Quotation Collectables

Enough of my own words in this blog. This post is a dedication to some phrases that have struck me as particularly meaningful and/or pragmatic by various musicians and teachers on a loosely related theme of piano playing. I share them with my students, and now decided to post them here.  Enjoy!!


"Timing is the art of being as late as possible without being too late"  
-Arthur Schnabel 

"Education is planned amnesia!!"
 -David Dubal

"Really good piano lessons are actually elevated practice sessions"
-Jennifer Apsel 

"Think of practicing as investing, and performance (or playing through) as spending. Too much of both isn't a good thing. Successful people in the business world have learned to strike a balance between the two"
-Graham Fitch 

"Here is the gradual resurgence of the heartbeat" - Edwin Fischer on the beginning of the G major chords after the second arioso of Beethoven op. 110, last movement. 

"It takes 10% of the work to get a piece 90% of the way there, and 90% of the work to get that last 10%" - John Perry

"Silence is the canvas on which music is painted" - Joseph Levine 

"Rhythm is the canvas on which music is painted" - John Perry

"Sometimes a missed note in performance is more expressive and exciting than the right note. I'm not talking about wrong notes due to sloppiness or lack of preparation, but the other kind -  when you are in the heat of the moment, you take a risk, lunge for a note because you feel it passionately -  but miss. It's kind of like saying "I love you" to somebody for the first time: It's possible to be so nervous, so overwhelmed with anticipation - that in the heat of the moment you croak - the words don't come out. That vulnerability - the human sensitivity that was revealed in that mishap can be more human and more touching than  if you had said it cleanly" - Emile Naoumoff

"Better to play the wrong notes the right way than the right notes the wrong way"
-Vladimir Horowitz 

"There are no wrong notes, only wrong (physical) movements"
-Evelyne Bran cart

"The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes—ah, that is where the art resides." - Arthur Schnabel

"My constant desire to compose music is actually the urge within me to give tonal expression to my feelings, just as I speak to give utterance to my thoughts. That, I believe, is the function that music should serve in the life of every composer; any other function it may fill is purely incidental. It should not be arrived at mentally, tailor-made to fit certain specifications...time may change the technique of music but never alter it's mission"
-Sergei Rachmaninov