Quotes by Michael Hersch

Michael Hersch

A critic can serve as guide. I think there’s an understanding amongst the public that critics have their own preferences and dislikes.

Preference

Thinking

Understanding

A healthy dialogue is always good.

Dialogue

Healthy

A lot of my approach to the instrument, especially as I’ve gotten older, is to treat the piano in ways that are not very pianistic – to consider the sounds I’m after first, and to deal with technical considerations later.

Firsts

Piano

Way

As a young composer I had a particular fondness for Liszt’s Beethoven Symphony arrangements for the piano, and to this day I enjoy playing non-piano music at the piano.

Piano

Symphony

Young

As I see it, the major requirements for a strong and able rendering are an understanding of a work’s structure, voicing, and trajectory; an ability to execute the details on the page from largest to smallest; technical command, and hopefully a connection with the overall expressive impulse (though the latter is not at all necessary to give a good performance).

Giving

Strong

Understanding

George Rochberg once said that ‘to be a composer, you need to have fire in the belly, fire in the brain, but most importantly, an iron stomach.’ I feel this is for the most part true, and hope I might convey something of it to younger composers.

Brain

Fire

Iron

I do believe young people should be obligated to try different types of music – that is what education is. But once you’re in a situation as an adult, it doesn’t benefit anybody – at least in my experience – to force music on people that they don’t like or do not have an interest in – whether it’s three-hundred years old or newly written.

Believe

People

Years

I don’t think performance out of duty yields very much. Coercion is never the way to go.

Coercion

Thinking

Yield

I don’t think the role of the critic has changed very much. In the most positive sense, the music critic is one who helps the public navigate what’s out there, especially in bringing attention to things they otherwise wouldn’t hear about, or to provide a new window into something familiar.

Attention

Roles

Thinking

I enjoy the challenge of taking something which was not meant for the piano, distilling its essence and writing or improvising it for/at the piano, but having the listener forget that he or she is listening to a piano.

Essence

Piano

Writing

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Able

Art

Artist

Attention

Audience Of One

Believe

Brain

Coercion

Communication

Concerts

Confusion

Country

Creativity

Culture

Determine

Dialogue

Diaries

Ends

Essence

Essentials

Fire

Firsts

Given

Giving

Goal

Groups

Hands

Healthy

Honest

Imagine

Important

Interesting

Iron

Issues

Mean

Meaningful

Meetings

Men

Musician

New Music

Often Is

Opinion

Order

People

Piano

Preference

Responsibility

Restless

Roles

Rome

The Future Blueprint

Tool

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

Tool

The Autobiography

Tool

The Behaviour Diary

Tool

The Dating Diary

Tool

The Relationship Therapist

Tool

Quotes by Michael Hersch

Michael Hersch

A critic can serve as guide. I think there’s an understanding amongst the public that critics have their own preferences and dislikes.

A healthy dialogue is always good.

A lot of my approach to the instrument, especially as I’ve gotten older, is to treat the piano in ways that are not very pianistic – to consider the sounds I’m after first, and to deal with technical considerations later.

As a young composer I had a particular fondness for Liszt’s Beethoven Symphony arrangements for the piano, and to this day I enjoy playing non-piano music at the piano.

George Rochberg once said that ‘to be a composer, you need to have fire in the belly, fire in the brain, but most importantly, an iron stomach.’ I feel this is for the most part true, and hope I might convey something of it to younger composers.

I don’t think performance out of duty yields very much. Coercion is never the way to go.

I don’t think the role of the critic has changed very much. In the most positive sense, the music critic is one who helps the public navigate what’s out there, especially in bringing attention to things they otherwise wouldn’t hear about, or to provide a new window into something familiar.

I enjoy the challenge of taking something which was not meant for the piano, distilling its essence and writing or improvising it for/at the piano, but having the listener forget that he or she is listening to a piano.

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Topics by Michael Hersch

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The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

The Relationship Therapist

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