As so often I have pointed out, intuition is a level of the highest range. In details, I don’t have to think or to worry about the realization of my … - Burkard Schliessmann

I’m very interested in the ‘Culture of Interpretation.’ I’m convinced that each great artist has his own personal style, but it is his artistic responsibility in developing this style to respond other interpretations, either prior or at the same time. I’m convinced that Rubinstein would have presented us another Chopin if Cortot had not existed. Cortot presented very romantic Chopin interpretations - really masterly, outstanding, but confused. Rubinstein’s immediate answer was a very classical Chopin. He was really the first to point out the classical line and structure in his oeuvre.

I myself represent the style of a Bach who was a human being with all his heights and depths, who knew life very well. My Bach is the experience of my playing the whole literature; and filling the different voices with their own life, vitality, vividness; it’s the independent speaking-until-singing of the different voices; and lastly it’s a balance between pianistic virtuosity and something chamber-music-like.

The Goldberg Variations are, as explained in my booklet-text, in short, music that observes neither end nor beginning, music with neither real climax nor real resolution, music that, like Baudelaire’s lovers, “rests lightly on the wings of the unchecked wind.” Gould is referring here to the circular design of the work, a circularity whose development is polarized, inspired, and fed by more and more new energy fields. The result is a universe that in its significance resembles the alpha and omega of music in general, music that evolves out of nothing and disappears back into nothing as if in a state in which time stands still.