Quotes & Sayings About Pianists

Hearing Marilyn Crispell play solo piano is like monitoring an active volcano. She is one of a very few pianists who rise to the challenge of free jazz. — Jon Pareles

But that Herschel, for example, who "broke the barriers of the heavens" - did he not once play a provincial church-organ, and give music-lessons to stumbling pianists? Each of those Shining Ones had to walk on the earth among neighbors who perhaps thought much more of his gait and his garments than of anything which was to give him a title to everlasting fame: each of them had his little local personal history sprinkled with small temptations and sordid cares, which made the retarding friction of his course towards final companionship with the immortals. — George Eliot

The irrepressible spirit that made his playing seem like good conversation is the Rubinstein legacy for pianists, if they can pick up their heads from the keyboard long enough to claim it. — Donal Henahan

You hear the same work by different orchestras, different conductors, violinists, pianists, singers, and slowly, the work reveals itself and begins to live deeper in you. — David Ogden Stiers

There are three kinds of pianists: Jewish pianists, homosexual pianists, and bad pianists. — Vladimir Horowitz

I was born in Memphis. There was music all around me, really deep and special music. I heard all these great masters at a young age.There was a great genius in my town, Phineas Newborn, who is one of the greatest pianists ever on the planet. He took me under his wings at about 9 and he put me on the right track. — Charles Lloyd

A mission that comes from the heart to promote these things and to encourage composers to write, then of course they should do it. And there are more than a few pianists these days who do this, fortunately. — Marc-Andre Hamelin

Few of us boggle - though we should - at the fact that Louis Armstrong sang and played trumpet with similar panache, or that Leonard Bernstein and Benjamin Britten were equally adept as composers, conductors and pianists. — Terry Teachout

Back in the Stone Age, before there were workshops, it was a very difficult idea to get into musical theatre. Normally, you would be a chorus girl or boy and write something. People would get their start as rehearsal pianists or dance assistants. — Maury Yeston

Some pianists seem to really remember the keys and not so much the notes they play. They want to learn until it's a physical habit that can be replicated. For pianists, this is much more of a problem than for other instruments, like the violin, where you actually have to think of the pitch. — Carlo Grante

Pianists of extraordinary talent, such as Christina Petrowska,spend a large part of their early lives perfecting technique ... Miss Petrowska,a Canadian with a phenomenal ability to play the most difficult music cleanly, gave a demonstration of her achievements at Carnegie Recital Hall. A product of the Juilliard School who studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Gyorgy Ligeti in Europe, Miss Petrowska built most of her program around fiercely difficult contemporary works. She has fingers that work like chrome-plated pistons, and her high-seated position let her bring pulverizing power to bear. — Donal Henahan

It is my fervent wish and my greatest ambition to leave a work with a few useful instructions for the pianists after me. — Franz Liszt

If the composition's imperfect, why would so many pianists try to master it?'
'Good question. I have no great explanation for it, but one thing I can say. Works have a certain imperfection to them have an appeal for that very reason. There's something in it that draws you in, more than more fully realized novels. ou discover something about that work that tugs at your heart- or maybe we should say the work discovers you.
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#canbetakenasacommentaryonthisnoveloverall — Haruki Murakami

Deep practice, however, doesn't obey the same math. Spending more time is effective - but only if you're still in the sweet spot at the edge of your capabilities, attentively building and honing circuits. What's more, there seems to be a universal limit for how much deep practice human beings can do in a day. Ericsson's research shows that most world-class experts - including pianists, chess players, novelists, and athletes - practice between three and five hours a day, no matter what skill they pursue. — Daniel Coyle

As a young child, I thought that all pianists played everything. I mean, I thought anything on piano - any piano music, all pianists played it. — Allen Toussaint

I really don't know whether any place contains more pianists than Paris, or whether you can find more asses and virtuosos anywhere. — Frederic Chopin

I'm one of those pianists who tends to ignore every existing recording and lots of traditions about playing pieces when I start. — Jeremy Denk

I don't record for my own glory.I mean, of course part of it is for career advancement, but more importantly, I want some of that repertoire - as much of it as possible - to remain and enter pianists' consciousness and, hopefully, into the standard repertoire. — Marc-Andre Hamelin

I was trained in classical piano, but it kind of dawned on me that classical pianists compete for six job openings a year, and the rest of us get to play 'Blue Moon' in a hotel lobby. — Barbara Kingsolver

I don't think I handle the notes much differently from other pianists. But the pauses between the notes - ah, there is where the artistry lies!! — Artur Schnabel

I applied, and I got in as a pianist. Their idea in the music department was that pianists, if they were good enough to get in, they were good enough to learn a new instrument. They felt sorry for pianists being alone in the practice room all the time, and they really wanted to socialize us pianists. — Zeena Parkins

When I was studying ... there weren't any black concert pianists. My choices were intuitive, and I had the technique to do it. People have heard my music and heard the classic in it, so I have become known as a black classical pianist. — Nina Simone

Pianists call me a composer, composers call me a pianist. The classicists think me a futurist, and the futurists call me a reactionary. — Anton Rubinstein

