Quotations

We do not need to be edu­cated musi­cally. We sim­ply need to guard against musi­cal mise­d­u­ca­tion. Our own ears, unless they have grown so used to medi­oc­rity that they have lost their keen­ness, will do the rest of the job for us.

I feel strongly that every child – not just the musi­cally gifted – should receive some musi­cal instruc­tion. With rare excep­tions, chil­dren have an instinct for music, are to a cer­tain extent musi­cal, and should be musi­cally devel­oped. For the child’s own future enjoy­ment and his own sat­is­fac­tion, he should learn to play an instru­ment. These days, when we are try­ing to make things eas­ier for our chil­dren, we may be too timid about the process of their learn­ing an instru­ment. Chil­dren should be forced to learn an instru­ment, gen­tly but firmly.

Crit­i­cism does not dis­turb me, for I am my own sever­est critic. Always in my play­ing I strive to sur­pass myself, and it is this con­stant strug­gle that makes music fas­ci­nat­ing to me.

Can you appre­ci­ate music with­out play­ing it? Of course you can, in the same way that peo­ple who are not ath­letes get enjoy­ment from attend­ing a game to enjoy the crowd, the excite­ment, and the experience.

You always hear of the “del­i­cate, sen­si­tive artist.” I assure you that it takes the nerves of a bull­fighter, the diges­tion of a peas­ant, the vital­ity of a night­club host­ess, the tact of a diplo­mat, and the con­cen­tra­tion of a Tibetan monk to lead the stren­u­ous life of a vir­tu­oso. The great com­pen­sa­tion, of course, is the human one. In the course of giv­ing con­certs, I have been around the world many times. I know lit­er­ally thou­sands of peo­ple in all parts of the globe. I don’t sup­pose there’s a place in the world where I haven’t friends. If that’s not a reward for ser­vice, what is?

Instinc­tively we rec­og­nize good music, and some­how or other, we know the real thing. When I have played in coun­try schools where the chil­dren had never heard a flesh-and-blood musi­cian in their lives, they lis­tened atten­tively when I played first-rate pieces. When I played second-rate pieces – as an exper­i­ment only – they wrig­gled and stared out the window.

You can “just lis­ten” to the Brahms vio­lin con­certo and enjoy it keenly. But if you read about Brahms’ life, you appre­ci­ate it more. And, if you’ve lis­tened to record­ings of it, you will appre­ci­ate it ten times as much.

Guide a youngster’s fin­gers over a piano key­board, and let him pick out Yan­kee Doo­dle. From that moment onward, he will have a height­ened appre­ci­a­tion of music.

There’s not a liv­ing human being who doesn’t need luck. You need luck every time you give a con­cert. You worry about weather and trans­porta­tion. Trains and planes are some­times late; taxis have been known to break down. Then, at the hall, you worry that a string might snap or the lights fail, or that a page-turner might flip over two pages at once.

You must pre­serve your enthu­si­asm for play­ing. Loss of that enthu­si­asm is deadly to musicianship.