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Great Contemporary Pianists Speak for Themselves
"Mach has produced a book of uncommon interest." — Washington Post
"Mach's interviews will enhance the pleasure of any concertgoer." — People
In this rich collection of fascinating interviews with 25 of the world's greatest pianists of the contemporary era, Elyse Mach has chosen to let the artists speak freely and develop their thoughts about music, their lives, and their careers with a minimum of interruption. The result is a treasury of reminiscences and reflections that are not only remarkably candid and revealing but entertaining and thought-provoking as well. Through the eyes of these inspired musicians, we get an intimate look at the concert scene and the life of the concert pianist, as well as insights into the artists' feelings about their art, their performance anxieties, the music they play, and many other topics. Enhanced with 50 photographs, this book will be welcomed by anyone with an interest in serious music and piano artistry.
Pianists interviewed in this volume include Claudio Arrau, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Alfred Brendel, John Browning, Alicia de Larrocha, Misha Dichter, Rudolf Firkušný, Glenn Gould, Vladimir Horowitz, Byron Janis, Lili Kraus, Rosalyn Tureck, André Watts, Paul Badura-Skoda, Jorge Bolet, Youri Egorov, Janina Fialkowsha, Leon Fleischer, Emil Gilels, Stephen Hough, Zoltán Kocsis, Garrick Ohlsson, Cécile Ousset, Murray Perahia, and Ivo Pogorelich.
"The fascinating world behind the glamour of the concert platform comes alive in very fluid and readable style." — Rosalyn TurecK
"Mach's interviews will enhance the pleasure of any concertgoer." — People
In this rich collection of fascinating interviews with 25 of the world's greatest pianists of the contemporary era, Elyse Mach has chosen to let the artists speak freely and develop their thoughts about music, their lives, and their careers with a minimum of interruption. The result is a treasury of reminiscences and reflections that are not only remarkably candid and revealing but entertaining and thought-provoking as well. Through the eyes of these inspired musicians, we get an intimate look at the concert scene and the life of the concert pianist, as well as insights into the artists' feelings about their art, their performance anxieties, the music they play, and many other topics. Enhanced with 50 photographs, this book will be welcomed by anyone with an interest in serious music and piano artistry.
Pianists interviewed in this volume include Claudio Arrau, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Alfred Brendel, John Browning, Alicia de Larrocha, Misha Dichter, Rudolf Firkušný, Glenn Gould, Vladimir Horowitz, Byron Janis, Lili Kraus, Rosalyn Tureck, André Watts, Paul Badura-Skoda, Jorge Bolet, Youri Egorov, Janina Fialkowsha, Leon Fleischer, Emil Gilels, Stephen Hough, Zoltán Kocsis, Garrick Ohlsson, Cécile Ousset, Murray Perahia, and Ivo Pogorelich.
"The fascinating world behind the glamour of the concert platform comes alive in very fluid and readable style." — Rosalyn TurecK
- GenresMusicNonfiction
480 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 3, 2025
Janina Fialkowska said that “Cortot always said that the best way to practice is to practice the difficulties in the pieces. It’s better than exercises.” Misha Dichter said he “will single out the places that are the most awkward technically and I’ll work on these as intensely as possible so that they become as easy as any other part of the piece.” Discipline is the constant companion of the professional musician. Alicia de Larrocha said, “fingering is the base of security, I think.” John Browning said, “I simply play a piece over and over until I know it by heart.” His teacher made him memorize all the assigned music. Rudolf Firkusny said, “Some play better with straight fingers; others play better with curved fingers. It’s the result that counts.” He also said, “I do advise practicing in a slower tempo.” “Most of the young pianists today use the pedal as a crutch.”
