Technique is communication: the two words are synonymous in conductors.

Technique is communication: the two words are synonymous in conductors.

What [Louis Armstrong] does is real, and true, and honest, and simple, and even noble. Every time this man puts his trumpet to his lips, even if only to practice three notes, he does it with his whole soul.

Einstein said that "the most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious." So why do so many of us try to explain the beauty of music, thus depriving it of its mystery?

I hate you, Richard Wagner . . . but I hate you on my knees.

Any great art work … revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world - the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air.

I'm not interested in having an orchestra sound like itself. I want it to sound like the composer.