I really don’t know whether any place contains more pianists than Paris, or whether you can find more asses and virtuosos anywhere.

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.

…I haven’t heard anything so great for a long time; Beethoven snaps his fingers at the whole world.. – (Upon hearing a Beethoven Trio)

…the Official Bulletin declared that the Poles should be as proud of me as the Germans are of Mozart; obvious nonsense.

But why should one be ashamed of writing badly in spite of knowing better – it’s results that shows errors.

Here you doubtless observe my tendency to do wrong against my will. As something has involuntarily crept into my head through my eyes, I love to indulge it, even though it may be all wrong. – (About his Op. 11 Piano Concerto)

Among the numerous pleasures of Vienna the hotel evenings are famous. During supper Strauss or Lanner play waltzes…After every waltz they get huge applause; and if they play a Quodlibet, or jumble of opera, song and dance, the hearers are so overjoyed that they don’t know what to do with themselves. It shows the corrupt […]

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.

Sometimes I can only groan, and suffer, and pour out my despair at the piano! – (about Russia’s domination of Poland)

([Friedrich Kalkbrenner) has made me an offer; that I should study with him for three years, and he will make something really – really out of me. I answered that I know how much I lack; but that I cannot exploit him, and three years is too much. But he has convinced me that I […]