Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The Nocturnal' was very nearly beyond me.
I've had a lovely life. I've had a great life.
I went to college to study the piano and cello.
The guitar is the most beautiful of all instruments.
I have cut away what I call the excess stuff in my life.
It takes a lifetime and a half to master the classical guitar.
I don't do much relaxing. When I'm not giving a recital I practise.
Michael Berkeley's 'Sonata' is very - what can you say - melodious.
I'm quite reflective - I listen to music, I read, I walk with Django.
I suppose that when I started to play the lute it was fairly esoteric.
The guitar was not treated very seriously as a concert recital instrument.
Hearing Andres Segovia in person was quite a revelation ... It was a knockout.
I've always played a lot of Spanish music, but not as much as most guitarists do.
My father started me off on the guitar, and we learned classical guitar together.
I enjoy having a large audience, but I don't do anything special to attract them.
I practiced two or three hours, sometimes none, sometimes six. It was very varied.
The lute is tuned differently than the guitar and of course it has many more strings.
I practice more than ever ... mostly scales and arpeggios ... and anything I can't do.
The guitar speaks for me and it says things - hopefully - for everybody that I play for.
My father was a very clever man. My mother was not clever. An extraordinary woman, but simple.
When I was 18, I went into the army as a payroll clerk because otherwise I was headed for Korea.
One thing you learn very rapidly in this business is that you are part of a continuing tradition.
Wanting to play the guitar was neither a wild dream nor a realistic ambition. It was simply inevitable.
I like to play the lute full-bloodedly, with passion, as well as with delicacy and, I hope, refinement.
I much rather coach a string quartet in an interpretation of Haydn or Beethoven than to teach the guitar.
What do I think of digital recording? Well, it's all right. But those old thorn needles, now, that was a sound.
When I feel like improvising, I always improvise on the guitar, never on the lute. It's as natural to me as breathing.
I was mostly self-taught on guitar and that had its benefits. It's a great thing to work through problems on your own.
I used to drive myself about in an old Austin van... and then have to sleep in the back because I couldn't afford a hotel.
Some composers end up writing for the guitar as they would write piano music or, more often, harp music. It isn't the same.
You're never static as a performer. You either get better or you get worse. As I see it, you have an equal chance at either.
A violin is tuned to a fifth. But a guitar is tuned to a fourth with a one-third middle. It is very perplexing to composers.
If the orchestra's not enjoying itself, the concerto will not succeed, with the players confined to using half an inch of bow.
I think that Bach has a very nice sound on the lute. But I find that what I want to do with Bach is best revealed on the guitar.
It's very good for one's brain and muscular system to work in harmony. If you keep up your playing it just keeps things ticking over.
I learned mainly by listening to Andres Segovia and that was a great inspiration. And also the gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt.
The cult of the instrument is O.K. for people who are mad about the guitar. But I love music. The guitar is just the instrument I happen to play.
I was passionately interested in Elizabethan history at school, so it was natural for me as a musician to take interest in the music of that period.
I think that the first World War put an end the kind of music that Mahler, Bruckner and Richard Strauss were writing. A change of fashion was needed.
Whatever it is, music should sound spontaneous, I've derived a great deal of pleasure from playing jazz and having the knowledge of that spontaneity.
I think Englishmen or Northern Europeans in general are more naturally attracted to the lute than to the guitar, which always seems Spanish exotic - to our ears.
You have to get the attention of the audience. You have to make sure they know you are starting. You have to achieve a rapport with them on the very first chord.
You have to be serious, and you must have a constantly inquiring mind. But I find it's new music that really stretches me, both technically and as an interpreter.
Quite often, I have to work hard to improve my technical capacity, if you will, before the demands of a new work come within reach. And I find that very stimulating.
Music has been my real solace. And that's why I play music. And that's why I'm so determined, or have been so determined to pursue what I wanted to do, come what may.
Some specialist guitar music is not of the highest intellectual calibre, so I must make it sound as though it is. If it bores me, it certainly won't please an audience.
I love playing jazz because I love the freedom you have to improvise. It has given me a feeling in my classical repertoire of creating the atmosphere of the here and now.
Your experience of life is to a large part distilled into your performing. As you grow older, you concentrate on aspects of music that you perhaps only touched on earlier.
It is difficult to understand the fortunes of an instrument. There was music written for the guitar until the mid-19th century. Then the instrument declined in popularity.
I don't mean this to sound pretentious but I think that artists of all kinds are a rung up the ladder of the spiritual heirarchy, and for me there is something very religious about music.