http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Kraus-Lili.htm Great Contemporary Pianists Speak for Themselves (Elyse Mach)
Without those experiences, I would never have achieved the depths of compassion and, on the other hand, the appreciation of the richness of life that fills my sould and spirit ever since liberation, to this day. Depth may not be the right word either; perhaps immediate or irresistable come closer to my meaning. The gratitude for having a clean cup like the one I'm holding; and the countless wonders, considered trivial, could never, never have grown to the degree of gratitude and enthusiasm with which hey now occur.
Indeed, gratitude and enthusiasm rule my life as they do my performances; they appear in my teaching; and they trigger my understanding of composers - I give them all I have and thank them with all I am for the privilege of being their interpreter.
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When I walk out and see the friendly grin of those 88 keys assuring me, inviting me, I love them and then everything falls into place.
I never eat anything before a performance because I believe that every fiber of your body has to serve the performance and you cannot burden your stomach by making your digestive juices work. If you do, you function too much in the stomach and not enough in the spirit and the brain.
During the performance, this person you see before you, this Lili Kraus, ceases to exist as an individual. I exist only in the music I project to the audience.
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The piano really is a marvelous instrument. In a way it is not only the most sphisticated, but also the most transcendental of all instruments, because it forces you to rely not on technique only, as many would have it today, but on your creative imagination almost to the point of sorcery. The paradox lies in the fact that the voice of the piano dies in the moment of birth. Once you have struck the key, the sound can only diminish; there is no way of actually prolonging it. It is up to your imagination and vision to pretend and make believe that there is a continuity of sound equivalent to the sound of a flute, a voice, a cello, a horn, in fact, a whole orchestra. So the piano has all the richness imaginable besides the polyphony it can produce.
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Mozart has given this gift of sweetness, which is so extraordinary because it is born out of tragedy. I feel an affinity to Mozart because he, like myself, had an almost unbearable sensitivity for all suffering around him, if I dare to speak myself in the same breath with his name. ......
In his diary, Leonardo da Vinci said that the true experience of the artist at times is so terrifying that, if the artistic vision were presented in full truth to the layman, he would be so shocked that he would flee in terror. Therefore, according to Leonardo, it is the duty and sacred privilege of the creative artist to cloak his experience in the garb of love and perfection. Now this is precisely what Mozart has done, and his music has become so much a part of me that I agonize when the music turns minor, and I'm redeemed when it reverts to the major.
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