Symphonies Quotations

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.

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.

In truth, I became a conductor because deep down I wanted to conduct Brahms's four symphonies and Richard Strauss's tone poems.

We can't afford big symphonies but we commission works that sound rich and symphonic because of the nature of the instrumentation and the people we work with.

Mozart's symphonies are quite special. One of our landmarks is our recording of all of his symphonies, which means that we've recorded not 41, but 68 symphonies. Many people are unaware that there are many unnumbered symphonies.

Port Symphonies is more of a composing project rather than a conducting project. The score is written in time, in seconds. The notes translate to ship horn on, then ship horn off.

I have been told that a young would-be composer wrote to Mozart asking advice as to how to compose a symphony. Mozart responded that a symphony was a complex and demanding form and that it would be better to start with something simpler. The young man protested, 'But Herr Mozart, you wrote symphonies when you were younger than I am now.' And Mozart replied, 'I never asked how.'

We're all just amazed, ... that the Seattle Symphony people have stepped forward on our behalf like this. But I know that people in the LPO would have done the same thing for them. It's a small world symphonies are like families, so we're all sort of related.

Essentially, all expressions of human nature ever produced, from a caveman's paintings to Mozart's symphonies and Einstein's view of the universe, emerge from the same source: the relentless dynamic toil of large populations of interconnected neurons.

The symphonies are the things that, as a soloist, I've not gotten to play. I used to travel the world playing concertos, and then I would sit and listen to the symphony.

Each of my symphonies has a fresh character with a specific definition of their own.

Not only are most of our citizens fathomlessly ignorant of the glories of American literature, a fast-growing percentage of our students are no longer taught much about any works of American art, be they novels, paintings, symphonies or ballets.

In the torment of the insufficiency of everything attainable we eventually learn that here, in this life, all symphonies remain unfinished

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

Beethoven's fourth and seventh symphonies have a certain amount in common. Well, of course they're both written by Beethoven, but besides that, I would say their overall effect and idea is to provide the listener with an incredible sense of joy.

These are artistic professionals who have spent a great deal of time and money learning their art. Unfortunately, they often need to perform for several symphonies and opera houses at a time.