Charles Hazlewood Quotes

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

For me to rehearse with a children's orchestra a Mahler symphony was to really work. We had three or four weeks of rehearsal with the orchestra, every day eight or nine hours, putting the First together. I had been conducting Tchaikovsky a lot and Beethoven, but Mahler was different.

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

So writing a song is much harder than doing a classical piece for me, because in a classical piece, I can just let the mood dictate what's going to happen.

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

I approach everything as chamber music. Even with Beethoven symphonies, I lead from the violin and basically encourage the orchestra to think of it as a giant string quartet.

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.

Perhaps, once I am gone, the one thing I might be remembered for is having sung a great deal of Mahler with a great many phenomenal conductors. It is wonderful music, very spiritual.

A Beethoven symphony should be rehearsed like chamber music, only for a lot more people.

You know, when I hear music, I just hear the whole thing.

Musical composition, about which I know little, is a complicated art, and some contemporary music may be the equivalent of a complex abstract painting.

The music of Bach is so timeless, so fulfilling. You don't feel like you have to be in front of it. The music has everything, and you are there to find the balance when you conduct. You don't have to give too much of your individuality. It's Bach, so it's dangerous to get in the way.

Western classical music is participative. Look at the number of people who are involved in a symphony.

I wouldn't want to hear Beethoven without beautiful bass, the cellos, the tuba. It's very important. Hip-hop has thunderous bass. And so does Beethoven. If you don't have the bass, it's like being amputated. It's like you have no legs.

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

My Mozart career began as a teenager in Los Angeles, singing arias from 'Le Nozze di Figaro' and 'Don Giovanni.'

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

I like to create the music I hear in my interior. As a conductor, you have the ability to squeeze the sounds and interpretation you asked for from 50 to 80 people.

I'm not a frustrated concert composer, and the concert pieces I've done have been a small part of my work. What I've sought there is instruction, variation from the demands of film and relief from its restrictions.

I studied with Felix Blumenfeld, who had studied piano with Anton Rubinstein and composition with Tchaikovsky. Felix, my professor, was the right hand of Anton Rubinstein. Blumenfeld knew his playing by heart, from every angle.

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

Musicians should not play music. Music should play musicians.

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

My version of 'Fast Car' is in the same key as the original. To me that is where all the emotion lies.

You've got to be able to play in the box and play deep.