Ellaine Extracts’s Reviews > The Piano Shop on the Left Bank: Discovering a Forgotten Passion in a Paris Atelier > Status Update

“preparation causes tension and we miss the note. “Natural movement is riskier,” he acknowledged, “but life is risky and music is an element of life, so it is risky, too!”

“There are many ways of doing things, but there is always one way that is natural”

“playing music is a strange mixture of a given structure—the score—and one’s creativity in its interpretation. Being able to play all of the notes is just the beginning; the real work is in adding your own self transparently to the composer’s intentions”

“One does not make music against someone else”

“We invest it with our dreams, we touch it offhandedly as we walk by, we crown it with favorite photos and treasured objects until it becomes a kind of domestic shrine. But when it is gone from our lives, it can’t really be replaced, not for what it encompasses as part of a life’s progress. Time moves on and the piano, like us, wears down

“Music and memory: can there be a stronger amalgam weighing on the heart? No wonder it’s hard to leave behind a piano that one has loved, or that one associates with friends and family, when circumstances force the abandonment of this supremely unportable possession”

“when it works, neither of you is conscious of the various elements. It’s like a wonderful conversation where anticipation and communication merge. It’s almost as if you are breathing together and the music is your breath”

“The human qualities an accompanist needs most, he told me, are tact, humility, and kindness, but also a firmness about musical principles”

“The human qualities an accompanist needs most, he told me, are tact, humility, and kindness, but also a firmness about musical principles”

“you have to be careful how you assert yourself. You must earn the confidence, the respect, and the trust of notoriously willful and self-centered performers”