There is too much employer-employee relationship in America. I wish the musicians would feel that many decisions have to do with them and not delegate everything to management or to the board or to the committee. This is why you get a sense of pride in some of the European orchestras: because they are part of the decision-making.
— Daniel Barenboim
For me personally, Elliott Carter was and remains one of the most meaningful composers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries because he represents substance. He was the living proof of uncompromising, complex music, which at first seems inaccessible. But it becomes accessible if one digs in and sees the development through.
No one can be an artist without a rich inner life.
I believe education is much more important than we assume.
We need to take music out of the ivory tower - both for musicians and for the public. Otherwise, classical music will not survive the 21st century.
There is no way Israel will deal with the Palestinians if the Palestinians do not understand the suffering of the Jewish people.
We need a certain amount of energy to produce the sound. But then to sustain it, we have to give more energy, or otherwise, it goes and it dies in silence. And therefore, sound is absolutely, inextricably connected to time, the length of time.
You don't go out and play Beethoven's 'Opus 111' without having rethought about it every time you play.
Wagner is contrapuntal in a philosophical way as well as a musical way. What I mean by that is that every tendency has its opposite, and you see that in the man himself. He's a metaphysical hermaphrodite - he embraces hard and soft, masculine and feminine.
Any conductor who tells you that if he is approached for the directorship of the Chicago Symphony that he's not interested in it, you know perfectly well he's lying.
'Tristan' is a very unique case, not just in Wagner's output, but in music in general. It remains contemporary no matter what else surrounds it. There is something self-renewing about it.
Either you live by the barometer of the music critics, or you live by your own. I choose the latter.
I think that our civilisation is very much a visual civilisation - television and videos and all this.
Music is an art that touches the depth of human existence; an art of sounds that crosses all borders.
Israel is in the grip of a ghetto mentality. We have a powerful army. We have the atomic bomb. But the psychology of what comes out of Israel has the tone of the Warsaw Ghetto.
I don't believe in changing the unchangeable.
I am the conductor for life of the Staatskapelle in Berlin, which fills me with tremendous joy because I feel absolutely at one with them. When we play, I have a feeling that together we manage to create one collective lung for the whole orchestra so that everybody in the stage breathes the music in the same way.
There are many wonderful orchestras in the world, but very few who have a character or personality of their own. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is one of them, and I think it very important to recognize and respect that character.
On Nov. 5, 2012, my friend Elliott Carter died in New York at the age of 103. For me, he was and remains one of the most interesting figures of music history in the past century.
Music is very abstract. When we talk about music, we're not discussing the music itself but rather how we react to it.
When we talk about music, we talk about our reaction to it. One person might say that music is so poetic, while another says it's all mathematics. Yet another might say it's about sensuality, and so on. That's all true. But music is not just one of these things. It's everything all at once.
Music is not a profession. Music is a way of life - one that requires much professionalism.
I think what history has done to Jewish people, frankly, cannot be made good by giving them a piece of land.
Every note is a lifetime for itself.
I think the most important thing for a listener is to realize that he, too, should not listen to music in a passive way; that if you sit in a concert hall and expect to be moved or taken off your seat by the music, it will not happen.
Of course there is really vile anti-Semitism in Wagner's writings, but I can't accept the idea that characters like Beckmesser and Alberich are Jewish stereotypes in disguise. Would Beckmesser be a court councillor if he was meant to be a Jewish stereotype? No Jew could occupy such a role.
I get no satisfaction just showing myself in every corner of the world every week.
Playing and listening to music gives you a sense of fulfilment because you have to put everything in you at its disposal.
Every concert I've finished with the knowledge I've played a fistful of wrong notes.
You find Jews, Irish, and Italians in every orchestra.
I think Sharon is anti-Israeli because it's in the interest of Israel to understand the problems of the other side.
I was never really interested in an operatic post, but I took on the Bastille because it seemed a unique opportunity to build an opera ensemble from scratch, and to deal with all the disciplines that go into opera - the music, the staging and the singing - in an interrelated way.
I am permanently relaxed.
I have accumulated so many experiences, so much, that I want to be able to realize so many things. This is why I have basically given up most of my positions.
I am convinced that 100 years from now, people will talk about Elliott Carter as one of the most important figures in the second half of 20th-century music.
The historical importance of a composer does not always go hand in hand with the quality of their work.
People need to have enough to eat and have work and money. But there are other things that are important.
Children in schools need to have something to do with music and learn it the way they do literature, geography and biology.
I'm one of the ones who believed the Iraq War was a complete mistake from the very beginning.
I feel that the Jews have always had a special connection to this part of the world, which in geographical terms was called Palestine for so many centuries.
In order to lift a certain object from the ground, we have to use energy. But then to sustain it at that level, we have to keep on adding energy, or otherwise, the object falls to the ground. It's exactly the same thing with the sound.
You have to really have the will to hang onto the first note as it is being played, and then really stay with it and take the flight, as it were, you know, for the duration of the piece.
The thing about Wagner is we're always wrong about him, because he always embraces opposites. There are things in his operas which viewed one way are naturalistic, and viewed another way are symbolic, but the problem is you can't represent both views on stage at once.
Most of the dramatism in Wagner comes from a very close link between the music and the language of the text. So much of the expressivity of Wagner's music dramas comes from the singers' capacity to play with the sound of the language. This kind of thing you can do very well in concert performance.
Live life to the full, and become more curious every day. The more you find out about life, the richer your music-making will be.
More and more, we're used to taking things in through the eyes rather than through the ears, and opera is more of a spectacle.
I know so many Irish musicians. They're all over, because there has been so much emigration from Ireland. Like the Jews.
I don't think I'm anti-Israeli.
I don't like possessions.
Most of the time I spend looking for the 25th hour in the day, the ninth day in the week, the 32nd day in the month and the 367th, eighth or 70th day in the year because I feel I have a very rich life.
