In memoriam Albert Simon

"...He was a real musician for whom the material and the experience were not separate. He hated feelings projected onto music. The material itself, materiality were not only his source but almost the sanctity of feeling. He knew everything there is to know about music and could express everything about it; even so, he believed in the inexpressible. He knew, because he had experience of it, that whatever we say is only valid relatively, to a degree, in its weight and in its musical connections. This cannot be decided ahead of time, but throughout a piece of music, one must be in a position to decide at any given moment....

.....in all the music that he kept alive within him, everything depended on harmonious proportions, flexibility, restraint, though the "playing out" of the musical material to the full, made it passionate....At his concerts, we felt such a perfect balance of musical precision and flexibility, formative power and grace, explosiveness and elegance, as only the greatest of men can produce..."

(Laszló Dobszay, Muzsika, March, 2000)