Why write for the orchestra? For one thing it's a very challenging problem.
Beauty and fullness of tone can be achieved by having the whole orchestra play with high clarinets and a carefully selected number of piccolos.
A conductor can't be too arrogant with an orchestra and try to impose himself too much.
I had been composing just for myself, and people would say I played so orchestrally, and wondered if I thought about having someone write a piece for me for an orchestra. And I thought, I don't want someone else to write that. You know I finally had made an overhead chart of my drums and what pitches the cymbals and toms were tuned to, and what have you. And I started to compose just with what I had for my solo drumming.
A man of forty today has nothing to worry him but falling hair, inability to button the top button, failing vision, shortness of breath, a tendency of the collar to shut off all breathing, trembling of the kidneys to whatever tune the orchestra is playing, and a general sense of giddiness when the matter of rent is brought up. Forty is Life's Golden Age.
The piano is really the featured instrument of a 10-piece chamber orchestra. The construction is the harmonic language.
For better or worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.
If you're playing live, I like to think of the ensemble, whether it's the duet or a forty piece orchestra, as one person. And the entire audience, whether it's twelve people or twelve thousand at Madison Square Garden, is the other person. The two of you are going to dance together tonight.
I want to work with the big orchestras. I want to have a big family.
There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn't give a damn what goes on in between.
Let me say that I've never thought to conduct because the conductor has to think to the music before the orchestra. And the orchestra comes later. For me, it's terrible.
The very day I purchased it, I christened my guitar as my monophonic symphony, six string orchestra.
You can find the whole world of a film in one instrument, or you can find a world of sound in the orchestra.
Acting is just playing the violin in an orchestra. Directing is being the conductor.
It's so legato it's difficult to splice. Sibelius was famous for that.
I don't mean to make you nervous, but unfortunately I have to.
Don't ever follow me, because I am difficult.
My idea was to go to Vienna to study conducting and perhaps play in an orchestra first, so I thought before I got to Vienna I could do with a little training in Paris.
It's all very well to have principles, but when it comes to money you have to be flexible.
I often conduct an orchestra in my sleep; my orchestras are so huge that the back desks of the violas vanish into the horizon. And everything is so wonderful.