Michael Tilson Thomas Quotes

And what classical music does best and must always do more, is to show this kind of transformation of moods, to show a very wide psychological voyage. And I think that's something that we as classical musicians have underestimated.

Through the music I hope to give it an arc that gives it a greater sense of a journey through the set rather than a bunch of songs.

Music has no subject beyond the combinations of notes we hear, for music speaks not only by means of sounds, it speaks nothing but sound.

Each song is a small universe to me. Each song has a story of its own. Each has a full life to express in order to be complete, so it often happens that the building to a big crescendo feels right in the recording or writing process.

Just, you know, you can't put bread in a cold oven. You know, you've got to take your time. You've got to heat it up. So that's what, that's what I like to do with my music. I like to build it, and build it into a maddening, exciting crescendo.

If some of our works are symphonies, then wrapped walkways was chamber music.

A melody is not merely something you can hum.

It'll help you be imaginative if you listen to classical music. It helps you understand dynamics and how important they are to create an environment.

It's like a piece of music; you never lose sight of the theme. Each scene pushes off to the next like music builds and you can almost hear the next chord progression, so it has a strict structure, which is very compelling.

And to understand this, I think this is a most important point where I would like always to be understood what we do with the New York Philharmonic. That the meaning of the music is number one.

If you only do little clusters - three or four songs by one, and another, and then yet another - you lose the opportunity to think your way into the composer's mind, since, after all, most of these pieces are quite brief.

What makes a Beethoven symphony spectacular, what makes a Brahms rhapsody spectacular is that the patterns are wondrous.

The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, 'Is there a meaning to music?' My answer would be, 'Yes.' And 'Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?' My answer to that would be, 'No.'

I don't like to hurry. I'm not a conductor of the fast, fiery romantic type. I prefer Bruckner, with the sincerity of his musical language and the huge time spans in which his ideas develop, to Mahler, with his hysteria and self-indulgence.

After conducting Wagner, Beethoven's triple concerto is like taking an Alka Seltzer.

Part of me is probably more conservative than people realise. I like my old string quartets, I don't like music that's trippy for trippy's sake.

There are only twelve tones and they need to be treated carefully.

The 'Carousel' overture has always been one of my all-time favorite pieces of music.

Beethoven's music tends to move from chaos to order, as if order were an imperative of human existence.

You don't go out and play Beethoven's 'Opus 111' without having rethought about it every time you play.

All I'm really interested in musically is trying to make concept albums. Serving a larger sum than the parts.

Chopin is a great composer who influenced many, many important composers. He was a great innovator, especially in harmony.

You can put the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in the same category, but the types of music, the colors each band evokes, are completely different. It's the same with Mozart and Beethoven - they express two very different aspects of music.

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.

The spoken form is in fact a very restrained representation of what is possible in the musical language.