Quotes About Music

Everything will pass, and the world will perish but the Ninth Symphony will remain.

I don't see myself necessarily having a burning desire to write a symphony.

When I was growing up, there were no women in orchestras. Auditioners thought they could tell the difference between a woman playing and a man. Some intelligent person devised a simple solution: Drop a curtain between the auditioners and the people trying out. And, lo and behold, women began to get jobs in symphony orchestras.

New Year's Eve, we're going to be doing a concert with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Symphony Hall. It makes me feel good, because of all the people they could have had, they wanted me! We do have to do a little work with the rhythm section.

A symphony is no joke.

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

To practice your scales, so to speak, in order play the symphony, is what you have to do as a young poet.

My parents once caught me conducting Beethoven's 'Fifth Symphony.'

To me, a song is not finished. To me, there's no such thing as a finished anything. All of Beethoven's nine symphonies, to me, are one. I think of it as having no beginning and no end.

I grew up loving symphonies. Beethoven is beautiful.

I always like to sing barefoot, but when I first started doing these dates with the symphonies, I of course thought I should clean up my act, being a Jewish girl from Long Island with a little bit of a trucker mouth. So I wore a gown and some high heels.

The first reason for starting to do the symphony concerts was to play this new piece of mine.

When we're at the end of The Rite of Spring or of a Bruckner symphony, I want people to feel the music physically.

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

I'd be much more likely to watch the latest Tarantino movie than to listen to a Mahler symphony.

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

Most Beethoven symphonies require 80 or more instruments, and the late romantics even more.

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.

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.

Although, I am proud of all my Symphonies as they all have something special to say, my particular favourite is the Fifth. As the great Mahler expert Donald Mitchell said that if Mahler had written another Symphony, it would have been my Fifth!

Over the years it has been my privilege to lead performances with Saint Louis, the National Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra and so many other wonderful organizations.

I sometimes feel it is to my disadvantage that I have not conducted the Cleveland Orchestra or the Boston or Chicago symphonies, but then I have had to sacrifice something in order to have enough time with my orchestras.

There was a period after my first solo album came out that about 50 per cent of my work was with symphonies and big bands. We did the Captain and Tennille as well, but it ended up being about 50-50.

Beethoven's symphonies are not 'relaxing.' They are the most exciting things that have ever been created by a human being.