Practice Time: When Claudio Arrau cut down his daily practice, he cut it down to three hours daily. Alfred Brendel said, “I confine my practice to about five hours a day now.” Cecile Oussett said, “I was already practicing five hours a day, every day.” Vladimir Ashkenazy said, “I still practice five to seven hours a day. Zoltan Kocsis said, “There are times when I’ve heard Richter still in the practicing room at ten in the evening when we had begun at eight in the morning.” Ivo Pogorelich said in his interview, “I was playing eleven hours a day.”
Glenn Gould said, “The most important thing is to make a percussive instrument a singing instrument.” And “there can never be a final interpretation.” And “I believe Clementi influenced Beethoven more than any other composer.” He particularly loved Clementi’s Sonata in F-sharp Minor, Opus 26, No.2. Glenn Gould also said stuff I’d never say like, “I stay up all night mostly. I very rarely go to bed until five or six o’clock in the morning… I tend to get up around three inn the afternoon.” He also said, “I find all rock music offensive; always have.”
Like Glenn Gould, Byron Janis said of the piano, “it is really a percussion instrument that has to be made to sing.” Bryon also said, Chopin told his students to “play with all your soul, all your soul.” And “Paris just happens to be my favorite city in the world.” Rosalyn Tureck’s piano instructor was Olga Samaroff [who was also my mom’s instructor. At age 12, my mom performed with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. I still have piano exercises written in Olga’s handwriting.] Rosalyn said that, “Bach knew the piano; in fact, about ten years ago, a scholar produced evidence that Bach was a salesman for the Silberman piano. Bach conceived the keyboard part of the Trio Sonata for piano, not harpsichord.” Rosalyn said to play Bach, “One must thoroughly know and understand embellishment performance practices. It’s a life study in itself.”
Arthur Rubenstein said, “I cannot tell you how much I love to play for people ….sometimes when I sit down to practice and there is no one else in the room, I have to stifle my impulse to ring for the elevator man and offer him money to come in and hear me.” Paul Badura-Skoda said, “Between forty thousand and fifty thousand operas have been composed, but only one-half a percent remains in the repertoire; and of this one-half percent, only a small portion is constantly played.” Paul also said one of his favorite composers was Frank Martin [also one of my favorites too – especially his Adagietto from the Concerto for 7 Wind Instruments, Percussion, and Strings].
Jorge Bolet said, “My main objection to piano playing today is that I hear too much of the nonessential and not enough of the essential… Accompanying figures can be very interesting as long as they remain just that – accompanying figures. But when you project your accompanying figures as much as you project your melodic line, just what do you have? Merely a lot of busy-ness…. You have to shape your melodic line so that it rises and falls, or falls and rises; you have to give such lines curves and shapes; only then do you have places where the melody line actually breathes.” He also said, “for mechanical accuracy the only way to practice is slowly, so as to not miss any of the nuances in the score.” And “make sure that every finger movement is well fixed.” Jorge’s teacher told him “Take your normal position at the keyboard, drop your hands to your lap relaxed, then bring them up and put them on the keyboard. That should be your normal position.”
Janina Fialkowska said, “Rubenstein and all of the other great ones have had terrible moments where they actually had to stop the orchestra and go back to the beginning. This is going to happen to everybody.” She studied with Rubenstein and said he couldn’t tell her how to do something, but he could show her. She said, “When I first met him, I told myself no one could be that charming all the time; but he was. From the moment he woke up in the morning when he’d come down to breakfast, he was like a child who was experiencing something fabulously new. I think that was a sign of his genius, this childlike quality even at the age of ninety-six, of being amazed at life of being in a state of wonderment and constant discovery over it.” Rubenstein taught her to not just play a piece one way “but to know fifteen or sixteen other ways to play it’ Indeed he could just pick and choose as he was playing, which is why everything sounded so fresh and spontaneous and so wonderful when he played.” [This reminds me very much of when photographer Albert Watson’s make-up artist Paul Gobel was teaching me make-up when I was a fashion photog in NYC and he told me he knew a dozen ways just to do mascara and then each day used a different technique, ending on the last day making mascara grinding it from scratch Japanese style while seated on the floor. Technique as the art of variety.]
