How can you expect a beholder to experience my picture as I experienced it? A picture comes to me a long time beforehand; who knows how long a time beforehand, I sensed, saw, and painted it and yet the next day even I do not understand what I have done. How can anyone penetrate my […]

The conductor Stokowski (who was the conductor of Disney’s Fantasia) was a pioneer of orchestral recording.  This was not without its problems: Stokowski was moving more and more toward what is recognized as his most significant achievement – the broadening of popular interest in serious music.  He developed a firm conviction that radio, recordings, and […]

“Music must be given to those who love it. I want to give free concerts; that’s the answer.” -Sviatoslav Richter, pianist Bruno Monsaingeon: Introduction to Sviatoslav Richter — Notebooks and Conversations p. XX. Cited at: Wikipedia

Stokowski’s ability to inspire musicians was sometimes balanced by the ability to turn them off.  Saidenberg altered me to a remarkable violinist who quit the Philadelphia Orchestra and went on to become America’s greatest authority on constitutional law.  “Raoul Berger was a wonderful violinist in the Philadelphia Orchestra.  One day at rehearsal, Stoki stopped the […]

American composer Steve Reich on Schoenberg and his compositional style: Schönberg is the beginning of the death of German Romanticism. It’s about deciding that we didn’t need harmonic organization. But this was music for a small cadre of listeners. I think Schönberg said, “In fifty years, the postman will whistle my tunes.” Well, it’s been […]

“Most performers pretty much ignore the audience – they play and go off … Don’t get me wrong. I worship these guys! But what will make someone who hardly knows about classical music listen to to Grigory Sokolov for two hours straight, and in total silence? you have to work your way up to that […]

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.

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 […]

In 1862 Brahms went to Vienna: Although he been in Vienna only a few weeks, Brahms was already making a name for himself.  After the first performance of  his First Serenade, Hanslick wrote more favorably, calling the work “one of the most charming of modern compositions.” A few months later, the leading Viennese orchestra played […]

Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931) was a Belgian violinist, conductor and composer. Carl Flesch described him has “the most outstanding and individual violinist I have ever heard in my life.” Franck’s Violin Sonata, Chausson’s Poem and violin concerto, and Debussy’s string quartets were all dedicated to Ysaÿe. Ysaÿe wrote six sonatas for solo violin, each dedicated to […]