Igor Levit Quotes

#1. If an artist tells you "this is an oak tree," then it better be an oak tree. It's how you proclaim things; if you say "the silence is the music," then it's the music.

Igor Levit

#2. When you have humor, you have a base for collaboration. It is very important.

Igor Levit

#3. When I play, what I see are people who mean something to me, both positively and negatively. It's my private life, in a way, what I see, and this is what I share.

Igor Levit

#4. I always talk about the hierarchy of art, and I always put music on the top of everything, because it's so immaterial.

Igor Levit

#5. Musical talent is maybe something, but there are no unmusical people. You're moved by music. It's total rubbish to say, "Oh, I'm unmusical." It doesn't exist; it's ridiculous.

Igor Levit

#6. The most unique thing about music making is sharing.

Igor Levit

#7. I have one guy that I really have to talk to once a day, and if I don't talk to him once a day, I really feel like something is not completed. This is, like, an attraction story.

Igor Levit

#8. People can text with two hands and are so fast and I am not ... I just have that one person I want to talk to.

Igor Levit

#9. There are no musically untalented people.

Igor Levit

#10. You never know what you're going to share. I can play, I know what is written - the marks, the things the composer tells me to do - and I do it, but it will still sound different each day.

Igor Levit

#11. I'm much better at saying something on the answering machine than texting.

Igor Levit

#12. I'm not good at texting because I'm an older generation, old school. And nobody ever listens to the answering machine anymore. It's terrible.

Igor Levit

#13. I think after music is performance because it is also an immaterial form of art, and then there's everything else.

Igor Levit