THOMAS BERNHARD
Executioners
“My last teacher before Horowitz had been Wührer, one of those teachers who suffocate a pupil with their own mediocrity, not to mention the teachers who finished their degrees earlier and who have brilliant careers, as they say, performing at every moment in world cities and occupying highly paid chairs at our famous music conservatories, but they’re nothing but piano-playing executioners without the faintest understanding of the concept of music, I thought. These music teachers are playing and sitting everywhere and ruining thousands and hundreds of thousands of music students, as if it were their life’s mission to suffocate the exceptional talent of our musical youth before it’s developed. Nowhere does such irresponsibility reign as does it in our music conservatories, which lately have been taken to calling themselves music universities.”
The Loser