This Week at The Classical Station

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."  

Michael Tilson Thomas: "Classical music is a wonderful 1200 year-old tradition that witnesses everything that it has meant and what it means right now to be human."

Leopold Stokowski: "A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence."

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov: "A painter paints his picture on canvas. A musician paints his picture on silence."  

Igor Stravinsky: “Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.”

Robert Schumann: “To send light into the darkness of men’s hearts – such is the duty of the artist.”

Joseph Haydn: “There was no one near to confuse me, so I was forced to become original.”

J.S. Bach: "I was obliged to be industrious. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well."

Giacchino Rossini: “Nothing primes inspiration more than necessity.”

Giacomo Puccini: "Inspiration is an awakening, a quickening of all man's faculties, and it is manifested in all high artistic achievements."

“To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.” - Leonard Bernstein