Philharmonic Quotes & Sayings

Not with the Rochester Philharmonic, but I formed my own orchestra, made up of musicians from the Eastman School, where I'm on the faculty now, direct the Jazz Ensemble and teach improvisation classes. — Chuck Mangione

My whole childhood was filled with classical music and going to concerts of the New York Philharmonic and other New York ensembles and organizations, but interestingly, I didn't become conscious of wanting to be a musician until I was about 11. I was a rather late starter. — Gunther Schuller

Essentially, the [New York] Philharmonic is just like any other orchestra-they all have the spirit of kids, and if you scratch away a little of the fatigue and cynicism, out comes a 17-year-old music student again, full of wonder, exuberance and a tremendous love of music. — Zubin Mehta

I absolutely love the Philharmonic. I also love rock guitar. — Trey Anastasio

The alarm in the morning? Well, I have an old tape of Carlo Maria Giulini conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in a perfectly transcendent version in Shubert's seventh symphony. And I've rigged it up so that at exactly 7:30 every morning it falls from the ceiling onto my face. — Stephen Fry

As I came to New York, it was for me a new beginning. To discover what people are living here. What do they need, what do they expect, what would they like to be the image and the performance of the New York Philharmonic? — Kurt Masur

As he [Sir Malcolm Sargeant, conductor of the London Philharmonic] stood in waist deep in the shallows of Whaler's Cove, the littler spinners came drifting over, sleek and dainty, gazing at him curiously with their soft dark eyes. Malcolm was a tactful, graceful man in his movements, and so the spinners were not afraid of him. In moments, he had them all pressing around him, swimming into his arms, and begging him to swim away with them. He looked up, suffused with delight, and remarked to me, 'It's like finding out there really are fairies at the bottom of the garden! — Karen Pryor

Every philharmonic orchestra merely interprets the composer. My goal was to create new music by that composer. In doing so, I wanted to find the painter's creative center and become familiar with it, so that I could see through his eyes how his paintings came about and, of course, see the new picture I was painting through his eyes - before I even painted it. — Wolfgang Beltracchi

I have sat in with the Burbank Philharmonic and the Topanga Orchestra when they need someone if someone gets sick or something. — Torrey DeVitto

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. — Lorin Maazel

Simplicity is always a virtue. One kid on a riverbank working out a Stephen Foster tune on his new harmonica heard from the correct esthetic distance projects more magic and power than the entire Vienna Philharmonic and Chorus laboring (once again) through the Mozart Requiem or Bach's B Minor Mass. — Edward Abbey

Do you suppose Valentine is happy?" Women. They were forever pondering the imponderables and expecting their menfolk to do likewise. "Valentine delights in his music, the Philharmonic is ever after him to give up his ruralizing and come to Town to rehearse them. One must conclude his rustic existence appeals to him." Her Grace set the letter aside. "Or being up in Oxfordshire appeals to him, or his wife appeals to him. I think Ellen is yet shy of polite society." If their youngest son ran true to Windham form, he was spending the winter keeping his new wife warm and cozy, and perhaps seeing to the next generation of the musical branch of the family. His Grace reached over and patted his wife's hand. "We'll squire her around next Season, put the ducal stamp of approval on Val's choice. — Grace Burrowes

I think I drunk e-mailed the Auckland Philharmonic last night. — Antonia Murphy

From time to time, the Vienna Philharmonic could play without a conductor because they are so good. — Bernard Arnault

To this day I am indulgent toward orchestras that are trying to lift themselves in the world, while critics are busy assuring them that they are not the Vienna Philharmonic and never will be. — Robertson Davies

Some members of the Vienna Philharmonic convinced me to try Bruckner, which I have never done before. And that was interesting to me to have this experience with this orchestra, which knows the repertoire very well, and to be confronted with this knowledge, and to learn from them. — Pierre Boulez

You pay a whore to make you feel like a man, you fund a philharmonic to make yourself feel like a refined man. — Sam Lipsyte

Ori Kam is an outstanding violist who has already played as a soloist with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra twice, much to our delight and satisfaction, and has availed himself with distinction. — Zubin Mehta

