking practice, rigid approaches to rhythm (which has its place of course, but not necessarily as the norm) and so on. For almost any technical issue, one can find a passage or passages of music in which it appears, which one can work on - if such things can't be found anywhere, why is it a technical issue? The sorts of exercises that involve holding down four fingers and lifting the fifth forcibly, without moving the wrist, are the quickest road to tendonitis you could ask for. One teacher at Juilliard forced all her students to practise these; some of them developed irrepairable muscular problems as a result, and launched lawsuits against her as a result. As my teacher said about the fact that she did have quite a few good students 'they must have been really good, if they could still play the piano after studying with her' (he could be a real bitch at times ).