Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
As a boy I remember how terribly real the statues of the saints would seem at 7 o'clock Mass-before I'd had breakfast. From that I learned always to conduct hungry.
Music does not know the difference between people; it only speaks to their hearts. It is the only form of communication that can bring this terrible world together.
I discovered that the people of the North are different and there's no way you can make a person from the North similar to a Southerner. They're two different worlds.
My first strong musical memory is of the Villa-Lobos Sixth Quartet which my parents were rehearsing. I remember that it reminded me of big teddy bears dancing around.
South Africa is a country built on possibility. Possibility lies in making a difference and creating value from a situation - without denying that certain issues exist.
This continuity of sound and form was something that I became really interested in from working with Ligeti. He was always going on about how form has to be continuous.
I find brass bands have a melancholy sound. All right out of doors, of course - fifty miles away. Like bagpipes, they turn what had been a dream into a public nuisance.
I'm a bit of a Luddite, really: I don't use email much, as I started drowning in it. So I said 'screw this' and dumped my laptop, though I've begun to re-engage with it.
The convergence of the Rhone and Saone. Paul Bocuse. The birthplace of cinema. Chateauneuf-du-Pape just a few miles down the road. It does not get much better than Lyon.
Some musical directors have more chutzpah. They pick up the phone and talk people into giving. I prefer to call and say 'thank you' after the money has been contributed.
A happy disposition is largely a disposition to make others happy. One life permeates all things, and there is no corner of the cosmos too remote to feel its heart throb.
Our pop scene is among the best in the world because there are 300 languages spoken on the streets of London, compared with 200 in New York. Our diversity is our strength.
The underlying process in Northern music tends to be slower and continuous, whatever's happening on the surface; in Southern music the underlying process is always faster.
The academy gave me a grounding in discipline and hard work that has sustained me throughout my life, and the lessons I learned there I now try to impress on young people.
I think music needs to be presented in a way so that kids can grasp songs, dances, simple music that's associated with some particular defining moment in human experience.
There is a mysterious way in which orchestras keep a sense of their history and what they've done. I still listen to the L.A. Philharmonic and feel that Giulini was there.
It's wonderful doing concerts in places like New York and London, but I feel a responsibility to also bring my work home, to bring world-class, classical music to Somerset.
For anyone who doesn't have that connection with Mozart, I urge those people to go and find some of his music, because it can quite genuinely make you just glad to be alive.
I always felt that one day I would have to make the change in my own life, bite the bullet and see what it is to be a composer who conducts rather than the other way around.
I like this idea of identification with the local team. I think it's great. That's what an orchestra should be. It's an orchestra for its hometown, and it serves the people.
There's always blood on the carpet when I play Beethoven at the piano. I hate playing the piano! And it's so hard to fight for Beethoven's soul! But that's what I have to do!
Parallels between classical and pop are not new. The whole San Francisco movement of John Cage and Terry Riley went hand in glove with what the Velvet Underground were doing.
I can go in front of an orchestra. I can go in front of an audience. But if you see me walking through an audience in the reception or through a lot of people, I'm still shy.
And at the same time, I had my very first concert at the age of 16. I hadn't heard a symphony orchestra before, and I was so deeply impressed I said I have to be a conductor.
I don't believe in an annual dose of film music for the sake of it being film music. If we program film music, it will be because there is a real artistic reason for doing so.
The Northern idea of form is more of a process. The various units of the form overlap. You can't tell where some things stop and new things start. This is typical of Sibelius.
Mozart makes you believe in God because it cannot be by chance that such a phenomenon arrives into this world and leaves such an unbounded number of unparalleled masterpieces.
If we are able to get inside the music and inhabit it convincingly enough, it will cause everyone to find each other in this new psychological space. And that's most exciting.
What is sad is not to be able to do today what you have done in your youth. But what is good is to remember that - when you were able - you did it to the best of your ability.
The works of the creative spirit last, they are essentially imperishable, while the world-stirring historical activities of even the most eminent men are circumscribed by time.
In America, they have this nauseating habit of calling the conductor 'maestro'. I always slightly gag when the cor anglais player goes, 'Maestro, can I discuss bar 19 with you?'
If you think of the history, in the days of Brahms and Beethoven and all these guys, almost every concert was a new music concert. To play something old was really an exception.
The private sector is growing so incredibly in India, in every city you have industries for whom building a concert hall would be nothing financially. But they just don't do it.
Only when every one of us and every nation learns the secret of love for all mankind will the world become a great orchestra, following the beat of the Greatest Conductor of all.
We found that when people put this issue on the table, it turns out that men acknowledge the issue, and employers and employees can work out solutions just as working mothers do.
Sometimes if you have very confident people, you have to tell them please, be polite, there are other players are good enough as you and you should never speak out of an orchestra.
A hundred years ago, concerts were far more come-what-may - people played cards, drank beer and appreciated the music. If we go some way towards restoring that spirit, I'll be happy.
A conundrum of music is that music brings people together, yet to become a skilled musician involves a certain amount of lonely time in which you're just figuring it out, practicing.
Even my family laughed at me because they thought this young guy who's always stuttering in front of other people should be in front of 100 musicians and talk to them and leading them.
Randy Newman and I grew up together in Los Angeles. We are both products of the film studio era. Randy is one of the great songwriters of our time and one of the fun people to be with.
My parents had chosen the medical profession for me. I even studied a few semesters at St Xavier's College, but at the back of my mind, I always wanted to be a musician like my father.
When I was to come to Washington the first time as Music Director of the Boston Symphony, Mrs. Johnson phoned us to find out if they could give us a party and who we would like to meet.
The stag tells him that he is the eldest of the sons - the father's favorite - and he warns the father that if he tries to shoot any of the stags, their antlers will tear him to pieces.
Recently, I went to a disco with friends, and all the young people were saying, 'Dudamel, we want to go to your concert, but it's impossible because it's sold out.' It's really amazing.
We have to go and show these people what classical music is. We say sometimes that classical music has a small audience, but it's because people don't have the chance to be closer to it.
Its just that, when the orchestra look at me, I want them to see a completely involved person who reflects what we rehearsed, and whose function is to make it possible for them to do it.
It's just that, when the orchestra look at me, I want them to see a completely involved person who reflects what we rehearsed, and whose function is to make it possible for them to do it.
Concert-going has become much less the thing to do, while people are still going to opera. This might be a harsh judgment, but it could easily happen that orchestras could slowly atrophy.
In earlier times, so many people sang much more. You know as a kid you'd go to some kind of religious training and or summer camp or whatever it was and you'd learn to sing a lot of songs.
I wish that only three residents of Tel Aviv could see what conditions on the West Bank are like. Living in such proximity, most Israelis have no idea about the adversity on the West Bank.