New Orts #32

August 25 MMXXIV

My cello has been transported on mules, camels, trucks, rowboats, droshkie, bicycles, gondolas, jeeps, a submarine off Italy, subways, trams, sleds, junks, and on a stretcher in Amalfi.  But by far the  most racking experience of all is when, in full dress, I must  transport the cello in my own hands across the stage each time I have to play.
— Gregory Piatigorsky, cellist (1903-1976)

 Lampenfieber [stagefright] — the only lucid interval in the artistic life.
— Moritz Rosenthal, pianist (1862-1946)

She had a vibrato "above and beyond the call of beauty".
— Robert Commanday (1922-2015), former music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle

I need someone whose mind falls like a chopper on a block; to whom the pitch of absurdity is sublime, and a shoestring adorable. To whom can I expose the urgency of my own passion?
— Virginia Woolf, The Waves