The musician’s quest

The violinist Ivan Galamian describes the musician’s quest for a goal greater than mere technical accomplishment:

A complete technique .. implies the ability to do justice, with unfailing reliability and control, to each and every demand of the most refined musical imagination.  It enables the performer, when he has formed an ideal concept of how any work should sound, to live up to this concept in actual performance.  A technique which fulfills these ultimate requirements can be called an accomplished interpretative technique.  It is the fundamental goal for which one must strive, because it, and it alone, opens the way to the highest artistic accomplishment.

Galamian, Ivan, Principles of Violin Playing and their Teaching, p. 5.  Cited in Gerig, Reginald (1974) Famous Pianists and their Technique.  Washington: Robert B. Luce Inc, p. 2-3.

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