Lorin Maazel Quotes on Music (5 Quotes)

I come to a performance of music that I know very well as if I were performing it for the first time. Every day is a new day, a new experience. This is the way I approach a masterpiece. A masterpiece can never age - it's only the people who perform it or listen to it who become insensitive to it. If you come with a fresh feeling toward a masterpiece, it will always feel fresh and give you the benefit of its genius.

An interpreter brings to life music in the form that it is given to him, that is, a constellation of black spots on a page. But if the interpreter doesn't identify with the music and can't be one with it, then no number of directions from the composer will be of any help.

We are doing a program this season of music by Schubert, Schoenberg, Rachmaninoff, and Ravel, music which is totally -- on paper -- incompatible,

In these confused times, the role of classical music is at the very core of the struggle to reassert cultural and ethical values that have always characterized our country and for which we have traditionally been honored and respected outside our shores.

I think I infuse the music with a new passion. Part of this is because I have fallen in love: I am in love with the New York Philharmonic. The chemistry has just been right. Beyond expectation.