Top 7 Quotes & Sayings by Leopold Auer

If you practice with your head, two hours is plenty.

Practice with your fingers and you need all day. Practice with your mind and you will do as much in 1 1/2 hours.

Art begins where technique ends. There can be no real art development before one's technique is firmly established. And a great deal of technical work has to be done before the great works of violin literature, the sonatas and concertos, may be approached.

A worker without genius is better than a genius who won't work.

Too many students who are technically quite far advanced do not properly interpret the technically less difficult pieces they play, because they regard them as beneath serious consideration. This is a fundamental error in musical taste and judgment.

The right kind of practice is not a matter of hours. Practice should represent the utmost concentration of brain. It is better to play with concentration for two hours than to practice eight without. I should say that four hours would be a good maximum practice time-I never ask more of my pupils-and that during each minute of the time the brain be as active as the fingers.

The thumb does not have very a important role when shifting from one position to another. There is too much said, as it seems to me, about importance of the thumb... The thumb must lightly touch the neck and follow the forefinger when moving in different positions, aiding the hand to shift up and down without clutching the instrument.