Daniel Barenboim Quotes
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The greatness of a musician is measured by the degree of fanaticism he brings to his playing.
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The problem with listening to music today is that there's so much of it everywhere. We've got used to hearing music without actually listening to it.
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'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.
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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.
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I get no satisfaction just showing myself in every corner of the world every week.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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When I played my first concert with an orchestra, I was eight years old in Berlin.
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The historical importance of a composer does not always go hand in hand with the quality of their work.
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I believe education is much more important than we assume.
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You used to queue for three days and two nights for tickets for Rubinstein. People stayed in the queue for the whole day.
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I don't believe in changing the unchangeable.
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Music has the capacity to create a greater reality.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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There are many types of silence. There is a silence before the note, there is a silence at the end and there is a silence in the middle.
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When you get to be 103, modernism is a very wide concept.
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Tradition demands that we not speak poorly of the dead.
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Now the first step has to be taken, the step towards democracy. This step is full of risks, and requires trust on all sides. We don't know where it will lead. But if we just stand still, we will have no chance of escaping the violence.
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People need to have enough to eat and have work and money. But there are other things that are important.
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Sound is often talked about in a very subjective way, as if it had a colour. This is a bright sound, this is a dark sound. I don't believe in that because I think that is much too subjective.
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Beethoven was a deeply political man in the broadest sense of the word. He was not interested in daily politics, but concerned with questions of moral behaviour and the larger questions of right and wrong affecting the entire society.