Andris Nelsons Quotes
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As for my relationship to Beethoven, I admire people who can say what they really think. It's as though he's saying, 'That's how I feel about the world, and I don't care what people may say.' His music is pure and honest. Beethoven never pretends to be anybody else.
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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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You have a great result if the orchestra trusts the conductor, and the conductor trusts the orchestra.
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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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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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When I was younger, I wanted very much to play football.
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I think 'Rheingold' has symbolic meaning of what happens in the world when you're running after the Rhine gold, after the gold. It doesn't end very well. It's kind of a reminder of the values of life, and I think 'The Ring,' in a way, is kind of a prediction of Wagner of what would happen in the world.
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Birmingham did a truly remarkable thing in building Symphony Hall, which is the finest concert hall in the U.K. and one of the best in the world. The city has supported music without putting on the brakes.
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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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I want to take the great tradition of the orchestra within me, to take what the orchestra offers.
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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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It's so important which musicians we choose for being in the orchestra.
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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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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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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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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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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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AWe musicians can influence, and are responsible to influence, human hearts when we perform. We have to touch them.
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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.
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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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I really think that the music is the food for our souls.
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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.