A practice regime

After a year’s sabbatical in 1953, the pianist Horowitz found a routine and rebuilt his technique:

I realized I had to work out new daily schedules for myself – so much time for study, for rest, for reflection, for exercise … Soon my days had a new rhythm, a new serenity.  Every day I start with what I call calisthenics, exercises that I invent myself.  Each day, a new set, which I play very, very slowly.  When I practice the standard literature that I have played before, I practice section by section, and I never move from one to the other until I am satisfied.  Each week I devote at least two to three hours of my practice time to music I have never seen or played before.

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.

Posted

in

by

Greg

Tags:

, ,

Featured Content

Bach’s preferred instrument
Johann Sebastian Bach’s preferred to play the viola when conducting an orchestra. Source: Siblin, Eric (2009) The Cello Suites.  Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin, p. 216.
Appreciating beauty
Music exists only in a passing of time, racing past us like the mid-nineenth-century trains Ruskin so hated. It is utterly non-fixed, and to focus on one moment is to destroy the whole. It is a forest that we have to pass through, not a single tree that we can contemplate or capture. But, if […]
Philosophy
“Philosophy is doubt.” – Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, French writer Rosenberg, Max (1955) Introduction to Philosophy.  New York: Philosophical Library, p. 14.
How to win over an orchestra
Haydn was in London in 1791 when he performed in a concert led by Johann Salomon (a violinist/composer).   Salomon played the first violin and led the orchestra, and Haydn sat at the harpsichord, keeping the band together by an occasional chord or two, as the practice then was. Great composers have not always been […]
Paul Simon on music today
Paul Simon (of Simon and Garfunkel) on the future of the “album” concept: I don’t think the album is going to disappear for several reasons … It’s not that people aren’t listening to albums.  They’re just doing it on shuffle.  What that does is it makes albums more eclectic and more interesting.  But if an […]
It’s the page turner’s fault
Several years ago, Mr. Kalichstein hired a young music student who kept reaching across the score to turn pages from the bottom right corner, in the process obscuring several measures of the concerto. “Take it from the top!” the frustrated Mr. Kalichstein finally hissed; reflexively, the page turner flipped the score back to the beginning. […]
A party piece
Irish pianist and composer George Alexander Osburn (1806-93) was a professor at the Royal Academy of Music and a director of the Philharmonic Society. One of his most popular compositions was La Pluie de Perles (The Shower of Pearls). At a fashionable party, at which he arrived very late, he was invited to play, and […]
Life experience
“Knowledge about life is one thing; effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.” – William James, American philosopher and psychologist W. James, Essays in Pragmatism, United Kingdom, Free Press, 1970, p. 113.
How we decorate space and time
“Art is how we decorate space; music is how we decorate time.” Jean-Michel Basquiat,  street artist
Recordings