Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" In my mid-twenties, I was with a conducting career, but I had never been to university and I wanted to. There were things I wanted to study in depth. I also wanted to see if I could survive without music. "

Simon Rattle

See

Career

Music

Related Quotes:

" One of the most difficult things in opera is for people to suspend disbelief. "

" Some of my favorite music in the world is Haydn. I had a sabbatical one year and made myself one promise: to play a different Haydn piano sonata each day - they are inexhaustible treasures. "

" Sometimes, musicians worry too much about how beautifully they are playing. "

" Oh Lord... I don't really do pride. "

Simon Rattle

Really

Pride

" I was thrilled that Sadiq Khan was so in support of the idea of culture being at the centre of a city and the idea that it is everyone's right. It can't be a matter of privilege or chance. It should be something everyone can have in their life, and that means knowing what it is. "

" The better the orchestra, often the harder it is to conduct, not the other way around. "

" Orchestras are like people. They're the sonic embodiment of their community. "

Simon Rattle

Community

People

" Beethoven was always too much. He's not slightly anything - he's very everything. "

" I think Beethoven means dissonances to be more stressed than consonances - it's the shock tactician in him. "

Simon Rattle

Stressed

Than

" Nobody has Francis Bacon on their walls in their house - or very few people - but sometimes people listen to Beethoven as though it was background and a comfort, and I think that is very dangerous. "

" It's interesting: composers can be very funny ducks. "

" I am old enough to remember the enormous fight over Tate Modern. It is such a part of our cultural landscape now, we forget the opposition to it. "

" American economists can't understand the German fear of inflation and the effects of inflation when dealing with the world economic crisis. They wonder why Germany pursues such a different course - 'Why can't they agree with us?' I would have thought it was fairly obvious. "

" I think we will find more and more ways in which technology invades our artistic spaces, so music is something you will need more than ever because it is there in time and in space and for that moment only. "

" Learning music is a birthright. And you have to start young. "

" My worst and best qualities are rashness: the good part of it is due to youth, which is, of course, why I'm not a great conductor. "

" There are a few great orchestras in the world, thank goodness. Although some people do put them in ranking order, it's not like a snooker match. Each orchestra has different things to offer. "

" We need to bring music to the people, even to those who normally do not listen to classical music. "

" I was a harpsichordist in my teens, and there was a bunch of us in Liverpool who got together every week to play Bach. "

" One of the most extraordinary and all-encompassing forms of communication is music. It reaches places that all kinds of other things cannot reach. I'll put my cards on the table: I think it is our greatest language. "

" Passionate musicians only come from passionate five-year-olds. "

" I love Mozart, but I often make a terrible hash of it. "

" I first heard Mahler's second symphony aged 11 in Liverpool, and it inspired me to become a conductor. "

" The grapevine in England is an extraordinary thing. When there is a really brilliant young composer or soloist, we all hear about it. "

" You don't like Liverpool: you either loathe it or you love it. And I don't know anyone who loathes it and comes from it. "

" I've always loved French music. My parents adored it; my father played it on the piano. "

" Conductors make too much fuss about conductors! Humility and hard work are virtues. We're nothing without our musicians. "

" I'd be much more likely to watch the latest Tarantino movie than to listen to a Mahler symphony. "

Simon Rattle

Symphony

Watch

" What really counts isn't whether your instrument is Baroque or modern: it's your mindset. "

" In England, unless I am mistaken, I think some of the politicians who love classical music and opera are a bit loath to be seen there in case people think it is elitist. That is a real shame because it also means we are not allowing our politicians a hinterland that an earlier generation, a Denis Healey, would have taken for granted. "