Andris Nelsons Quotes
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For one person, Haydn is most exciting. Or Bach is the most exciting. For another, it's Carter or Strauss. For me - and for any musician - all of the music is exciting. And if you don't approach it with excitement, we can't be musicians.
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I know that Boston is one of the great centers of intellectual culture as well as sport. It's one of the centers of America, with a great orchestra, great sports, great hospitals, and great universities.
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Music is something so mystical, so unexplainably a thing you cannot put in the rules or boundaries, you know? It speaks about our feelings about questions of life and death. It goes absolutely beyond any kind of rules.
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On stage, I'm always nervous, but there is so much adrenalin, too. It's strange because I have to turn my back on the audience, and my audience is the orchestra. I communicate my energy to them, and they communicate it to the audience behind me!
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As a trumpet player, I was playing Xenakis, Lindberg: very challenging, technical, atonal, and I enjoyed it.
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When you have a great car, you want people to see the car.
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You don't have to make a grand, exaggerated sound to sing opera.
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Wagner always opens you a second breath, and then you go on, and you are absolutely into his musical world, and you can't stop, and you can listen for four hours, five hours, six hours, and then you are like in his mystical hands of his music. He's such a great poet of music.
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Shostakovich was one of the great symphonists of all time, and maybe the last great symphonist.
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The Boston Symphony is one of the best orchestras in the world and has such a great tradition - which I want to cherish, of course, and to learn from and to continue and to add whatever I can add.
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The music of Bach is so timeless, so fulfilling. You don't feel like you have to be in front of it. The music has everything, and you are there to find the balance when you conduct. You don't have to give too much of your individuality. It's Bach, so it's dangerous to get in the way.
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AWe musicians can influence, and are responsible to influence, human hearts when we perform. We have to touch them.
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I really think that the music is the food for our souls.
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When I was younger, I wanted very much to play football.
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Music is something you can't really put in terms like in a sport, like running or football - that you win if you score more. In music, there's nothing like that.
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Music is a universal thing with no boundaries, whether you play inside or outside.
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The Soviet Union had only one party. You couldn't express yourself freely; you couldn't admit belief in God. And yet this terrible regime understood that human beings have to express themselves, through music, even at a bad level. All kids studied music automatically, just as they did maths or languages or sport.
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For me, the main goal is loving music and experiencing the great music-making with the orchestra, which is the great reason why I conduct, and that is the main goal.
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I'm sure the atmosphere at Tanglewood and the space there and nature - I think it absolutely fits Wagner's music.
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People talk very much about, 'What can we do with the orchestra in the 21st century?' We should think about the 21st century, of course.
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All composers who came after were influenced by Beethoven, even during his lifetime, both by his personality and by his music. He was a father figure for generations.
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Through conducting, you express through your arms, through your face and even the body, what you want to tell, so the musicians of the orchestra understand.
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I simply love Wagner's music. That actually started very early. He was the first composer I was exposed very much to because my parents introduced me to Wagner's music very early.
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The two most important things is, one, the music in my life, and the family. It's somehow connected because music is about human beings, about love, about hate, about everything that happens in life.