I cannot bear assaults of any kind, and it seems to me that the Beatles essentially were out to affront and to assault.
Chopin, Schubert, and Liszt had no idea of how to write for the piano.
Concert pianists are really afraid to try out the Beethoven Fourth Concerto if the Third happens to be their specialty. That's the piece they had such success with on Long Island, by George, and it will surely bring them success in Connecticut. So first there's tremendous conservatism. And then stagnation sets in. Or it certainly did in me.
I love the early sonatas; I love the early Mozart, period. I'm really fond of that moment when he was either emulating Haydn or Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach or anybody but himself. The moment he found himself, as conventional wisdom would have it, at the age of 18 or 19 or 20, I stop being so interested in him.
I'm fascinated with what happens to the creative output when you isolate yourself from the approval and disapproval of the people around you.
I don't think any of the early Romantic composers knew how to write for the piano... The music of that era is full of empty theatrical gestures, full of exhibitionism, and it has a worldly, hedonistic quality that simply turns me off.
Isolation is the one sure way to human happiness.
I detest audiences. Not in their individual components but en masse... I think they are a force of evil.
The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.
There's a very curious and - and almost sadistic lust for blood that overcomes the concert listener, and there's a waiting for it to happen: a waiting for the horn to fluff; a waiting for the strings to become ragged; a waiting for the conductor to forget the subdivide, you know? And it's dreadful!
