Escaping the every day world

“Those around me refuse to accept that I could never live in the everyday world of things and people.  Hence the irrepressible need to have to escape from myself, and go off on adventures which seem inexplicable because no one knows who this man is – yet maybe he’s the best part of me!  Anyway, an artist is, by definition, someone used to living among the dreams and phantoms.”

– Claude Debussy

Cited in: Roberts, Paul (2008) Claude Debussy.  New York: Phaidon Press, p.9.


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Reactions to classical music
The only way to take classical music out of the museum is to stop playing it in a museum.  The adventurous cellist Matt Haimovitz said as much recently, when he toured dive bars, pizza parlours, and roadhouse juke joints with the [Bach] Cello Suites.  “People were reaction to the music as it was going by,” […]
Debussy on impressionism
What I am trying to do is something ‘different’ – an effect of reality, but what some fools call Impressionism, a term that is utterly misapplied, especially by critics who do not hesitate to apply it to Turner, the greatest creator of mysterious effect in the world of art. — Claude Debussy B. James, Ravel: […]
Patience
An ounce of patience is worth a pound of brains — Dutch proverb Henry Bonn. A polyglot of foreign proverbs.  London, Henry G. Bohn, 1857, p.315.
The Great Collapse (The Boy and the Heron)
Composer: Joe Hisaishi Arranger: Greg Smith Title: “The Great Collapse”, from The Boy and the Heron Instrumentation: Piano Solo Available from Sheet Music Direct and Sheet Music Plus.
The Poet and the Muse
Poet, you are no liar. The world that you imagine is the real one. The melodies of the harp alone know truth, and in this life they can be our only true guides. Cavafy, “The Poet and the Muse”
A concise rehearsal
Hans Knappertsbusch (1888-1965) was a German conductor. However, he had a dislike of rehearsals. Karajan recalled: One time he was going over Tchaikovsky’s Fifth with the Vienna Philharmonic. He came to the second movement, with the horn solo, and said, “Let’s start.” He did a few bars, stopped, and said, “See you this evening. You […]
Leif Ove Andsnes on Beethoven
“I feel a real need for Beethoven now.  It’s such important and spiritual music: it gives you strength, it gives you comfort. It’s just great!” – Leif Ove Andsnes, pianist. Source: Jessica (2011) “Top of the World”, Pianist, Issue 60. p.13.
Stokowski and singers
Leopold Stokowski was staging a concert version of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov. Natalie Bodanya, one of the finest singers at Curtis at the time, refused to audition, noting how “impersonal and impossible Stokowski was. Stokowski had filled all the roles, with the exception of that the Princess. “Is it possible” Stokowski asked Sylvan [Sylvan Lenin, a […]
Proportion
“The traditional sense of proportion is a hang-up. The usual Mozartean concept of how long an idea lasts becomes too predictable. Some of the composers who talk the most about avoiding predictability are the ones most victimized by this predictable traditional sense of proportion.” – Morton Feldman, American composer. Cited in: Tom Johnson, Remembrance, September […]
Piotr Anderszewski on interpretation
To me it’s all about how you read and translate the music you play: the most important thing is to reach the point where you feel you understand what happened in the composer’s mind before he actually wrote it. Musical notation is a very sophisticated yet imperfect system; it was the only way for the […]