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Quotes from Piano Notes: The World of the Pianist — Charles Rosen

1927–2012 United States

← All quotes by Charles Rosen

5 quotes

The relation of the performance of music to sound is complex and ambiguous: this is what makes possible Mark Twain's joke that Wagner is better than he sounds.

Piano Notes: The World of the Pianist (2002)

The piano is the only keyboard instrument in which one can grandly vary the effects of the harmonics or overtones of a chord at will by balancing the sonority in different ways.

Piano Notes: The World of the Pianist (2002)

One of the pupils of Artur Schnabel told me that he never heard his teacher practice a difficult passage slowly, but he was struck by the way Schnabel would play one chord of a slow movement over and over, measuring and remeasuring the different components of the harmony.

Piano Notes: The World of the Pianist (2002)

I do not think that any composer has ever asked for octave glissandi on the black keys, but there is a recording by Moriz Rosenthal of Chopin's Black-Key Etude in which he plays the short octave passage in both hands glissando: it hurts my hands just to think about it.

Piano Notes: The World of the Pianist (2002)

The world of Debussy is a seductive oasis, and it is hard to leave it after spending many days immersed in its atmosphere. Playing Debussy-or any other composer with a strong and idiosyncratic personality-affects not only one's cast of mind but the physical disposition as well, the way the muscles work and the fingers come into contact with the ivories.

Piano Notes: The World of the Pianist (2002)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Charles Rosen (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.