Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
In the phusical sense, 'playing a fret less instrument in tune' is an impossibility. Hence what we call 'playing in tune' is no more than an extremely rapid skilfully carried out improvement of the originally inexactly located pitch.
In a way, the highest praise you could give to a composer like Bach was to take and make your own arrangement; it was sort of an homage to that composer and to his work, so it wasn't considered sacrilegious to do something like that.
As far as doing TV, I do think there's a big audience out there that could enjoy classical music, but they don't know how to find it, and sometimes by doing different things... crossover things probably make up about 5% of what I do.
The truth is that several years ago, I suffered from depression. And I remember during this time, I basically fell into this hole where my life became cold, and it became gray, and I lost sight of everything that was important to me.
I just recorded in studios, you know, people pressed the buttons for me. So I just started recording the bass lines and guitar parts with my voice, covering classical pieces, or just making up melodies so I could learn how to use it.
A concert is my experimentation time. I practice playing something several different ways, but in a concert, inevitably I get more ideas onstage, in that combination of focus and adrenaline, than I could ever get in the practice room.
This young wine may have a lot of tannins now, but in five or 10 years it is going to be spectacular, despite the fact that right now it tastes like crude oil. You know this is how it is supposed to taste at this stage of development.
For me, personally, the most interesting music comes from the popular sector - from film and pop music - since contemporary classical music got stuck and went into directions where it lost a lot of the public by over-intellectualizing.
When I came to the United States, I appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show as a 13-year-old, and I played a Mendelssohn Concerto, and it sounded like a talented 13-year-old with a lot of promise. But it did not sound like a finished product.
In 1987, I had no idea who Steven Isserlis was. We met at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina. It was originally just an Italian summer festival, but for the past 14 years, there's also been a spring festival in America.
So many times, I've seen conductors that, every time they have a thought, they stop the orchestra and say it, and I can see the orchestra rolling their eyes and saying, 'Oh, God, he stopped again.' So there's a technique to rehearsing.
As far as I'm concerned, I want to do everything because life is short. So, when I did 'The Red Violin' film, I got to go to the Oscars, and I got to meet Samuel Jackson, and I got to do stuff that one wouldn't normally do in my world.
I can remember dancing around living room with my two sisters to the music of Paganini and Mozart. I can still remember my dad combing the newspaper, circling all the free concerts in town, and on the weekends, we would go as a family.
I've always had my ear peeled for interesting music. As a student, I regularly spent time hunting for interesting repertoire, looking through music bins, buying stacks and stacks of CDs, and discovering rarely played pieces by composers.
If you put four different people on a podium conducting the same downbeat, you get four different sounds. It's a little mysterious and fascinating. There's so much you can do with motions and body movements besides giving accurate beats.
A lot of people ask me, 'What is your goal now that you have done everything?' And I always say that my goal is to not be bored by what I do. The only way that I cannot be bored by what I do is if I play something and it's all new to me.
I don't listen to a lot of music when I have my free time. But I'll go to a jazz club and have a drink and listen to a good jazz musician. Or sometimes in the morning, if I want to put myself in a good mood, I'll put on some Latin music.
I could have taken the easy life and just done classical, but I felt very strongly about the album, my first pop album, the first time that I'd fused so many influences. I was very proud when it was in the charts in 25 countries at once.
When we think about our work it deals with our motivations, our desires, our sense of security, purpose, and status. Our work deals with a whole host of relationships. Work impacts the flourishing of individuals, communities, and nations.
When you start reading a piece together, you get a sense of someone's basic philosophy of music without saying a word. You realize the other person's approach, how they express themselves, the kind of restraint they show, all those things.
I'm in a position where, theoretically, I could play the same ten concertos and make a very good living bouncing around playing Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky and Barber, but I really think artists should keep pushing limits and trying new things.
You are the hip-hop violinist, the creator, the visionaire, ... and therefore you should do whatever the hell you wanna do because whatever you do is right. They're not gonna have like 20 hip-hop violinists in the company. I know what to do.
I'm now doing three things: concerts, conducting, and teaching, and they each support each other. I learn to see things from different perspectives and listen with different ears. The most important thing that you need to do is really listen.
Stradivarius, in particular, was the most amazing craftsman and one of the great artists and scientists that ever lived because he figured out something with the sound and the science of acoustics that we still don't understand it completely.
There's nothing I really wanted to record more than Bach. It's wonderful music. It's - on a grand scale, there's a lot to it. There are - I can work on it for a long time and keep discovering more things, you know, that surprise me every time.
When I attained my seventh year, my father, whose ear was unmusical but who was nevertheless passionately fond of music, gave me my elementary lessons on the violin; in a very few months, I was able to play all manner of compositions at sight.