Garrick Olson said, “Beethoven made people weep with his improvisations.” Garrick said that only Hoffman could play “that middle section of the G Minor Prelude by Rachmaninoff, where he does the inner-voice third-hand effect even better than the composer himself.” [That sentence was GREAT for me to read because personally the MOST difficult thing for me on the piano specifically is bringing out that middle section inner-voice third-hand effect in that exact G Minor Prelude so that it sings.]
Ivo Pogorelich said, “You have to listen all the time” and “Technique is the art of variety.” Ivo also said, “I believe a composition can only be performed well if it is entirely yours; you know not only every note from memory, but the notes have become you, and you have become the notes.”
Great book; as you can see, I learned a lot and am super glad I read it, which happily motivates me to practice more.
Practice Time: When Claudio Arrau cut down his daily practice, he cut it down to three hours daily. Alfred Brendel said, “I confine my practice to about five hours a day now.” Cecile Oussett said, “I was already practicing five hours a day, every day.” Vladimir Ashkenazy said, “I still practice five to seven hours a day. Zoltan Kocsis said, “There are times when I’ve heard Richter still in the practicing room at ten in the evening when we had begun at eight in the morning.” Ivo Pogorelich said in his interview, “I was playing eleven hours a day.”
Glenn Gould said, “The most important thing is to make a percussive instrument a singing instrument.” And “there can never be a final interpretation.” And “I believe Clementi influenced Beethoven more than any other composer.” He particularly loved Clementi’s Sonata in F-sharp Minor, Opus 26, No.2. Glenn Gould also said stuff I’d never say like, “I stay up all night mostly. I very rarely go to bed until five or six o’clock in the morning… I tend to get up around three inn the afternoon.” He also said, “I find all rock music offensive; always have.”
Like Glenn Gould, Byron Janis said of the piano, “it is really a percussion instrument that has to be made to sing.” Bryon also said, Chopin told his students to “play with all your soul, all your soul.” And “Paris just happens to be my favorite city in the world.” Rosalyn Tureck’s piano instructor was Olga Samaroff [who was also my mom’s instructor. At age 12, my mom performed with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. I still have piano exercises written in Olga’s handwriting.] Rosalyn said that, “Bach knew the piano; in fact, about ten years ago, a scholar produced evidence that Bach was a salesman for the Silberman piano. Bach conceived the keyboard part of the Trio Sonata for piano, not harpsichord.” Rosalyn said to play Bach, “One must thoroughly know and understand embellishment performance practices. It’s a life study in itself.”
Arthur Rubenstein said, “I cannot tell you how much I love to play for people ….sometimes when I sit down to practice and there is no one else in the room, I have to stifle my impulse to ring for the elevator man and offer him money to come in and hear me.” Paul Badura-Skoda said, “Between forty thousand and fifty thousand operas have been composed, but only one-half a percent remains in the repertoire; and of this one-half percent, only a small portion is constantly played.” Paul also said one of his favorite composers was Frank Martin [also one of my favorites too – especially his Adagietto from the Concerto for 7 Wind Instruments, Percussion, and Strings].
Jorge Bolet said, “My main objection to piano playing today is that I hear too much of the nonessential and not enough of the essential… Accompanying figures can be very interesting as long as they remain just that – accompanying figures. But when you project your accompanying figures as much as you project your melodic line, just what do you have? Merely a lot of busy-ness…. You have to shape your melodic line so that it rises and falls, or falls and rises; you have to give such lines curves and shapes; only then do you have places where the melody line actually breathes.” He also said, “for mechanical accuracy the only way to practice is slowly, so as to not miss any of the nuances in the score.” And “make sure that every finger movement is well fixed.” Jorge’s teacher told him “Take your normal position at the keyboard, drop your hands to your lap relaxed, then bring them up and put them on the keyboard. That should be your normal position.”
