In the beginning, there was silence. And out of the silence came the sound. The sound is not here.
Daniel Barenboim
Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity.
Music is not a profession. Music is a way of life - one that requires much professionalism.
I would like to be a terrorist for music education - to make a complete reform, all over the world.
Beethoven's importance in music has been principally defined by the revolutionary nature of his compositions. He freed music from hitherto prevailing conventions of harmony and structure.
Music means different things to different people and sometimes even different things to the same person at different moments of his life.
Music is very abstract. When we talk about music, we're not discussing the music itself but rather how we react to it.
Beethoven was a deeply political man in the broadest sense of the word. He was not interested in daily politics, but concerned with questions of moral behaviour and the larger questions of right and wrong affecting the entire society.
Anti-Semitism has no historical, political and certainly no philosophical origins. Anti-Semitism is a disease.
I was never really interested in an operatic post, but I took on the Bastille because it seemed a unique opportunity to build an opera ensemble from scratch, and to deal with all the disciplines that go into opera - the music, the staging and the singing - in an interrelated way.
I feel that the Jews have always had a special connection to this part of the world, which in geographical terms was called Palestine for so many centuries.
I have accumulated so many experiences, so much, that I want to be able to realize so many things. This is why I have basically given up most of my positions.
We need to take music out of the ivory tower - both for musicians and for the public. Otherwise, classical music will not survive the 21st century.
Now the first step has to be taken, the step towards democracy. This step is full of risks, and requires trust on all sides. We don't know where it will lead. But if we just stand still, we will have no chance of escaping the violence.
There are many wonderful orchestras in the world, but very few who have a character or personality of their own. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is one of them, and I think it very important to recognize and respect that character.
Once you start playing a piece, there is a connection between every note. You cannot say, 'I will not concentrate on this note.' You cannot ignore things the way you do in the rest of your life.
In my mother's belly, I remember not liking the tempi my father played the Beethoven Sonatas in.
It's funny, because in 1970 I met the Beatles quite by a chance at a party. It was the Beethoven bicentenary, and I was then also playing the Beethoven Sonatas. And that's all they wanted to hear about - I wanted to talk about them, and all they wanted to talk about was Beethoven.
When we talk about music, we talk about our reaction to it. One person might say that music is so poetic, while another says it's all mathematics. Yet another might say it's about sensuality, and so on. That's all true. But music is not just one of these things. It's everything all at once.
For many people, music is here to let them forget the daily chores of life.
The Barenboim Foundation has nothing to do with politics.
I can't stand going out to one more dinner with some Mrs. So-and-So who might leave a million dollars to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra when she dies.
Live life to the full, and become more curious every day. The more you find out about life, the richer your music-making will be.
I don't like possessions.
Sound is often talked about in a very subjective way, as if it had a colour. This is a bright sound, this is a dark sound. I don't believe in that because I think that is much too subjective.
In Arab culture, music is for celebration. You don't play music at funerals.
No one can be an artist without a rich inner life.
I have music in my brain all the time, all sorts.
You can't expect someone born into a family with no music... to understand when I'm conducting the Schoenberg Variations.
There are many types of silence. There is a silence before the note, there is a silence at the end and there is a silence in the middle.
I maintain music is not here to make us forget about life. It's also here to teach us about life: the fact that everything starts and ends, the fact that every sound is in danger of disappearing, the fact that everything is connected - the fact that we live and we die.
There is no way Israel will deal with the Palestinians if the Palestinians do not understand the suffering of the Jewish people.
What the world is saying to us human beings is, 'Don't stick to the old ways, learn to think anew.' And that's what musicians do every day.
Israel is in the grip of a ghetto mentality. We have a powerful army. We have the atomic bomb. But the psychology of what comes out of Israel has the tone of the Warsaw Ghetto.
For me personally, Elliott Carter was and remains one of the most meaningful composers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries because he represents substance. He was the living proof of uncompromising, complex music, which at first seems inaccessible. But it becomes accessible if one digs in and sees the development through.
There are wonderful restaurants in London. I love Indian food and I like Arab food, and I go very often to the Arab restaurant Noura.
When you love somebody and they die young and you are young, too, it is very hard.
Beethoven's music tends to move from chaos to order, as if order were an imperative of human existence.
I liked very much when we lived in Hampstead. We would go for walks on the Heath. I liked it better than living in the centre of town.
An hour of violin lessons in Berlin is an hour where you get the child interested in music. An hour in a violin lesson in Palestine is an hour away from violence, is an hour away from fundamentalism.
I love conducting. What I'm tired of is music administration. I don't want that. I just want to make music.
The greatness of a musician is measured by the degree of fanaticism he brings to his playing.
The tempo is the suitcase. If the suitcase is too small, everything is completely wrinkled. If the tempo is too fast, everything becomes so scrambled you can't understand it.
I believe education is much more important than we assume.
Jewish intellectuals contributed a great deal to insure that Europe became a continent of humanism, and it is with these humanist ideals that Europe must now intervene in the Middle East conflict.
US presidents can make all the commitments and declarations they want until they are blue in the face, in the Muslim world they will always be perceived as partisan.
Tradition demands that we not speak poorly of the dead.
To have real knowledge, one must understand the essence of things and not only their manifestations.
It is always interesting and sometimes even important to have intimate knowledge of a composer's life, but it is not essential in order to understand the composer's works.
When playing music, it is possible to achieve a unique sense of peace.