I love the sound of snow ... You can hear it even if you are only standing on a balcony. [The sound] is only minimal, not even a real noise: a breath, a trifle of a sound. You have the same thing in music: if in the score there is a pianissimo marked that ends in nothing. Up thee you can feel this 'nothing'. With an orchestra it is very difficult to achieve it. The Berlin Philharmonic manage it sometimes. — Claudio Abbado

It seems always to have been difficult to have been a New York Philharmonic conductor because of the nature of New York. We are in direct competition with the great orchestras in the world who come to play in our hall or in Carnegie, and we are constantly compared. I think that 's a good thing. — Zubin Mehta

There was the best teachers from the Czech Philharmonic, highly dedicated people, some of the best musicians in the world passing on the knowledge about the country, about the principles, and about the music. — Miroslav Vitous

We ought to approach this challenge [of global warming] with a sense of profound joy and gratitude: that we are the generation about which, a thousand years from now, philharmonic orchestras and poets and singers will celebrate by saying, they were the ones that found it within themselves to solve this crisis and lay the basis for a bright and optimistic human future. — Al Gore

I miss the standard of the New York Philharmonic's playing very much. It has certainly been a high point in my life. — Zubin Mehta

I did a concert ... in September with the Berlin Philharmonic ... They're great musicians, and there's always something to learn from them. — Cecilia Bartoli

The New York Philharmonic is a tremendous opportunity, a great orchestra. — Zubin Mehta

If somebody had told me when I was starting composition in Helsinki in the '70s that I would end up in L.A. and to describe that journey, those 17 years with the philharmonic and building the hall and this and that, I would have said, "This is a fairy tale of the first order." — Esa-Pekka Salonen

For years, Jazz At The Philharmonic albums were the only ones of their kind. — Norman Granz

The philharmonic became such a journey and adventure in my life, and a deeply satisfying thing. — Esa-Pekka Salonen

And to understand this, I think this is a most important point where I would like always to be understood what we do with the New York Philharmonic. That the meaning of the music is number one. — Kurt Masur

It is wonderful to see how happy all my friends in the LA Philharmonic are in their new home. — Emanuel Ax

What's happened - in our country, anyhow - is that the young people have shied away from the formality of the concert hall, that tie - and - tails philharmonic image. — Chuck Mangione

There was an opinion expressed in the newspapers that, after 20 years, maybe the Israel Philharmonic should consider asking me to leave. I thought they might have a point, so I asked my orchestra. They told me overwhelmingly that they wanted me to stay. — Zubin Mehta

Hamburg is getting a new symbol with its new Elbe Philharmonic concert hall. Such an architecturally impressive building is built somewhere in the world maybe once every five years, if you're lucky. — Charles Landry

Somewhere in the city, an orange cat finished chewing on a marjoram plant next to his studio apartment's door and leapt purring onto the shoulder of his owner, home early from work. Somewhere in the city, a young Chinese pianist sat down at a rehearsal hall and let his fingers play the first opening notes of the Emperor Concerto, notes that would envelop the small girl in row D of the Philharmonic that night in a shimmering cloud. A boy in Staten Island touched his finger to the lower back of the girl who had been just a friend until then. A woman in Hell's Kitchen stood in her dark attic garret, her paintbrush in hand, and stepped back from the painting of chartreuse highway and forest-green sky that had taken her two years to complete. A clerk in a Brooklyn bodega tapped her crimson fingernail on a box of gripe water, reassuring the new mother holding a wailing baby, and the mother's grateful smile almost made both of them cry themselves. — Stephanie Clifford

Then, just at the peak of complacency, when it was assumed that the climate of the world had changed forever, when the conductor of the philharmonic played Vivaldi's Four Seasons and left out an entire movement, and when to children of a young age stories of winter were told as if they were fairy tales, New York was hit by a cataclysmic freeze, and, once again, people huddled together to talk fearfully of the millennium. — Mark Helprin

Open rehearsals reach people who might not otherwise hear the Philharmonic - people on fixed incomes, people who can't move easily at night, students. — Zubin Mehta

I can't imagine Jon Cryer performing with the New York Philharmonic isn't one of the signs of apocalypse. — Jon Cryer

The whole reason for Jazz at the Philharmonic was to take it to places where I could break down segregation. — Norman Granz