Zubin Mehta Quotes

I grew up in an era where an orchestra was like a treasure chest.

You could almost write an opera about the selection of music directors for orchestras. The intrigues are really interesting, and then, at the end, the results are completely unexpected.

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.

I played with the best conductors of the world.

The climate suits me, and London has the greatest serious music that you can hear any day of the week in the world - you think it's going to be Vienna or Paris or somewhere, but if you go to Vienna or Paris and say, 'Let's hear some good music', there isn't any.

In Hamburg, there are three major orchestras, an opera house, and one of the great concert-hall acoustics in Europe at the Laeiszhalle, in a town a fifth the size of London. And that's not unusual. In Germany, there are dozens of towns with two or three orchestras. The connection with music goes very, very deep.

The Chicago Symphony is considered the greatest orchestra in the world.

I also work with the regular orchestras in Munich, Germany and other similar orchestras.

Composers love to write for symphony orchestras because the symphony is the Rolls Royce of musical instruments.

I've been lucky to conduct the very best orchestras in the world: New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Berlin, the London Philharmonic.

If anything, when I was young, I wanted to be an orchestra.

It's a great privilege and a highlight for choir and orchestra members to perform for audiences in live concerts.

The music lovers of London and the country deserve to have something where orchestras can flourish. You have no idea how wonderful an orchestra like the London Symphony Orchestra can sound in a great concert hall.

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.

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

Bernstein was everywhere - Vienna, London - and everyone admired him. Of course he loved Boston, and he did so many great things at Tanglewood. He was the best example of what a conductor should be.

Yesterday I was playing Beethoven's fifth, because I love that.

Most of the important composers in our country are clustered in the Northeast.

The classical music scene was completely unfamiliar to me. It was something that I didn't have the most fun associations around. A lot of people don't - they think of older generations and stuffiness. But it's not. You listen to the Overture of 1812, and you can hear a rock n' roll catharsis.

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.

This kind of prelude was succeeded by the concerto itself which he executed with a degree of spirit and firmness that no one has ever pretended to equal.

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.

They're always so serious, the orchestras, you know? It's always a fun contrast of that song and the genre of music. And me.

My father was a guitar player, and I was raised with a super high standard of what good guitar playing was.

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