Quotes by Pianists - Page 2

Nobody will believe in you unless you believe in yourself.
Liberace
There are two sides to every question: my side and the wrong side.
Oscar Levant
The only true immortality lies in one's chi
Johannes Brahms
Simplicity is the key to beauty. Clarity is the key to perfection.
David Nevue
I'm the hero of this story, I don't need to be saved
Regina Spektor
That our selves and all men are apt and prone to differ it is no new Thing in all former Ages in all parts of this World in these parts and in our deare native Countrey and mournfull state of England.That either part or partie is most right in his owne eye his Cause Right his Cariage Right, his Argumts Right his Answeres Right is as wofully and constantly true as the former. And experience tells us that when the God of peace hath taken peace from the Earth one sparke of Action word or Cariage is too too powrefull to kindle such a fire as burns up Families Townes Cities Armies, Navies Nations and Kingdomes.[Letter of Roger Williams to Town of Providence, August 31, 1648]
Roger Williams
I was in the situation of someone who has assumed, all his life, that madness was on eway, and suddenly in its grip, discovers that it is not only different from the way he'd imagined but that the person suffering from it is someone else, and that this someone else is not interested in finding out what madness is like: he is simply immersed in it, or it has descended on him, and that's that.
Felisberto Hernández
I know that our world is going through a very difficult time right now, but I will never lose my faith in humanity, and our incredible ability to overcome just about anything.
Yanni
One lives by memory . . . and not by truth.
Igor Stravinsky
He gives me the impression of being a spoilt child.(on Liszt)
Clara Schumann
He was a six and a half foot scowl.(on Rachmaninov)
Igor Stravinsky
Can’t say what impresses me most about my followers – their good looks, their incredible intellects, or their immunity to cheap flattery.
David Burge
By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong. life-quotes.co
Charles Wadsworth
Mrs. Horowitz said, "It is inexcusable that humans think they can murder other animals because they murder themselves. I must tell you, I hate humans. They terrify me.""They should," I continued. "I interviewed Yehudi Menuhin the other day.
David Dubal
The world is in A major...the earth revolves in A major, a low A.
Thomas Ades
A coward is a servant of his fears.A hero enslaves his fears.
Lera Auerbach
I cannot now evaluate the events that, at the end of those thirty years, made me discover the necessity of religious belief. I was not reasoned into my disposition. Though I admire the structured thought of theology, it is to religion no more than counterpoint exercises are to music.
Igor Stravinsky
You may be thinking that your company has a human resources person who will keep you out of trouble. This is a dangerous misconception. Whether your company has a massive Human Resources Department with hundreds of representatives or a small office with just a single representative, these HR reps are not your advocates. They work for the company, not for you.
Johanna Harris
Everything great that has ever happened to humanity has begun as a single thought in someone's mind, and if anyone of us is capable of such a thought, then all of us has the same capacity, capability, because we're all the same.
Yanni
Why are we so afraid to die? Are we concerned about the reckoning we may have to face on the other side? Or does the thought of our nonexistence terrify us? Perhaps neither. Perhaps what we fear most is no longer being able to do the things we love.
Fabrizio Paterlini
A quiet mind allows the artist to tap into the wellspring of Divine Music within.
Kenny Werner
We are all part of a universal game. Returning to our essence while living in the world is the object of the game. The earth is the game board, and we are the pieces on the board. We move around and around until we remember who we really are, and then we can be taken off the board. At that point, we are no longer the game-piece, but the player; we've won the game.
Kenny Werner
It is odd that the Bible says, ‘God created man,’ whereas it is the other way round: man has created God. It is odd that the Bible says, ‘The body is mortal, the soul is immortal,’ whereas even here the contrary is true: the body (its matter) is eternal; the soul (the form of the body) is transitory.
Béla Bartók
Today we're younger than we're ever gonna be
Regina Spektor
By the time I had complete my 22nd year, I was a new man - an atheist.
Béla Bartók
A conscious being without free will is simply a metaphysical absurdity.
Raymond M. Smullyan
No, free will is not an 'extra'; it is part and parcel of the very essence of consciousness. A conscious being without free will is simply a metaphysical absurdity.
Raymond M. Smullyan
I detest audiences - not in their individual components, but en masse I detest audiences. I think they're a force of evil. It seems to me rule of mob law.
Glenn Gould
I'd like to thank my parents for making this night possible. And my children for making it necessary.
Victor Borge
Because life is short. I feel we’re made of a hunger, a desire for life – if that can be described as a material. As I get older, I’m trying to open that channel more. If you don’t, if you close off desire and get complacent, life loses its freshness and sweetness, and that’s what I crave. That’s my bliss.
Sarah Slean
Do not confuse kindness with weakness. Kindness is a dying art. It is the single most important quality in this world and one which is sorely lacking.
