Pianist Quotes

Nat King Cole

Glenn Gould

Arthur Rubinstein

Bill Evans

Lionel Hampton

Lang Lang

Alfred Brendel

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

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.

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

Lord, I love my man better than I love myself
And if he don't have me, he won't have nobody else.

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

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.

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

During a 1959 tour of England

Dinah Washington

Sometimes I think someone upstairs saved me from being ordinary.

Michel Petrucciani

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

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.

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

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

Let's take a look at the 25th variation of the second part. Here Bach meets us in his highest and deepest personal and human form: it's like in the Art of Fugue in the unfinished fugue No. 20, where Bach confronts us with his personal signature. It was he himself, who, after he had been occupied during his whole life with symbols, with numbers, with the mastering of structural and formal problems and renewals, now he saw himself confronted with a personal view into mirror. He now shows us a human being in his whole conception of life. The composer of Come, oh sweet death now is confessing, Oh sweet death, how bitter is your prickle.

Burkard Schliessmann

How do I produce the effects which I obtain from the piano? … In answer I would say I produce them by listening, criticizing, judging—working over the point, until I get it as I want it. Then I can reproduce it at will, if I want to make just the same effect; but sometimes I want to change and try another.

Wilhelm Backhaus

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.

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

Sunshine can burn you, food can poison you, words can condemn you, pictures can insult you; music cannot punish - only bless.

Don't tell me how talented you are. Tell me how hard you work.

Arthur Rubinstein

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.