Sergei Rachmaninoff: Quotes about the world

Sergei Rachmaninoff was Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Explore interesting quotes on world.

Sergei Rachmaninoff: 24 quotes 42 likes

“I feel like a ghost wandering in a world grown alien. I cannot cast out the old way of writing and I cannot acquire the new. I have made an intense effort to feel the musical manner of today, but it will not come to me.”

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Interviewed by Leonard Liebling in The Musical Courier, 1939; cited from Sergei Bertensson and Jay Leyda Sergei Rachmaninoff: A Lifetime in Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002) p. 351.

World , Music , Way , Feeling

“The virtuosos look to the students of the world to do their share in the education of the great musical public. Do not waste your time with music that is trite or ignoble. Life is too short to spend it wandering in the barren Saharas of musical trash.”

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Extract from an interview by James Francis Cooke, as given in the 1999 edition of Great Pianists on Piano Playing (Mineola: Dover Publications, 1999) p. 217.

Life , World , Education , Music

“Opinion in all parts of the world would agree that Rachmaninoff is the most complete of living masters of the instrument; his technique is comprehensive, and he is, of course, musical to his bone's marrow. Most important of all, he is a composer, and for this reason he is able to approach a work as none of his pianist contemporaries can approach one – that is, from the inside, as an organic and felt creative process.”

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Neville Cardus The Delights of Music (London: Victor Gollancz, 1966) p. 90.
Criticism

World , Music , Parting