James Rhodes
How strange! This bed on which I shall lie has been slept on by more than one dying man, but today it does not repel me! Who knows what corpses have lain on it and for how long? But is a corpse any worse than I? A corpse too knows nothing of its father, mother or sisters or Titus. Nor has a corpse a sweetheart. A corpse, too, is pale, like me. A corpse is cold, just as I am cold and indifferent to everything. A corpse has ceased to live, and I too have had enough of life…. Why do we live on through this wretched life which only devours us and serves to turn us into corpses? The clocks in the Stuttgart belfries strike the midnight hour. Oh how many people have become corpses at this moment! Mothers have been torn from their children, children from their mothers - how many plans have come to nothing, how much sorrow has sprung from these depths, and how much relief!… Virtue and vice have come in the end to the same thing! It seems that to die is man’s finest action - and what might be his worst? To be born, since that is the exact opposite of his best deed. It is therefore right of me to be angry that I was ever born into this world! Why was I not prevented from remaining in a world where I am utterly useless? What good can my existence bring to anyone? … But wait, wait! What’s this? Tears? How long it is since they flowed! How is this, seeing that an arid melancholy has held me for so long in its grip? How good it feels - and sorrowful. Sad but kindly tears! What a strange emotion! Sad but blessed. It is not good for one to be sad, and yet how pleasant it is - a strange state…
Frédéric Chopin
Ultimately, musicians of the world must come realise the potential of their calling.Like the shamans, we may serve as healers, metaphysicians, inciters, exciters,spiritual guides and sources of inspiration. If the musician is illuminated from within,he becomes a lamp that lights other lamps. Then he is serving planet and its people,healing what ails us. Such music is truly important. It is said that “only one who obeys can truly command.” When the artist is immersed in a services,giving himself up over and over again, another paradox occurs:He is being seen by all others as a master.
Kenny Werner
When one does a thing, it appears good, otherwise one would not write it. Only later comes reflection, and one discards or accepts the thing. Time is the best censor, and patience a most excellent teacher.
Frédéric Chopin
Sorrowful and great is the artist's destiny.
Franz Liszt
I have inflammation of the imagination.
Lera Auerbach
I was used, fucked, broken, toyed with and violated from the age of six.
James Rhodes
A love of classical music is only partially a natural response to hearing the works performed; it also must come about by a decision to listen carefully, to pay close attention, a decision inevitably motivated by the cultural and social prestige of the art.
Charles Rosen
Realized dreams often turn into nightmares.
Lera Auerbach
Of all the arts, music is really the most abstract.
Leo Ornstein
I would say that Op 31 had brought music just to the very edge … I just simply drew back and said, “beyond that lies complete chaos”.
Leo Ornstein
There are eighty-eight keys on a piano and within that, an entire universe.
James Rhodes
Music embodies feeling without forcing it to contend and combine with thought, as it is forced in most arts and especially in the art of words.
Franz Liszt
Plenty of masterpieces are just one cliché after another, Mozart for example, but that's quite natural, because if you think about it, two clichés that have never met each other before can beget the most original and profound effect.
Thomas Ades
Brahms' Variations are better than mine, but mine were written before his.
Franz Liszt
The lower the class of the affair, the more likely the band will be invited to eat.
Don Asher
Kalkbrenner has made me an offer; that I should study with him for three years, and he will make something really - really out of me. I answered that I know how much I lack; but that I cannot exploit him, and three years is too much. But he has convinced me that I can play admirably when I am in the mood, and badly when I am not; a thing which never happens to him. After close examination he told me that I have no school; that I am on an excellent road, but can slip off the track. That after his death, or when he finally stops playing, there will be no representative of the great piano-forte school. That even if I wish it, I cannot build up a new school without knowing the old one; in a word : that I am not a perfected machine, and that this hampers the flow of my thoughts. That I have a mark in composition; that it would be a pity not to become what I have the promise of being...
Frédéric Chopin
People usually complain that music is so ambiguous, and what they are supposed to think when they hear it is so unclear, while words are understood by everyone. But for me it is exactly the opposite...what the music I love expresses to me are thoughts not to indefinite for words, but rather too definite.
Felix Mendelssohn
The sheer force of the music calls for a wild audience reaction.
Emanuel Ax
The new kind of music seems to create not from the heart but from the head. Its composers think rather than feel. They have not the capacity to make their works exalt - they meditate, protest, analyze, reason, calculate and brood, but they do not exalt.
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Music is the heart of life." She speaks love; "without it, there is no possible good and with it everything is beautiful.
Franz Liszt
Bach is an astronomer, discovering the most marvellous stars. Beethoven challenges the universe. I only try to express the soul and the heart of man.
Frédéric Chopin
I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.
Igor Stravinsky
Whatever may be my activity in a given moment (whether I am composing, or whether I am making love . . .), I feel pleasure if there is an obstacle placed in my path but one not greater than my ability to overcome. If circumstances paralyze my energy, I suffer. From this point of view, pleasure and pain accompany every moment of our life, even if we try to disregard them.
Alexander Scriabin
Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.
Frédéric Chopin
The notes I can handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes-ah, that is where the art resides.
Artur Schnabel
If an artist wants to use his mind for creative work, cutting oneself off from society is a necessary thing
Glenn Gould
The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes - ah, that is where the art resides.
Artur Schnabel
The only difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats allow the poor to be corrupt, too.
Oscar Levant
I have no use for a theoretic freedom. Let me have something finite, definite — matter that can lend itself to my operation only insofar as it is commensurate with my possibilities. And such matter presents itself to me together with limitations. I must in turn impose mine upon it. So here we are, whether we like it or not, in the realm of necessity. And yet which of us has ever heard talk of art as other than a realm of freedom? This sort of heresy is uniformly widespread because it is imagined that art is outside the bounds of ordinary activity. Well, in art as in everything else, one can build only upon a resisting foundation: whatever constantly gives way to pressure, constantly renders movement impossible. My freedom thus consists in my moving about within the narrow frame that I have assigned myself for each one of my undertakings.I shall go even further: my freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint, diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self of the chains that shackle the spirit.
Igor Stravinsky