The true criminal is the aficionado. He has a terrible addiction to faces—a dark, soulful Eastern European to play Tchaikovsky and Dvorak, a complex Oriental, preferably a woman dressed in red with shoulders bare, to tackle Bartok and Stravinsky, a broad-backed Swede, male or female, to pull and jerk Beethoven. Those who find the face of Heifetz in a Wieniawski polonaise are as profoundly simpleminded as the pilgrims who worship the shroud of Turin.
To free the note from the nose, the rhythm from the arch of the eyebrow, the twitch of the lip. To free the downbow from the wrist, the pizzicato from the finger. To find the heart of the music, and hear it pure, disembodied, ungeographied, de-raced, un-sexed, with all trace of the Human removed except that initial shove called Composition—that is the goal of the true musician.
—Sandor, In Search of the Lost Chord, A Brief Guide, p. 103