Quotes by Conductors - Page 3

Music first and last should sound well should allure and enchant the ear. Never mind the inner significance.

We are full of rhythms . . . our pulse our gestures our digestive tracts the lunar and seasonal cycles.

My idea of success has little to do with fame. I just wanted to know if I could play with the best musicians in the business.

The gift of imagination is by no means an exclusive property of the artist; it is a gift we all share; to some degree or other all of us are endowed with the powers of fantasy, the dullest of dullards among us has the gift of dreams at night - visions and yearnings and hopes. Everyone can also think; it is the quality thought that makes the difference - not just the quality of logical thinking, but of imaginative thinking. And our greatest thinkers, those who have radically changed our world, have always arrived at their truths by dreaming them; they are first fantasized, and only then subjected to proof.

...how absurd human beings are and how magnificent.

The basic difference between classical music and jazz is that in the former the music is always graver than its performance - whereas the way jazz is performed is always more important than what is being played.

The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.