Pianist Quotes - page 4
My father was a violinist, my mother a pianist. I was born into a world of music... The practicing of my father's pupils accompanied every thought and action of my childish life.... Then when I was thirty [c. 1906], my career as musician was brought to an end by Vollard [art-dealer in Paris] who bought all the pictures I possessed, pictures which I had painted over several years with unbounded enthusiasm during such hours of freedom as I was able to spare between [music]-lessons to my pupils.
Maurice de Vlaminck
I really don't know what to say about this without sounding hypercritical. First of all, the style of playing is so tremendously behind the beat, it gets to the point that I feel he's in opposition to his rhythm section, and I can't get a nice swing out of the thing. The pianist is tremendously heavy-handed, which I think gets in the way of what he's trying to do, so I feel that in some spots he's stumbling, instead of having the feeling that the man is executing what he wants to play. The whole thing strikes me as a sort of comme-ci-comme-ca performance of a like tune. Two stars.
Clare Fischer
A royal connoisseur Jayachamarajendra Wodeyar's tryst with music began with western music, of which he was deeply knowledgeable on many levels. The Maharaja was a gifted pianist. He had nurtured hopes of becoming a concert pianist; a dream that necessarily ended with his ascension to the throne. He was a Licentiate of the Guildhall School of Music, London;an honorary Fellow of Trinity College of Music, London; and the first president of the Philharmonia Concert Society, London.
Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar
She was a splendid pianist, playing with a touch and expression that were simply superb. Her hands were models-ideal and actual-for a sculptor and never seen to such advantage as when flying over the keyboard to find its magical melodies... There were times when she was occupied by one of the Mahâtmas, when her playing was indescribably grand. She would sit in the dusk sometimes, with nobody else in the room beside myself, and strike from the sweettoned instrument improvisations that might well make one fancy he was listening to the Gandhâvas, or heavenly choristers. It was the harmony of heaven...she was loyal to the last degree to her aunt, her other relatives, and to the Masters; for whose work she would have sacrificed not only one, but twenty lives, and calmly seen the whole human race consumed with fire, if needs be.
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky