Does anyone have experience with ALL the Dohnanyi exercises?

[maxim3]

This question is only for those who have had a serious fling with Dohnanyi.

I'm a sort of intermediate self-taught type of piano learner.

I have discovered, after some months of not looking at them, that I can play the famous (or infamous) finger-busting Dohnanyi exercises with much less effort than I could before. You know the ones I'm talking about.

But I've just been having a brief stab at all the other exercises, and my question is this: Does anyone in the world bother doing ALL of Dohnanyi?

If you have experience of the whole book, I'd love to hear any opinons, memories, etc. you might care to offer.

[adodd81802]

You persist with your obsession of exercises... Are you learning any pieces at the moment?

I sincerely hope you're not just concentrating on exercises and nothing else.

[lostinidlewonder]

Focusing on exercises too much can give a very false sense of security when it comes to playing the piano. Just because you can play exercises well doesn't mean you can play pieces well, however often if you can play many pieces well you also can do exercises no problems. You will also find that through doing lots of pieces that many exercises are actually obsolete or irrelevant to the general procedures you find in actual music.  

Personally I never focused on exercises but do use them to teach with although I will not teach every single exercise in the book just the ones which have some relevance to a students study. Doing an entire volume simply highlights insecurity with ones own understanding in what they need to know technique wize. It also highlights a lack of understanding as to how one actually improves at the piano, one might believe that just doing exercises well proves they can learn well, it is just a wrong way of looking at your progress.