Violin Mastery Quotes

Bach in general was so good with the violin. He just finds the genius way around his music on the instrument.

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

Violin was my first form of expression - and is still in a lot of ways.

Menuhin was playing Bach on a fantastic spiritual level when he was a teenager.

I started taking piano lessons when I was about 5, and there was always a lot of music in my family: my parents both play instruments, my grandparents were classical violinists, and my grandfather was actually a music professor and a conductor.

Bach in general was so good with the violin. He just finds the genius way around his music on the instrument. When you think about the fact that the instrument has changed significantly since he wrote for it and his music still really works, it's brilliant. He was definitely ahead of his time. There's something so satisfying about his music. It's beautifully organized and emotional at the same time. I find it highly exciting.

Yes, I mean like you know, having studied with Yehudi Menuhin that is like some direct route into Bach, because he was one of the foremost interpreters of Bach for the violin.

I always have loved the Stradivarius. My teacher, Josef Gingold, he had a Stradivarius. As a treat, he would put it under my chin and let me play a few notes, and I remember that feeling of the overtones, the complexity of the sound. It's like a great wine.

What drew me to the violin was mastering the instrument technically, which I'm continuing to do.

Although I wasn't fond of the violin in the beginning, as I played on I developed a fondness which soon turned into a passion.

My brother, who's a violinist now, was the real ham, the real performer of the family. His passion for the violin is the only thing that kept him from being an actor.

When you can hear a violinist, that is better than you, then you learn from him, because if you play with somebody who is worse than you, then you go down.