Max Richter Quotes

The advice I am giving always to all my students is above all to study the music profoundly... music is like the ocean, and the instruments are little or bigger islands, very beautiful for the flowers and trees.

Western music is Bach, Handel and Schubert. It's good music, cleverly done. As a musician, I can see that.

I find little in the works of Beethoven, Berlioz, Wagner and others when they are led by a conductor who functions like a windmill.

I can take any series of numbers and turn it into music, from Bach to bebop, Herbie Hancock to hip-hop.

Mozart is always a bit of a challenge - you know, even though it is often given to very young singers, it is actually the most complicated to sing in many instances.

From a very early period of my life I have derived the highest enjoyment from listening to music, especially to melody, which is to me the most pleasing form of composition.

You must have the music to justify an instrument's extensive use.

I also have a big love of classical music played on piano because this is the environment I grew up in my brother being one of the great masters in this world.

I never learned to verbalize an abstract musical concept. No thank you. The whole point of being a serious musician is to avoid verbalization whenever you can.

Trying to describe something musical is like dancing to architecture, it's really difficult.

Many, many composers have only found their way to a certain form, through familiarizing themselves with texts.

The hardest of all the arts to speak of is music, because music has no meaning to speak of.

The world of classical music is so fascinating. It's a world that encompasses people from everywhere and erases the basic restraints of nationality; everyone is united by this common language of music.

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

You have to open the music, so to speak, and see what's behind the notes because the notes are the same whether it is the music of Bach or someone else.

The thing with music education is that it is good at teaching technique, but not texture. You only learn about that from listening to music and experimenting on your own.

I don't think you can have a calculated approach towards learning music.

The creative process of composing music has always fascinated me.

I don't believe in a composer who is only able to compose, who can't play or conduct, can only use a computer. If that trend continues there will be no more symphonies, no more oratorios.

Studying music involves a lot of mathematics and a lot of exercises of memory. Or you've got to be able to be like somebody, to play like somebody, to play Mozart's music the way he played it and how he intended it. You've got to make it perfect, and that's not what I want to do. Although it is beautiful.

My father taught me to read music and play the piano-but not well, even though people have said that I'm a natural musician.

I played a lot of Bach's partitas and sonatas; I like the way that Bach was abstracting already from these dance forms.

In contrast, traditional classical music starts from an abstract musical schema. This is then notated and only expressed in concrete sound as a last stage, when it is performed.

I play no instruments.

Beethoven, Schubert, Schoenberg, Berg imply a type of pianist who is intellectual. That's not always associated with female soloists.