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.

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