Ignacy Jan Paderewski Quotes

There are some composers - at the head of whom stands Beethoven - who not only do not know when to stop but appear to stop many times before they actually do.

John Lennon was brilliant, so gifted, so giving. He was the Bach, Beethoven, the Rachmaninoff of our time.

On Nov. 5, 2012, my friend Elliott Carter died in New York at the age of 103. For me, he was and remains one of the most interesting figures of music history in the past century.

I am convinced that 100 years from now, people will talk about Elliott Carter as one of the most important figures in the second half of 20th-century music.

Shostakovich was one of the great symphonists of all time, and maybe the last great symphonist.

When you're a kid, Beethoven is Beethoven, but as I've grown older, my astonishment at the sheer inventiveness of the man has increased, and I have an appreciation that I didn't have when I was in my 20s.

All my life I have regarded myself as one of Mozart's greatest admirers, and I will remain one until my last breath.

Mozart, the last chord of a centuries-old great European taste.

I have always reckoned myself among the greatest admirers of Mozart, and shall do so till the day of my death.

I listed to Tchaikovsky. He is both kitsch and profound. I love that lack of "Good taste."

For me, Bach is like Shakespeare. He has known all and felt all. He is everything.

Mozart has the classic purity of light and the blue ocean; Beethoven the romantic grandeur which belongs to the storms of air and sea, and while the soul of Mozart seems to dwell on the ethereal peaks of Olympus, that of Beethoven climbs shuddering the storm-beaten sides of a Sinai. Blessed be they both! Each represents a moment of the ideal life, each does us good. Our love is due to both.

I wanted to honor [George Gershwin]. He's a great American songwriter.

Just as surely as every new language mastered opens up a new world, so knowledge of a Beethoven, a Chopin, or a Schumann opens up a new world in spiritual beauty and thought.

If I had my life to live over, I wish I could be a great pianist or something.

Mozart is the most inaccessible of the great masters.

The composer reveals the innermost nature of the world, and expresses the profoundest wisdom in a language that his reasoning faculty does not understand, just as a magnetic somnambulist gives information about things of which she has no conception when she is awake. Therefore in the composer, more than in any other artist, the man is entirely separate and distinct from the artist.

Brubeck, for instance, is not careless. He's a studied guy. And even if his picture ends up on the back cover of Life, he's still a studious guy.

To Strauss the composer I take off my hat; to Strauss the man I put it back on again.

Yeah, you're a regular Mozart...well, except for the whole music thing.

Mozart, who was buried in a pauper’s grave, was one of the greatest successes we know of, a man who in his early thirties had poured out his inexhaustible gift of music, leaving the world richer because he had passed that way. To leave the world richer—that is the ultimate success.

I was proud to work with the great Gershwin, and I would have done it for nothing, which I did.

Eric Lewis doesn't play the piano, he devours it. He doesn't play music, he channels the divine.

I wasn't a Prince fan until I watched Purple Rain. When I watched that, it was one of my favorite movies of all time because it shows the life of an artist.