20th-century Pianist Quotes

Nat King Cole

Glenn Gould

Bill Evans

Lionel Hampton

Lang Lang

Alfred Brendel

Dinah Washington

In his larger forms, Schubert is a wanderer. He likes to move at the edge of the precipice, and does so with the assurance of a sleepwalker. To wander is the Romantic condition; one yields to it enraptured, or is driven and plagued by the terror of finding no escape. More often than not, happiness is but the surface of despair.

There's one heaven, one earth, and one queen, and your Elizabeth is an imposter.

During a 1959 tour of England

Dinah Washington

Some people will think I'm great even if I play like an idiot and some people will think I'm an idiot even if I'm great.

But it's always jazz. You can put a new dress on her,... but no matter what kind of clothes you put on her, she's the same old broad.

In Africa I discovered what the true purpose of a musician is. We are historians, and it is our purpose to tell the people the true story of our past, and to extend a better vision of the future.

Here lies Evgeny Kissin, son of the Jewish people, a servant of music.

I got a gal, she lives up on the hill
Well, this woman's tryin' to quit me, Lord, but I love her still.

Music, the most abstract and uncanny art, is an eternal river of sound moving through time. We can free ourselves from whatever may be holding us back, and join that flowing river.

William Westney

He [Gilels] played in an easy, natural manner, with strong but unassuming musicianship. His technique was brilliant; years later Neuhaus, still astonished, was to recall Gilels's incredible octaves in Liszt's Spanish Rhapsody. Yet Gilels was never looked upon as a mere virtuoso. As a matter of fact, his programs did not often include music pour epater le bourgeois. He played a stedy diet of Beethoven (the Hammerklavier was a work that strongly engaged his last years), Schubert, Schumann, Chopin and Brahms. In many respects, the great virtuoso who put his authoritative stamp on whatever he played was, at the same time, a thinking man's pianist.

Sometimes I think someone upstairs saved me from being ordinary.

Michel Petrucciani

Music isn't enough. Performers aren't enough. There must be someone that loves music as much as life. For you, and remember this always, those of us with something urgent to say, we give everything.

It's only when you stop trying to find faults and start doing something constructive that you will survive … It's just good for you as a human not to dwell on your disasters.

Valentina Lisitsa

As the painter needs his framework of parchment, the improvising musical group needs its framework in time.

I am not a complete idiot, but whether from weakness or laziness have no talent for thinking. I know only how to reflect: I am a mirror... Logic does not exist for me. I float on the waves of art and life and never really know how to distinguish what belongs to the one or the other or what is common to both. Life unfolds for me like a theatre presenting a sequence of somewhat unreal sentiments; while the things of art are real to me and go straight to my heart.

Sviatoslav Richter

You may have holes in your shoes, but don't let the people out front know it. Shine the tops.

I'm very happy that so many children are learning the piano because of me.

I'm a businessman. I work for business people. The kind of thing they say is: Now we've sold a lot of records, let's sell some more.

I don't expect people who listen to Emerson, Lake, and Palmer to come hear me. I accept that reality.

I think classical music is a great, beautiful art as long as people recognize it. But first we need to calm down and listen to it with heart. In this technologically advanced time, too many things are drawing peoples' attention. Sometimes we need to slow down, look back and feel the beauty of art and life.

It would be an attempt to define the role, responsibility, and path of the performing musician. Our simple job is to bring beauty and inspiration to others and to do this through the most honest and humble search to find these qualities within our unique selves and then within our unique work; to painstakingly increase our knowledge and to refine and re-refine our results until we are certain that until some new enlightenment falls to us, we have done the best that we possibly can; and that as in any human endeavour which attempts to transcend its mortal bounds, we always know that we still do not know.

Martin Berkofsky

When recordings replaced concerts as the dominant mode of hearing music, our conception of the nature of performance and of music itself was altered.

If I play Tchaikovsky I play his melodies and skip his spiritual struggles…If there's any time left over I fill in with a lot of runs up and down the keyboard.

I don't know what the effective ratio would be, but I've always had some sort of intuition that for every hour you spend in the company of other human beings, you need "x" number of hours alone. Now, what "x" represents I don't really know; it might be two and seven-eighths or seven and two-eighths, but it is a substantial ratio.