Janina Fialkowska said, “Rubenstein and all of the other great ones have had terrible moments where they actually had to stop the orchestra and go back to the beginning. This is going to happen to everybody.” She studied with Rubenstein and said he couldn’t tell her how to do something, but he could show her. She said, “When I first met him, I told myself no one could be that charming all the time; but he was. From the moment he woke up in the morning when he’d come down to breakfast, he was like a child who was experiencing something fabulously new. I think that was a sign of his genius, this childlike quality even at the age of ninety-six, of being amazed at life of being in a state of wonderment and constant discovery over it.” Rubenstein taught her to not just play a piece one way “but to know fifteen or sixteen other ways to play it’ Indeed he could just pick and choose as he was playing, which is why everything sounded so fresh and spontaneous and so wonderful when he played.” [This reminds me very much of when photographer Albert Watson’s make-up artist Paul Gobel was teaching me make-up when I was a fashion photog in NYC and he told me he knew a dozen ways just to do mascara and then each day used a different technique, ending on the last day making mascara grinding it from scratch Japanese style while seated on the floor. Technique as the art of variety.]
Garrick Olson said, “Beethoven made people weep with his improvisations.” Garrick said that only Hoffman could play “that middle section of the G Minor Prelude by Rachmaninoff, where he does the inner-voice third-hand effect even better than the composer himself.” [That sentence was GREAT for me to read because personally the MOST difficult thing for me on the piano specifically is bringing out that middle section inner-voice third-hand effect in that exact G Minor Prelude so that it sings.]
Ivo Pogorelich said, “You have to listen all the time” and “Technique is the art of variety.” Ivo also said, “I believe a composition can only be performed well if it is entirely yours; you know not only every note from memory, but the notes have become you, and you have become the notes.”
Great book; as you can see, I learned a lot and am super glad I read it, which happily motivates me to practice more.
April 5, 2020
Love this book! High quality interviews, lots of insights on piano technique, psychology of performing, and so on, despite the limited time granted by these busy artists for interviews! Particularly the interviews of Arrau, Rosalyn Tureck, and John Browning are eye opening. Seems like I'm looking at a window to a long lost past where artists are less concerned about commercialization and money, instead focusing on reflection and artistry. It reflected on their playing too, when I listen to these pianists of old, they have more individuality, whereas pianists these days tend to sound similar to one another. Perhaps a victim of the standardization of what constitutes perfection in society. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
May 16, 2023
Loved it!! It was so interesting to see the overlapping ideas - crazy to think that in a book with Vladimir Ashkenazy, Lili Kraus, and Glenn Gould you would see common threads and ideas about music and pianism...but there they are! Really recommend to pianists, not sure anyone else would find it at all interesting.
May 4, 2022
Lectura obligada para todo pianista
Mucho que aprender de las reflexiones de los pianistas entrevistados, reflexiones sobre sus vidas, sus miradas y técnicas. Libro muy recomendado.
Mucho que aprender de las reflexiones de los pianistas entrevistados, reflexiones sobre sus vidas, sus miradas y técnicas. Libro muy recomendado.
April 26, 2014
The title speaks for it self. Obviously I didn't read all 25 interviews, but there was a fair amount of reading, then googling information about composers, performers, schools of musicology, pedagogy. I no longer feel badly that my parents didn't buy me a piano when I was 3 yrs. old. ha ha. These concert pianists are all hard working genius's. Amazing stories, and some not too dissimilar.
It would be interesting for me to read a book of interviews from Great Violinists, Operas Singers, etc.
It would be interesting for me to read a book of interviews from Great Violinists, Operas Singers, etc.
September 29, 2013
Terrifically interesting for piano and pianist lovers. Great to hear - in their own voice - the personal stories of these wonderful artists and how they approach and developed their pianistic talents.
February 7, 2008
I read this book whenever I want to be inspired.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews