"Debussy's great service to music was to reawaken among all musicians an awareness of harmony and its possibilities. In that, he was just as important as Beethoven, who revealed to us the possibilities of progressive form, or as Bach, who showed us the transcendent significance of counterpoint. Now, what I am always asking myself is this: is it possible to make a synthesis of these three great masters, a living synthesis that will be valid for our time?

-Bartok (1939)

The Wanderer

"The sun seems so cold here,  the blossom is withered,  life is old,  and what they say is empty words;  I am a stranger everywhere."

-Georg Philipp Schmidt von Lübeck

Hannibal Season 03 Episode 05

"I prefer the sound and feel of the
harpsichord. The music arrives like
experience, sudden and entire. The
piano has the quality of a memory."
-Hannibal

Music

Music serves as my focus, solace, and reward.

I made a list of the pianists I most love, and/or, have most inspired me, for a music forum I am part of, but I thought I should save it here as well...

Argerich
Arrau
Ashkenazy
Bareboim
Brendel
Cherkassky
Cortot
Fischer
Gieseking
Gilels
Goode
Gould
Hamelin
Horowitz
Howard
Katchen
Katsaris
Kissin
Kempff
Kovacevich
Lipatti
Lupu
Michelangeli
Ogdon
Perahia
Pogorelich
Pollini
Richter
Rubinstein
Schnabel
Schiff
Serkin
Sherman
Sofronitsky
Sokolov
Solomon
Uchida
Volodos
Weissenberg
Yudina
Zimerman

"Mozart you have to be born with.  Beethoven you have to conquer." - Andras Schiff

"We are not just our bricks and mortar, we are not just our flesh and blood, we are not just our material components. Everything in our world has got an imaginary component. As individuals, we’re always telling people the legend of us. The same goes for our houses, our streets, our towns, our country – there is a huge imaginary component to human life and if in the interests of scientific realism you ignore that, you are not describing reality. 

"Science is a brilliant tool for analyzing our material universe, but science cannot talk about what is inside the human mind: it’s beyond the realm of proof, it’s beyond the realm of science. So I say they should be left to art and magic, which are pretty much the same thing.”

-Alan Moore

Through his peculiar style of performance, Chopin imparted a constant rocking with the most fascinating effect, thus making the melody undulate to and fro, like a skiff driven on over the bosom of tossing waves. This manner of execution, which set a seal so peculiar upon his own style of playing, was at first indicated by the term Tempo rubato, affixed to his writings : a Tempo agitated, broken, interrupted, a movement flexible, yet at the same time abrupt and languishing, and vacillating as the flame under the fluctuating breath by which it is agitated. In his later productions we no longer find this mark. He was convinced that if the performer understood them, he would divine this rule of irregularity. All his compositions should be played with this accentuated and measured swaying and balancing. It is difficult for those who have not frequently heard him play to catch this secret of their proper execution. He seemed desirous of imparting this style to his numerous pupils, particularly those of his own country. His countrymen, or rather his countrywomen, seized it with the facility with which they understand everything relating to poetry or feeling; an innate, intuitive comprehension of his meaning aided them in following all the fluctuations of his depths of aerial and spiritual blue.




 -Franz Liszt