A pupil should decide on a tempo not because it is accepted by the academy, but because
it suits his or her individual sensibility.
The greatest teacher does not impose an interpretation but tries to find the way the pupil
wishes to play and to improve the effectiveness of the interpretation.
Most tolerant of all are composers who are happy to come upon a new form of
interpretation of a familiar piece.
Chapter 5 – Concerts
Playing in public not only isolates the pianist, it isolates and objectifies the work of music,
and turns the performance into an object as well. A public performance is irretrievable.
In public one plays for the music.
The less one is aware of the audience the greater the chance of a deep immersion in the
music that results in a more satisfactory performance.
What makes for success is the intensity of listening, the heightened attention awakened to
the public.
Chapter 6 – Recording
It is sometimes mistakenly thought that the more echo or resonance in a hall, the less
pedal one should use, but in a hall with a warm, rich acoustic, the effect of the pedal adds
to the resonance and gives greater fullness.
Overpedalling, where there is little resonance or echo and therefore too much clarity, is
disturbing. It blurs the lines and adds unwanted harmonic ambiguities.
A unity of interpretation requires a large-scale view of the tempo, even when there is a
great deal of rubato, or changes of speed, and requires a control of tone color to hold the
piece together.
Chapter 7 – Style and Manners
In the 1940s and 1950s the academic way of playing Bach, by those who persevered with
him on the piano in the teeth of the propaganda for the harpsichord, was one of sober
restraint. This approach was sanctified by the teaching of the academy. In playing a
fugue it was always thought to be important to bring out every appearance of the theme,
with the other voices held to a subsidiary dynamic level. In this way a fugue was realized
as a series of mezzo forte entries of the theme, extracted like plums from the texture
which formed a background cake of neutral flavor. The principal interest in Bach’s
fugues lies not in the main theme but in the way it combines with the interesting motifs of
the other voices, themselves often derived from the theme itself.