Roaring like a tiger turns some children into pianists who debut at Carnegie Hall but only crushes others. Coddling gives some the excuse to fail and others the chance to succeed. — Ayelet Waldman

Well, no. I believe that it's not at all impossible that some of the performances that I've heard so far by some pianists may be superior to my own playing because those are two totally different acts altogether. — Leo Ornstein

Whenever I record something, I always believe that it's worthy of inclusion in the pantheon, and I would certainly like pianists to pay more attention to it. I think it's ridiculous now, because the range of repertoire - or what's considered 'safe' - is so narrow, even though there are pianists who are really trying to push the envelope. There is still a lack of attention, and there's no reason for it. The piano repertoire is so rich, with so many wonderful things that still are not given their due. — Marc-Andre Hamelin

If there's one thing I feel very strongly about, it's that there shouldn't be a distinction between pianists who play Ligeti and those who play Chopin. It might seem that they involve different skill sets, but I don't think that's true: whether playing Ives or Bach or Beethoven, you must bring the same imagination, the same sensitivity, and an ability to deal with same kinds of musical problems. The method behind my madness, anyway, is to keep plugging away at this idea. — Jeremy Denk

I have a good friend, Rudolf Serkin, the pianist, a very sensitive man. I was talking to him one day backstage after a concert and I told him that I thought he had played particularly sensitively that day. I said, "You know, many pianists are brilliant, they strike the keys so well, but somehow you are different." "Ah," he said, "I don't think you should ever strike a key. You should pull the keys with your fingers." — Andrew Wyeth

Concert pianists get to be quite chummy with dead composers. They can't help it. Classical music isn't just music. It's a personal diary. An uncensored confession in the dead of night. A baring of the soul. Take a modern example. Florence and the Machine? In the song 'Cosmic Love,' she catalogs the way in which the world has gone dark, distorting her, when she, a rather intense young woman, was left bereft by a love affair. 'The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out. — Marisha Pessl

[She] knew there were women who worked successfully out of the home. They ran businesses, created empires and managed to raise happy, healthy, well-adjusted children who went on to graduate magna cum laude from Harvard or became world-renowned concert pianists. Possibly both.
These women accomplished all this while cooking gourmet meals, furnishing their homes with Italian antiques, giving clever, intelligent interviews with Money magazine and People, and maintaining a brilliant marriage with an active enviable sex life and never tipping the scale at an ounce over their ideal weight ...
She knew those women were out there. If she'd had a gun, she'd have hunted every last one of them down and shot them like rabid dogs for the good of womankind. — Nora Roberts

Too many jazz pianists limit themselves to a personal style, a trademark, so to speak. They confine themselves to one type of playing. — Oscar Peterson

Oscar Peterson is the greatest living influence on jazz pianists today. — Herbie Hancock

tidying with what a couple of the other pianists had called her obsessive-compulsive neatness. Well, could she help it if she liked the sheet music alphabetized? And then put in numerical order according to the year it was written? — Elizabeth Bevarly

What is scurrilously called ragtime is an invention that is here to stay. That is now conceded by all classes of musicians ... All publication s masquerading under the name of ragtime are not the genuine article ... That real ragtime of the higher class is rather difficult to play is a painful truth which most pianists have discovered. Syncopations are no indication of light or trashy music ... Joplin ragtime is destroyed by careless or imperfect rendering, and very often players lost the effect entirely by playing too fast. — Scott Joplin

Pianists don't argue too much generally because we have such a hard time just getting things right; arguing is for string players. — Emanuel Ax

I'm really very sorry, but it is not my fault. People are so annoying. All my pianists look exactly like poets, and all my poets look exactly like pianists — Oscar Wilde

Oscar Peterson is my favorite all-around pianist. There are pianists I like because of one thing and pianists I like because of another. But overall, I like Oscar Peterson best. — Carmen McRae

In the rather informal survey I have taken over the years on intensity of interest in food by profession, lawyers rank only a few trades below concert pianists ... — Calvin Trillin

Bob Erlendson, a local piano player, taught me chord structure and which scales go along with them. Later, I began listening to [pianists] Bill Evans and McCoy Tyner. Then I got interested in [saxophonist] John Coltrane. — Lenny Breau

I don't know where there can be so many pianists as in Paris, so many asses and so many virtuosi. — Frederic Chopin

I have simply worshipped pianists - two at a time, sometimes, Harry tells me. I don't know what it is about them. Perhaps it is that they are foreigners. They all are, ain't they? Even those that are born in England become foreigners after a time, don't they? It is so clever of them, and such a compliment to art. — Oscar Wilde

The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes - ah, that is where the art resides. — Artur Schnabel

Q: What genres do you especially enjoy reading? And which do you avoid?

A: I love reading anything about gigantic animate blobs of molten iron who secretly long to be concert pianists. It's not a particularly well-populated genre, but in particular I'd mention, "Grog, Who Loved Chopin," as well as the somewhat derivative "Clom, Big Fan of Mozart. — George Saunders