He told Clavier in 1981 that while sitting on a bench he tended to lean forward, raise his shoulders, become impossibly stiff and develop pains all over. He also said that he practiced with a chair at home and found it natural for him. Although Lupu was an admirer of the pianism of Arthur Rubinstein and Vladimir Horowitz, he named Mieczysław Horszowski as having the largest influence on his playing, saying that Horszowski "speaks to me like no one else". Lupu's initial approach to new music was to read it away from the piano, saying that he "reads more easily away from the instrument" and that "it is the only way to learn". Lupu said in regards to tone production that "everything in music comes from the head", adding: "If you have any concept of sound, you hear it in your inner ear. All you have to work for is to match that sound on the instrument. The whole balance, the line, the tone, is perceived and controlled by the head." He further described tone production as a "matching process for which [one] practices", and the physical contact of the keyboard as "a very individual thing determined by the color or timbre you hear and try to get, the piece you are playing, the phrase". Lupu's playing garnered admiration not only from music critics, but also by fellow major artists. In a 2002 interview Mitsuko Uchida said that "there is nobody on earth who can actually get certain range of colour, and also the control – don't underestimate this unbelievable control of his playing". Nikolai Lugansky said in an interview that Lupu "possesses the rare power of letting the music speak for itself", and András Schiff stated that Lupu had the "rare gift to illuminate anything that he plays with rare musical intelligence". Other pianists who expressed admiration for Lupu or cited him as an inspiration in their music-making include Emanuel Ax, Daniel Barenboim, Seong-Jin Cho (who named Lupu's recording of the Schubert Impromptus as his favourite), Kirill Gerstein, Stephen Hough, Robert Levin, Maria João Pires, and Daniil Trifonov. In addition, the conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin cited Lupu as an inspiration while he was a piano student, saying that listening to recitals and recordings by Lupu "shaped my conception of sound from a very young age", and the cellist Steven Isserlis called him "one of the greatest artists I have ever