Leo Ornstein Quotes

Some play the piano well and some badly and there is a great difference in the melodies they produce.

I play piano very badly. That's my great regret.

Although they can do it all the time, you know, they're far better than me, on a musically, on a theoretical music level. You know, they're out of my league.

I know what my taste is, and I do like my touch on the piano.

In music, you can't really tell who's better.

As for the piano, the faster her fingers flew over it, the more he marveled. She struck the keys with aplomb and ran from one end of the keyboard to the other without a stop.

Endeavour to play easy pieces well and with elegance; that is better than to play difficult pieces badly.

I play piano, but not well enough to play professionally.

I played piano for about two years when I was a kid. I didn't play long enough to be really great.

So, I really don't consider myself a fabulous keyboard player.

By many peoples' standards, my playing is very primitive but by punk standards, I'm a virtuoso.

A good interpreter can take a piece of bad music and make it sound pretty decent, while a bad interpreter can take good music and make it sound cheap. I can tell that some people have a bad taste, and unlike on the piano, they smear around a lot, that is bad taste.

Frank's bands could play the hardest stuff and make it seem like no big deal.

I'm not a great piano player.

I believe I inherited my sense of music from my father. My father was an ear piano player; he could just hear something and play it.

This kind of prelude was succeeded by the concerto itself which he executed with a degree of spirit and firmness that no one has ever pretended to equal.

I just sit down at the piano and rattle it off.

I had studied piano since I was 13, but I was surrounded by students who'd been playing since they were 5. I realized I was never going to be anything but mediocre.

I can sit down at the piano and make you think I know how to play the piano because I know, like, the beginnings of four songs.

I think that, initially, I was most passionate about music and particularly about playing the piano. I started playing when I was nine, and I was obsessed with it, really. I wouldn't even go spend the night at a friend's unless they had a piano. But I didn't have the chops, the extraordinary talent to be able to play the piano professionally.

My wife is an incredible pianist. I don't think there's anything my wife can't do, in all actuality.

I find myself more genuinely drawn to the essence of Beethoven in Schnabel than I ever have been by anybody.

I'm musical in the sense that I can write a song, but I realised when I was learning the piano as a child that there were people who played it so much better.

Playing to a decent standard sometimes isn't enough.

There are times, like with Dire Straits, where you can get as close as you can be to being good at your instrument and not cross over to that tasteless place.