Zitat des Tages über Sinfonien / Symphonies:
I hear entire symphonies, oratorios, in my head, but I can't write a note.
I would advise my young colleagues, the composers of symphonies, to drop in sometimes at the kindergarten, too. It is there that it is decided whether there will be anybody to understand their works in twenty years' time.
I'm thankful to Deutsche Grammophon, our partners - we are going to record the complete Shostakovich symphonies and hopefully some other things as well.
Most Beethoven symphonies require 80 or more instruments, and the late romantics even more.
Jazz tickles your muscles, symphonies stretch your soul.
I think that of my 21 symphonies, each has its own place.
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.
We've been performing with symphonies all of our career and it sounds so wonderful when they play 'My Girl' with the large string section, I want to turn around and look.
I sometimes feel it is to my disadvantage that I have not conducted the Cleveland Orchestra or the Boston or Chicago symphonies, but then I have had to sacrifice something in order to have enough time with my orchestras.
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.
This is what I want in heaven... words to become notes and conversations to be symphonies.
Although, I am proud of all my Symphonies as they all have something special to say, my particular favourite is the Fifth. As the great Mahler expert Donald Mitchell said that if Mahler had written another Symphony, it would have been my Fifth!
If some of our works are symphonies, then wrapped walkways was chamber music.
If I weren't the way I am, I shouldn't write my symphonies.
Now I'm having the time of my life being on the road with one of the world's all-time great big bands, and performing with symphonies. I wouldn't trade it for anything.
All these tales of people sitting down and composing symphonies just as though they were writing a letter are very much exaggerated; at least, it isn't that way in my work.
In my younger days, I used to visit record shops and covet boxed sets of Beethoven symphonies, Wagner operas, Bach cantatas, Mozart piano concertos. Only rarely was I able to find the money for such luxuries.
I love symphonies. I love string sections.
Not only are most of our citizens fathomlessly ignorant of the glories of American literature, a fast-growing percentage of our students are no longer taught much about any works of American art, be they novels, paintings, symphonies or ballets.
I love classical music and often listen to symphonies or opera in the morning.
Essentially, all expressions of human nature ever produced, from a caveman's paintings to Mozart's symphonies and Einstein's view of the universe, emerge from the same source: the relentless dynamic toil of large populations of interconnected neurons.
We can't afford big symphonies but we commission works that sound rich and symphonic because of the nature of the instrumentation and the people we work with.
I started directing chamber orchestras, then adding bigger pieces, adding winds, adding small symphonies. I've always loved chamber music, and I've done a lot.