Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach Quotes

Music is its own language - if you don't speak it, it's hard to say what you're trying to do.

The way to do it is to put as much life into the song as I can. You can either get it to breathe or you can't.

Listening is the key to everything good in music.

Good taste - that's all you really need when you're playing an instrument.

The art of interpretation is not to play what is written.

Music expresses what cannot be put into words I like to think, and I think the band makes a good go at it.

I don't have favourites, I think, when you play, you have to be like a prostitute, you have to love the piece you are playing. Even if you don't like it, you have to play it as if you would like it. Then you are a good interpreter.

One of the most important elements in teaching, conducting, and performing, all three, is listening.

Whenever I start to really think about what I'm playing, I may play it better musically, but the feeling isn't there.

I think this orchestra's strengths involve drama and voice.

Is it not the business of the conductor to convey to the public in its dramatic form the central idea of a composition; and how can he convey that idea successfully if he does not enter heart and soul into the life of the music and the tale it unfolds?

We need improvement in the style of performance. There is no more advantage in a musician who plays and conducts than in one who is only a beater of rhythm.

The role of the musician is to go from concept to full execution. Put another way, it's to go from understanding the content of something to really learning how to communicate it and make sure it's well-received and lives in somebody else.

Singing isn't always about being on key; it's about emotionality.

The negative is comparable to the composer's score and the print to its performance. Each performance differs in subtle ways.

A good interpreter can take a piece of bad music and make it sound pretty decent, while a bad interpreter can take good music and make it sound cheap. I can tell that some people have a bad taste, and unlike on the piano, they smear around a lot, that is bad taste.

Music has nothing to do with your technical ability.

I feel that I speak the musical language.

I think it's a very important collaboration between the conductor and the orchestra - especially when the conductor is one more member of the orchestra in the way that you are leading, but also respecting, feeling and building the same way for all the players to understand the music.

Songs suffer at the mercy of the performer.

As long as I can sing halfway decent, I'd rather sing than act. There's nothing like being in good voice, feeling good, having good numbers to do and having a fine orchestra.

I always imagined that to bring an orchestra to play together is not enough for a conductor.

Conducting is more difficult than playing a single instrument. You have to know the culture, to know the score, and to project what you want to hear. Some conductors are well prepared but cannot transmit their ideas to an orchestra, and others are good communicators but have nothing to transmit because they are not absorbed enough in the score.

For me, the conductor is a person who interprets along with me, and we interpret things together.

Just because you have developed the craft on your instrument doesn't mean that you don't have the ability to be expressive emotionally on that instrument, or vice versa.