Lorin Maazel Quotations

I think I infuse the music with a new passion. Part of this is because I have fallen in love: I am in love with the New York Philharmonic. The chemistry has just been right. Beyond expectation.

In these confused times, the role of classical music is at the very core of the struggle to reassert cultural and ethical values that have always characterized our country and for which we have traditionally been honored and respected outside our shores.

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.

So many things can hinder one. Think you are up in a hot air balloon with sandbags. As you get older, keep throwing those sandbags overboard. The more sandbags you throw, the higher you soar, the higher the balloon goes.

Our goals are clear: maintain a superb standard of performance of core classics, renew and refresh our tradition with contemporary music of value and relevance, reach out to all segments of our heterogeneous society, tour nationally and abroad as ambassadors of the true face of America.

Our Orchestra must also continue to play its leadership role in the community and in our nation. The young look to us to provide substance in place of dross, emotional depth in place of shallow titillation.

We are doing a program this season of music by Schubert, Schoenberg, Rachmaninoff, and Ravel, music which is totally -- on paper -- incompatible,

Why does Beethoven appeal and continue to appeal? Other than the obvious (his having written great music), Beethoven communicates a credo so effectively that the listener finds the courage he needs to reaffirm his own belief in the purpose of life. Beethoven stiffens the fiber of our commitment in a language that is beauty itself, in a statement as open as a Greek temple. Friend Beethoven is the one friend we shall always have.

Salzburg was where he was born and where he was rejected. I don't think he was capable of writing a boring bar of music.

Salzburg was where he was born and where he was rejected.

Art rises above and beyond the issues of the day. It reunites what has been rent asunder, not along national or religious lines, but along individual, human ones. It heals, redefines goals, and strengthens the resolve to move on, to rebuild, to reconstruct. However obtuse human behavior is in other arenas, art, if not suborned, can clarify, put into perspective and re-inspire.

I come to a performance of music that I know very well as if I were performing it for the first time. Every day is a new day, a new experience. This is the way I approach a masterpiece. A masterpiece can never age - it's only the people who perform it or listen to it who become insensitive to it. If you come with a fresh feeling toward a masterpiece, it will always feel fresh and give you the benefit of its genius.

What our profession is all about is interacting with people.

To be passionate in today's world is not politically correct... Nowadays we are supposed to cope. This was not Mahler's problem. He saw it, he heard it, and he expressed it. He was a kaleidoscopic, Olympian figure.

In this world, there's even room for quality.

As you get older, the assumption is you get wiser. I try to earn it by not staying still, not resting on laurels. A lot of people in other professions are retired at my age. I care about music more than ever.

The collaboration with the musicians of the New York Philharmonic is sheer joy. The Orchestra is so professional, so prepared, so motivated. I float from day to day, concert to concert, masterpiece to masterpiece, supported by the sound of the New York Philharmonic.