I am not fitted to give concerts. The audience intimidates me, I feel choked by its breath, paralyzed by its curious glances, struck dumb by all those strange faces.
Bach is an astronomer, discovering the most marvellous stars. Beethoven challenges the universe. I only try to express the soul and the heart of man.
Here, whatever is not boring is not English.
My manuscripts sleep, while I cannot, for I am covered with poultices.
Hats off, gentlemen – a genius! If the mighty autocrat of the north knew what a dangerous enemy threatened him in Chopin’s works in the simple tunes of his mazurkas, he would forbid this music. Chopin’s works are canons buried in flowers.
Concerts are never real music, you have to give up the idea of hearing in them all the most beautiful things of art.
The three most celebrated doctors on the island have been to see me. One sniffed at what I spat, the second tapped where I spat from, and the third sounded me and listened as I spat. The first said I was dead, the second that I was dying and the third that I’m going to die.
I haven’t heard anything so great for a long time; Beethoven snaps his fingers at the whole world...
As long as I have health and strength, I will gladly work all my days.
England is so surrounded by the boredom of conventionalities, that it is all one to them whether music is good or bad, since they have to hear it from morning till night. For here they have flower-shows with music, dinners with music, sales with music...
If the newspapers cut me up so much that I shall not venture before the world again, I have resolved to become a house painter; that would be as easy as anything else, and I should, at any rate, still be an artist!
Chopin has done for the piano what Schubert has done for the voice.
Oh, how hard it must be to die anywhere but in ones birthplace.
Man is never always happy, and very often only a brief period of happiness is granted him in this world; so why escape from this dream which cannot last long?
All the same it is being said everywhere that I played too softly, or rather, too delicately for people used to the piano-pounding of the artists here.
Here, waltzes are called works! And Strauss and Lanner, who play them for dancing, are called Kapellmeistern. This does not mean that everyone thinks like that; indeed, nearly everyone laughs about it; but only waltzes get printed.
Vienna is a handsome, lively city, and pleases me exceedingly.
I feel like a novice, just as I felt before I knew anything of the keyboard. It is far too original, and I shall end up not being able to learn it myself.
Play Mozart in memory of me.
England is a country of pianos, they are everywhere.
Bach is like an astronomer who, with the help of ciphers, finds the most wonderful stars.