Zubin Mehta Quotes

Years ago I realized that maybe I made mistake, politically, when I turned a lot of that stuff down. I would go off to obscure places and make movies that six people went to see.

I have to paint at least two times a week, and there's not enough time in the day to do everything.

When I first was conducting as guest conductor in Europe 25 years ago, I would propose doing American pieces and grudgingly it would be accepted from time to time.

I'm not used to not having enough time to live with the songs. Usually, if I write something, I live with it for a little while.

An American orchestra doesn't want to play more than it has to. I respectfully disagree with that attitude.

My music wouldn't sound the way it does if I hadn't had the experience of conducting.

Not everybody gets to record with an orchestra, and not everybody that gets to record with an orchestra gets to write all their own stuff.

To me, it doesn't make any sense to pick your work based on the size of the budget of the movie.

I could be making a lot more money now if I had chosen a different kind of movie, but none of that matters to me... I've done the parts I wanted to do.

If you are known to do something well, people want to see you do that. But what you choose to do is up to you. After 'Delhi Belly,' I got some 40 scripts - some on the same lines as 'Delhi Belly.' So, I guess people only get stereotyped if they want to.

But some people will say you just did these programs. Well, yes, the programs are important and I'm proud of the programs, but mostly I'm proud of the way the San Francisco Symphony plays these programs.

From time to time, the Vienna Philharmonic could play without a conductor because they are so good.

Any conductor who tells you that if he is approached for the directorship of the Chicago Symphony that he's not interested in it, you know perfectly well he's lying.

I want to take the great tradition of the orchestra within me, to take what the orchestra offers.

I have done films only for the sake of money and sometimes, I have been duped into believing that the film is a sensible project.

Rejecting offers has not been easy for me, especially when the movies involve some of my favourite actors and directors.

In superficial terms, to have an orchestral career is to be better than others, or at least to be chosen over others on that particular occasion; it is a form of survival.

It is not a dreamlike state, but the somehow insulated state, that a great musician achieves in a great performance. He's aware of where he is and what he's doing, but his mind is on the playing of his instrument with an internal sense of rightness - it is not merely mechanical, it is not only spiritual; it is something of both, on a different plane and a more remote one.

When you're frustrated with people, when they've made you angry, it just may be because you haven't given them enough time.

Of course, music is an art form, and it's not all that competitive. But we don't ever intend to be the second-best band on a stage at any show.

I guess I am conscious of my weaknesses, and I think pacing is probably my biggest. I don't know if I think the clarity thing is actually a weakness. It was a stylistic choice.

It was a choice of making it or still eating chicken onstage.

My great fear is not that I'll run out of ideas. It's that I'll run out of time.

It was great to do August Rush and have all the challenges of playing that character, especially the American accent for the first time and also playing the guitar and the conducting I had to do.

During a rehearsal of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony the members of the orchestra were so overwhelmingly moved by the conducting of Arturo Toscanini that they rose as one man and applauded him. When the spontaneous cheering has subsided, Toscanini turned to his men, tears glistening in his eyes. "Please . . . please! Don't do this! You see, gentlemen, it isn't me you should applaud. It's Beethoven!"