This Week at The Classical Station

Claudio Monteverdi: “The end of all good music is to affect the soul.”

Aaron Copland: “To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.”

Amy Beach: “Music is the superlative expression of life experience…”

Gustav Mahler: “I am hitting my head against the walls, but the walls are giving way.”

Lara St. John: "What is classical music if not the epitome of sensuality, passion, and understated erotica that popular music, even with all of its energy and life, cannot even begin to touch?"

Ludwig Van Beethoven: "Sounds roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes."

Joshua Bell: "There's nothing more frustrating than seeing a conductor say, 'Play softer,' as they're waving their hands in huge gestures."

Itzhak Perlman: "I don't feel that the conductor has real power. The orchestra has the power, and every member of it knows instantaneously if you're just beating time."

Giachino Rossini: “Give me a laundry-list and I will set it to music.”

Sir Colin Davis: "All the conductor has to do is stand back and try not to get in the way. Mozart is doing all the work. "

Johann Sebastian Bach: "It’s easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself."

Richard Strauss: “Never look at the trombones, it only encourages them.”

Yuja Wang: "Classical music is far from boring - it has all the blood, energy, the sinister dark side, rhythm that rock music has, and all the refined, subtle sensuality that one can ask for."

Gustavo Dudamel: "It's not that people don't like classical music. It's that they don't have the chance to understand and to experience it."

Yo-Yo Ma: "Music has always been transnational; people pick up whatever interests them, and certainly a lot of classical music has absorbed influences from all over the world."