Beethoven's fourth and seventh symphonies have a certain amount in common. Well, of course they're both written by Beethoven, but besides that, I would say their overall effect and idea is to provide the listener with an incredible sense of joy.
The Bible reminds people that the whole of Scriptures addresses the whole of our lives, including our work. We need to be reminded of this every time we open the Bible, so that we experience the hope and power of the gospel in our work every day.
I know how to deal with jet lag, and I know just how much rest I need and when I need to take naps. When you walk on stage, you need your brain working at its highest and most fully-functioning, so it's not always easy, but I sort of figure it out.
Too many students who are technically quite far advanced do not properly interpret the technically less difficult pieces they play, because they regard them as beneath serious consideration. This is a fundamental error in musical taste and judgment.
We developed our own type of Igudesman and Joo electric violin, let's say, and funny enough, the shape of it was developed by the head technician of Steinway. It's actually an electric violin, which is made from the stick that holds up the piano lid.
Conducting is a strange thing to teach. There are very few great conducting teachers, and most great conductors don't teach. Look at Valery Gergiev - what he does is not teachable. A lot of it is on-the-job training, what works and what doesn't work.
I have been so incredibly blessed, and I just feel like my calling is to be a missionary and share the gospel... The Lord's given me a platform to stand on and an audience that is listening. I feel like it's so important to share what makes me happy.
I remember when I gave my first recital. I thought, 'Oh, my goodness, people are coming to hear me.' I didn't expect anyone to come, and then the whole hall filled up. Of course, it wasn't a big hall, and some of the people were my friends and family.
I played the violin my whole life. I wanted to play from the time I was just a little kid, and I've always loved dance as well. I wanted to make people smile. I wanted to add an extra energy to my playing and make it visual and make it unique and fun.
I never liked feeling like the world needed to have labels on everything, whether it's people or categories of music. I think everyone should be what they want to be, and you shouldn't have to look a certain way in order to fit this mold or that mold.
The idea of a musical comedy was something we had had in mind for many years, but the project 'Igudesman & Joo: A Little Nightmare Music' has a history that goes back five years. I can say that this is the most successful project that we have ever done.
We started at once to dig our trenches, half of my platoon stepping forward abreast, the men being placed an arm's length apart. After laying their rifles down, barrels pointing to the enemy, a line was drawn behind the row of rifles and parallel to it.
The Germans have four violin concertos. The greatest, most uncompromising is Beethoven’s. The one by Brahms vies with it in seriousness. The richest, the most seductive, was written by Max Bruch. But the most inward, the heart’s jewel, is Mendelssohn’s.
Even though I started playing the violin when I was four, my early chamber music experiences helped build a strong foundation for my solo work, as all music is a rich language and dialogue that is shared on stage, no matter what the size of the ensemble.
I tried to work with a record label; I tried to work with a booking agency, variety shows. I went to Vegas. I just tried everything I could think of, and nothing took. No one thought there was a place for my style and my music; it was just too different.
That word 'prodigy' has such a derogatory implication. It is used to describe people who are forced to play a lot of concerts very early, people whose audience comes because of their youth, people who are exploited. None of the above really applied to me.
If you mess up the tiniest little thing in the Beethoven concerto, or the phrasing isn't just exactly perfectly executed, Beethoven brings out the worst in the best violinist. You almost never hear a satisfying performance, because it doesn't play itself.
Art begins where technique ends. There can be no real art development before one's technique is firmly established. And a great deal of technical work has to be done before the great works of violin literature, the sonatas and concertos, may be approached.
Many people functionally share this belief that work has no greater meaning than the paycheck it provides. A natural consequence of this faith commitment is the belief it's okay to do mediocre work so that in your free time you can enjoy your true passions.
Of course everyone has those moments of frustration now and then, when you say, 'I wish I could play well already - or just stop.' But it's too much trouble to stop just for a moment of frustration. It is when you keep going that you make the most progress.
I always have loved the Stradivarius. My teacher, Josef Gingold, he had a Stradivarius. As a treat, he would put it under my chin and let me play a few notes, and I remember that feeling of the overtones, the complexity of the sound. It's like a great wine.
I say to string players in small chamber orchestras, 'it's always easy to become a passenger on the journey in sound, just adding volume to the whole. But if you play in an individual way, it makes the difference between good and great sound in an orchestra.'
In concertos, I stand up, and I conduct with the bow when I'm not playing. During symphonies, I sit, but sometimes I stop playing to conduct. Being seated in a section allows me to feel more like we're playing chamber music, which is how I like to approach it.
Sometimes I like practicing, sometimes I don't. But I like the result... I hardly ever get discouraged. Maybe right when it's very hard to get something done correctly, but then the idea flashes through of how to fix it. And I get encouraged. And other ideas flow.