Quotes & Sayings About Rachmaninoff

[On Rachmaninoff:] He was the most Russian of them all, like a cathedral in the snow. Holy, wintry, infinite, he was all the Russias. — Dagmar Godowsky

Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music. — Sergei Rachmaninoff

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

I compose music because I must give expression to my feelings, just as I talk because I must give utterance to my thoughts. — Sergei Rachmaninoff

I think people just think I am crazy because they see me doing stand-up, but I am generally not. I am very sad. I'm one of those guys that lights candles and listens to Rachmaninoff. — Bobby Lee

I enjoy the kind of characters that allow you to write the dark stuff. I love Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky, and when I'm writing for Dracula or Jekyll & Hyde, I get a chance to use that vocabulary. — Frank Wildhorn

What were you going to do tonight?" "I was going to listen to the songs of Rachmaninoff." "Who's that?" "A dead Russian. — Charles Bukowski

It has always been Oscar Peterson. He is my Rachmaninoff. — Shirley Horn

What is Music? How do you define it? Music is a calm moonlit night, the rustle of leaves in Summer. Music is the far off peal of bells at dusk! Music comes straight from the heart and talks only to the heart: it is Love! Music is the Sister of Poetry and her Mother is sorrow! — Sergei Rachmaninoff

The virtuosos look to the students of the world to do their share in the education of the great musical public. Do not waste your time with music that is trite or ignoble. Life is too short to spend it wandering in the barren Saharas of musical trash. — Sergei Rachmaninoff

My father ran the gamut: a favorite of his was Josef Hofmann, but there was also Friedman, Rachmaninoff, Godowsky, Lhevinne, Moiseiwitsch, Paderewski, etc. — Marc-Andre Hamelin

Beethoven introduced us to anger. Haydn taught us capriciousness, Rachmaninoff melancholy. Wagner was demonic. Bach was pious. Schumann was mad, and because his genius was able to record his fight for sanity, we heard what isolation and the edge of lunacy sounded like. Liszt was lusty and vigorous and insisted that we confront his overwhelming sexuality as well as our own. Chopin was a poet, and without him we never would have understood what night was, what perfume was, what romance was. — Doris Mortman

Composers can do things that weren't allowed in the 17th century. Until we had composers like Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Rachmaninoff to break the rules. — Aaron Zigman

Dizzy Gillespie recorded it with Charlie Parker in an
influential 1945 track (incorporating a much imitated intro - perhaps initially
intended as a parody of Rachmaninoff 's Prelude in C-Sharp Minor — Ted Gioia

My dear hands. Farewell, my poor hands. — Sergei Rachmaninoff

Lauryn Hill, P-Funk, Marvin Gaye, Public Enemy - I have a very diverse palate for music. I can go from Judy Garland to Jimi Hendrix to Stevie Wonder to Rachmaninoff. I just love great music. — Janelle Monae

Rachmaninoff. The 18th Variation of a Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. — Claudia Gray

Opinion in all parts of the world would agree that Rachmaninoff is the most complete of living masters of the instrument; his technique is comprehensive, and he is, of course, musical to his bone's marrow. Most important of all, he is a composer, and for this reason he is able to approach a work as none of his pianist contemporaries can approach one - that is, from the inside, as an organic and felt creative process. — Sergei Rachmaninoff

Rachmaninoff made a musician out of me. His 'Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini' was the piece that sent me into raptures. It spoke to me. To me, it was a tender entreaty for the misunderstood. — Joni Mitchell

John Lennon was brilliant, so gifted, so giving. He was the Bach, Beethoven, the Rachmaninoff of our time. — Sid Bernstein

I feel like a ghost wandering in a world grown alien. I cannot cast out the old way of writing and I cannot acquire the new. I have made an intense effort to feel the musical manner of today, but it will not come to me. — Sergei Rachmaninoff

He had always wanted to write music, and he could give no other identity to the thing he sought. If you want to know what it is, he told himself, listen to the first phrases of Tchaikovsky's First Concerto
or the last movement of Rachmaninoff's Second. Men have not found the words for it, nor the deed nor the thought, but they have found the music. Let me see that in one single act of man on earth. Let me see it made real. Let me see the answer to the promise of that music. Not servants nor those served; not altars and immolations; but the final, the fulfilled, innocent of pain. Don't help me or serve me, but let me see it once, because I need it. Don't work for my happiness, my brothers
show me yours
show me that it is possible
show me your achievement
and the knowledge will give me courage for mine. — Ayn Rand

A good conductor ought to be a good chauffeur; the qualities that make the one also make the other. They are concentration, an incessant control of attention, and presence of mind; the conductor only has to add a little sense of music. — Sergei Rachmaninoff

The most efficient way to memorise a piece is to use the one which proceeds in an error free manner — Sergei Rachmaninoff

Playing Rachmaninoff was like walking on a rope bridge across a gorge with dreamy skies above and a raging, muddy river below. — Ella Leya

He was a dark and stormy knight. A latter-day rake with eyes the color of emeralds worth a queen's ransom. His smile promised voyages to the moon. And heaven alone knew how many females lay littered in his wake.

To a rousing burst of Rachmaninoff, he swept into my London flat one January evening and, with the hauteur of his greeting, captured my virgin heart forever and a day.

'Miss Ellie Simons? My car awaits. Shall we splurge on dinner or parking tickets? — Dorothy Cannell