Daniel Barenboim

Music is an art that touches the depth of human existence; an art of sounds that crosses all borders.

You can't expect someone born into a family with no music... to understand when I'm conducting the Schoenberg Variations.

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.

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.

Playing and listening to music gives you a sense of fulfilment because you have to put everything in you at its disposal.

You have to really have the will to hang onto the first note as it is being played, and then really stay with it and take the flight, as it were, you know, for the duration of the piece.

The greatness of a musician is measured by the degree of fanaticism he brings to his playing.

I think the most important thing for a listener is to realize that he, too, should not listen to music in a passive way; that if you sit in a concert hall and expect to be moved or taken off your seat by the music, it will not happen.

The ear plays the role of the guide in the museum in the concert I'm taking now. We don't have an oral guide, we have to provide it ourselves. One reason why active listening is absolutely essential.

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.

There is too much employer-employee relationship in America. I wish the musicians would feel that many decisions have to do with them and not delegate everything to management or to the board or to the committee. This is why you get a sense of pride in some of the European orchestras: because they are part of the decision-making.

We need a certain amount of energy to produce the sound. But then to sustain it, we have to give more energy, or otherwise, it goes and it dies in silence. And therefore, sound is absolutely, inextricably connected to time, the length of time.

You don't go out and play Beethoven's 'Opus 111' without having rethought about it every time you play.

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.

Music is very abstract. When we talk about music, we're not discussing the music itself but rather how we react to it.

The thing about Wagner is we're always wrong about him, because he always embraces opposites. There are things in his operas which viewed one way are naturalistic, and viewed another way are symbolic, but the problem is you can't represent both views on stage at once.

'Tristan' is a very unique case, not just in Wagner's output, but in music in general. It remains contemporary no matter what else surrounds it. There is something self-renewing about it.

Either you live by the barometer of the music critics, or you live by your own. I choose the latter.

I would like to be a terrorist for music education - to make a complete reform, all over the world.

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.

Controversial means somebody who makes people think. And if you are afraid of people who will be against you, you might as well stay home and do nothing.