"Ever since the time when the feat of playing whole programs without the notes originated among the great virtuosi of the first half of the nineteenth century, musical memory has occupied an important place in piano playing and in all serious piano study. Today the frequenters of concert-halls have come to take it quite for granted that all public performers on the instrument shall play from memory, so much so in fact that to have seen Vladimir de Pachmann with the notes of the Chopin F minor Concerto in front of him on the music-rack, or the late Raoul Pugno tripping gaily out onto the platform with the music of the Italian Concerto in his hand, was to have experienced a slight shock to one's accustomed sense of the fitness of things. Entirely aside from any feeling among the artists themselves as to the advantages or disadvantages of playing from memory, their audiences have quite decided that they want their Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, and all the rest performed without reference to the printed page, so that it well behooves the young aspirant for public pianistic honors to question himself about the quality of his musical memory."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Edwin Hughes, "Musical Memory in Piano Playing and Piano Study", The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Oct., 1915)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Vladimir_de_Pachmann
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Vladimir de Pachmann
Vladimir von Pachmann or Pachman (27 July 1848 – 6 January 1933) was a of Russian-German ethnicity, especially noted for performing the works of Chopin, and also for his eccentric on-stage style.
1 quote on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Vladimir de Pachmann →
Related Quotes
"You must be true to yourself. Strong enough to be true to yourself. Brave enough to be strong enough to be true to yo…"
"So often I have said in the past, when a war is over, the statesmen should not go into conference one with another, b…"
"the more violent the boy, the more I see that he creates, and when he kicks the others with his big boots, treads on …"
"Israel’s actions are fundamentally at odds with the values that Eurovision claims to uphold — peace, unity, and respe…"
"Where to begin? The pain I am in, hard to know when to stop. Out of the blue a dream came true, only to see it drop. …"
"I love it, but it doesn't knock me out. I think it's great, but it could be better. I like it a lot, it's just not my…"
"You'd never think, to look at you'd never think to look at that building there, is where there used to be trees. You'…"
"Miss my love today as I miss the stars that shine above telling me one day my love will come to me again. Miss my lov…"
"I have just one regret in life: that chance I wasted when you said goodbye. And to be honest, at the time, though I c…"
"Once I was hailed as a prodigal son. In other words, loved by everyone. Now it's so different: wherever I go, nobody …"