The Belgian violinist Eugène Yasÿe frightened Busoni by playing the Bach Chaconne and Paganini Caprices on a kit violin in the darkened passages of a hotel.  ”It was like the ghost of Paganini, purposely exaggerating all the worst mannerisms of the typical virtuoso, and Busoni could never forget the sight of Ysaÿe’s vast bulk and […]

“There is also in this [nineteenth-century romantic] music an extraordinary sense of control over the passage of time; a moment will be held still as if suspended, and then released with a rush. Einstein has told us that time is relative, flexible and elastic; I have noticed these qualities whenever I have tried to play […]

“After doing nothing, I know no more delightful occupation of eating, eat properly, I mean. The appetite is for the stomach what love is for the heart. The stomach is the choirmaster who governs and operates a large orchestra of the passions. An empty stomach is the bassoon or flute in which discontent grumbles or […]

The inexpressible depth of all music, by virtue of which it floats past us as a paradise quite familiar and yet eternally remote, and is so easy to understand and yet so inexplicable, is due to the fact that it reproduces all the emotions of our innermost being, but entirely without reality and remote from […]

I came to think that every notation is already the transcription of an abstract invention. From the instant the pen takes hold of it, the idea loses its original feature. … The invention (Einfall) becomes a sonata, a concerto: it is already an arrangement of the original. From this first transcription to the second, the […]

“I cannot tell you how much I love to play for people. Would you believe it – sometimes when I sit down to practice and there is no one else in the room, I have to stifle an impulse to ring for the elevator man and offer him money to come in and hear me.” […]

There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song – but in this […]

The Hungarian mathematician, Paul von Jankó developed an alternate layout to the traditional piano keyboard. In July 1888, upon seeing a performance in London by John Carlowitz Ames, The Musical Times reported: The clever idea, which suggested itself to the inventor as a means for overcoming the difficulty of stretching long intervals on the pianoforte […]

Rachmaninoff once urged Horowitz to go for long walks.  “If you don’t walk, your fingers will not run.” Abram Chasins, “The Return of Horowitz”, The Saturday Evening Post, October 22, 1966, p.102-3. Cited in: Gerig, Reginald (1974) Famous Pianists and Their Technique.  Washington: Robert V. Luce, p.307.

Chopin can hardly write anything now but that we feel like calling out in the seventh or eighth measure, “It is by him!” – Robert Schumann, 1838 P. Kildea, Chopin’s Piano, London, Allen Lane, 2018, p. 43.