A Quote by Robert Gottlieb

Schumann's 'Quintet in E flat for Piano and Strings' is one of the sublime moments in Romantic music. — © Robert Gottlieb
Schumann's 'Quintet in E flat for Piano and Strings' is one of the sublime moments in Romantic music.
Once, somebody asked Robert Schumann to explain the meaning of a certain piece of music he had just played on the piano. What Robert Schumann did was sit back down at the piano and play the piece of music again.
I don't like the piano player music of the movies, the Michael Nyman, and sometimes that piano music makes me puke. It's not really romantic. It's just trying to get your Pavlovian juices flowing because it's a technique now.
You're in direct contact with the music by having the strings under your fingers. It's not mechanical like a piano.
One encounters very capable fathers abashed by their piano-playing daughters. Three measures of Schumann make them red with embarrassment.
I'd actually been making my living as an organist with bands since I was probably 15 or 16 years old, and then as a senior in high school I put together a jazz quintet called The Bobby Mack Jazz Quintet.
Danzon is my favorite Cuban music, played by a traditional string orchestra with flute and piano. It's very formally structured but romantic music, which derives from the French-Haitian contradance.
When we hear a Mozart piano concerto today, we're most likely to hear the piano part played on a modern concert grand. In the hands of a professional pianist, such a piano can bury the strings and the winds and hold its own against the brass. But Mozart wasn't composing for a nine-foot-long, thousand-pound piano; he was composing for a five-and-a-half-foot-long, hundred-and-fifty-pound piano built from balsa wood and dental floss.
There are two kinds of music. One comes from the strings of a guitar, the other from the strings of the heart.
As a young composer I had a particular fondness for Liszt's Beethoven Symphony arrangements for the piano, and to this day I enjoy playing non-piano music at the piano.
...the laws of physics, carefully constructed after thousands of years of experimentation, are nothing but the laws of harmony one can write down for strings and membranes. The laws of chemistry are the melodies that one can play on these strings. the universe is a symphony of strings. And the "Mind of God," which Einstein wrote eloquently about, is cosmic music resonating throughout hyperspace.
I just wanted to release an album of piano music for music's sake. I'm not expecting to sell millions of albums. It's was just nice to be able to sit down at an acoustic piano and make some music.
When I'm romantic, I'll make minted lamb. Yeah, man, I do have my romantic moments.
A lot of my work is about these moments you find, like when you're driving alone at night by yourself, or you sit at home and smoke a cigarette and all of a sudden there is beautiful music playing - for me it is sad piano music - and think, "I'm so in love and I don't even know with what." You want to freeze this moment.
The Metropole Orchestra is like Count Basie or Duke Ellington with strings... it's strings that swing. Strings that swing like Dizzy Gillespie... keep swinging, baby. And when you have all of that special excellence of the Metropole Orchestra, then your music just flies - it soars in a way that's really magical.
The source of inspiration can be any of the things:deep emotional experiences - say, romantic love or spiritual contemplation.I think such rare moments come only when you have total concentration. You are consumed in and by the music. I guess you could say that it is akin to contemplation. In order to reach this desirable state of mind you have to rise above the environment you're in at that particular time - a bad piano, glaring stage lights, or the attitude of the audience. Sometimes the inspiration of the other musicians you're playing with helps you reach this stage.
As a kid, I took piano lessons, and I didn't like it. It wasn't cool. I was into Duran Duran and rock music. I didn't have any interest in piano. I did it for three years, and because of piano, I learned percussion. I learned scales. I learned how to sing. Piano gives you all of the basics of those things.
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