Rachmaninoff's Quotes

#1. Dizzy Gillespie recorded it with Charlie Parker in an
influential 1945 track (incorporating a much imitated intro - perhaps initially
intended as a parody of Rachmaninoff 's Prelude in C-Sharp Minor

Ted Gioia

#2. [On Rachmaninoff:] He was the most Russian of them all, like a cathedral in the snow. Holy, wintry, infinite, he was all the Russias.

Dagmar Godowsky

#3. He had a Cro-Magnon forehead,

S.M. Reine

#4. Rachmaninoff. The 18th Variation of a Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.

Claudia Gray

#5. It has always been Oscar Peterson. He is my Rachmaninoff.

Shirley Horn

#6. From "Modern Man" in Every Lyric Tells A Story
His life is run by telephones and clocks
He changes his women, like he changes his socks
He plays to win and sometimes he plays rough
Knows a lot about sex but not much about love

Mark Wilkins

#7. But if you, as an independent filmmaker or a 'serious' filmmaker, think you put more love into your characters than the Russo Brothers do Captain America, or Joss Whedon does the Hulk, or I do a talking raccoon, you are simply mistaken.

James Gunn

#8. Rachmaninoff made a musician out of me. His 'Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini' was the piece that sent me into raptures. It spoke to me. To me, it was a tender entreaty for the misunderstood.

Joni Mitchell

#9. John Lennon was brilliant, so gifted, so giving. He was the Bach, Beethoven, the Rachmaninoff of our time.

Sid Bernstein

#10. Composers can do things that weren't allowed in the 17th century. Until we had composers like Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Rachmaninoff to break the rules.

Aaron Zigman

#11. A good conductor ought to be a good chauffeur; the qualities that make the one also make the other. They are concentration, an incessant control of attention, and presence of mind; the conductor only has to add a little sense of music.

Sergei Rachmaninoff

#12. I think people just think I am crazy because they see me doing stand-up, but I am generally not. I am very sad. I'm one of those guys that lights candles and listens to Rachmaninoff.

Bobby Lee

#13. Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music.

Sergei Rachmaninoff

#14. My dear hands. Farewell, my poor hands.

Sergei Rachmaninoff

#15. My father ran the gamut: a favorite of his was Josef Hofmann, but there was also Friedman, Rachmaninoff, Godowsky, Lhevinne, Moiseiwitsch, Paderewski, etc.

Marc-Andre Hamelin

#16. The most efficient way to memorise a piece is to use the one which proceeds in an error free manner

Sergei Rachmaninoff

#17. If you take two steps towards God,' he used to tell me, 'God runs to you!

Yann Martel

#18. 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

#19. What were you going to do tonight?" "I was going to listen to the songs of Rachmaninoff." "Who's that?" "A dead Russian.

Charles Bukowski

#20. I compose music because I must give expression to my feelings, just as I talk because I must give utterance to my thoughts.

Sergei Rachmaninoff

#21. Lauryn Hill, P-Funk, Marvin Gaye, Public Enemy - I have a very diverse palate for music. I can go from Judy Garland to Jimi Hendrix to Stevie Wonder to Rachmaninoff. I just love great music.

Janelle Monae

#22. What is Music? How do you define it? Music is a calm moonlit night, the rustle of leaves in Summer. Music is the far off peal of bells at dusk! Music comes straight from the heart and talks only to the heart: it is Love! Music is the Sister of Poetry and her Mother is sorrow!

Sergei Rachmaninoff

#23. Someone once said that the earth produces enough to satisfy needs, but not enough to satisfy
greed,

Paulo Coelho

#24. The new kind of music seems to create not from the heart but from the head. Its composers think rather than feel. They have not the capacity to make their works exalt - they meditate, protest, analyze, reason, calculate and brood, but they do not exalt.

Sergei Rachmaninoff

#25. 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

#26. I enjoy the kind of characters that allow you to write the dark stuff. I love Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky, and when I'm writing for Dracula or Jekyll & Hyde, I get a chance to use that vocabulary.

Frank Wildhorn

#27. Playing Rachmaninoff was like walking on a rope bridge across a gorge with dreamy skies above and a raging, muddy river below.

Ella Leya