Joshua Bell Quotes

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

My grandmother got me recordings of the 'Goldberg Variations,' in addition to the 'Brandenburg Concertos,' the Mozart string quartets and Beethoven's 'Seventh Symphony.'

My whole life, I've been watching conductors. I was 7 the first time I played with a conductor. Seeing the ones that do it well, it's an amazing thing.

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

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.

There was one thing Beethoven didn't do. When one of his string quartets was played, you can believe the second violin wasn't improvising.

In South America, I heard the 8th Symphony of Beethoven. And the young conductor thought, Beethoven must be heroic. But this is piece which shouldn't be heroic. And this was such a misunderstanding, such a deep misunderstanding.

When you hear Bach or Mozart, you hear perfection. Remember that Bach, Mozart and Beethoven were great improvisers. I can hear that in their music.

I like Beethoven, especially the poems.

It's interesting about classical music that the more you hear something, the more you get to know a piece, the better and better it gets, period, which is just an interesting thing on it.

Some people really want to play Mozart and be just performers. I was more interested in invention.

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

If a professional musician in a symphony orchestra is playing Beethoven. But this particular orchestra have played this particular chestnut so many times, they can play it in their sleep. Does the genius remain present in the music or not?

Pulse as an active means of expression, Stravinsky and Beethoven are the two masters of that.

The Beethoven Experience provided the opportunity to solidify the relationship between the Orchestra and me, the Orchestra and me and the public, between all of us and the city of New York, because Beethoven after all is a really amazing point of reference.

We've been performing with symphonies all of our career and it sounds so wonderful when they play 'My Girl' with the large string section, I want to turn around and look.

I was playing 'The Flight of the Bumblebee,' and I totally forgot the ending, so I performed the whole piece again, and I still couldn't remember it.

At a grand evening service in a church, my concerto created such a furor that the worshippers rushed out to keep the crowd outside the church quiet.

Part of what I enjoy about writing classical music is communicating through the score and collaborating with such amazing musicians.

I grew up loving symphonies. Beethoven is beautiful.

I'm a big Beethoven fan, and you'll struggle to find a three-minute song on any of his stuff.

A song versus an album is not like a scene versus a play.

Learning a play is one thing, but to learn to play Vivaldi's 'Four Seasons' without music: that's brilliant.

A lot of people don't know that Beethoven, when he wrote the Fifth Symphony, that second movement, he took eight years to figure that out!

To be a good improviser, you have to study composition as a parallel. Because what improvisation is, on a high level, is spontaneous composition.