-
Musical 'fusion' projects have earned themselves a bad name, but that's mainly because they often involve pop artists conscripting orchestras to play unimaginative backdrops to their acts. What's really exciting is when you spark off a dialogue between very different musical forces.
Charles Hazlewood -
I have loads of issues with the way classical music is presented. It has been too reverential, too 'high art' - if you're not in the club, they're not going to let you join. It's like The Turin Shroud: don't touch it because it might fall apart.
Charles Hazlewood
-
Mozart, Beethoven - how can you not want to share them with everyone and anyone? This stuff is of as great importance as the food we eat and the air we breathe.
Charles Hazlewood -
I think most people's record collections are more interesting than radio generally gives them credit for. You're likely to be as interested in the Grateful Dead as Palestrina. It pisses me off how compartmentalised music is. I used to be in a punk band, you know?
Charles Hazlewood -
When I analyse the music, I can get really extreme.
Charles Hazlewood -
It's Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony I'm really looking forward to. Simon Rattle does it perfectly: he understands its primal rhythmic life force, and he and the wonderful Berliners make it a sheer riot of orchestral colour.
Charles Hazlewood -
I admire Tom Ades: he's a brilliant conductor, and he gets just the right hard, brilliant sound from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra for Russian music.
Charles Hazlewood -
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.
Charles Hazlewood
-
Most people in the Western world grow up with the received wisdom that Mozart was a genius. But few people necessarily know why. More than anyone else, he captured this something which is the human condition, the fine line that we all constantly dance between joy and pain, between absolute happiness and absolute heartbreak.
Charles Hazlewood -
Somerset is the first proper country county you come to in the West, which isn't dependent on London and isn't full of commuters. Somerset is full of the most fantastically interesting people.
Charles Hazlewood -
I hate playing the piano! And it's so hard to fight for Beethoven's soul! But that's what I have to do!
Charles Hazlewood -
I free-form it, rock n' roll it. I'm a creature of risk, so I don't know how I'm going to explore a Beethoven symphony until I'm doing it.
Charles Hazlewood -
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!
Charles Hazlewood -
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.
Charles Hazlewood
-
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.
Charles Hazlewood -
All roads for me lead back to Mozart. In his tragically short life, he breathed new life, fire and meaning into every form of music that existed in his time.
Charles Hazlewood -
I spend so much of my time working away, but I love being here. My family is in Somerset, and this is where my heart is.
Charles Hazlewood -
I want to prove that Holst's 'The Planets' can be as much of a sensory overload as a concert by the Grateful Dead, and just as exciting.
Charles Hazlewood