Explore Quotes by Daniel Barenboim

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.

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.

I am convinced that 100 years from now, people will talk about Elliott Carter as one of the most important figures in the second half of 20th-century music.

The historical importance of a composer does not always go hand in hand with the quality of their work.

People need to have enough to eat and have work and money. But there are other things that are important.

Children in schools need to have something to do with music and learn it the way they do literature, geography and biology.

There is no way Israel will deal with the Palestinians if the Palestinians do not understand the suffering of the Jewish people.

I think what history has done to Jewish people, frankly, cannot be made good by giving them a piece of land.

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.

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.

Any conductor who tells you that if he is approached for the directorship of the Chicago Symphony that he's not interested in it, you know perfectly well he's lying.

Most of the dramatism in Wagner comes from a very close link between the music and the language of the text. So much of the expressivity of Wagner's music dramas comes from the singers' capacity to play with the sound of the language. This kind of thing you can do very well in concert performance.

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

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.

Every concert I've finished with the knowledge I've played a fistful of wrong notes.

You find Jews, Irish, and Italians in every orchestra.

I don't think I'm anti-Israeli.

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.

On Nov. 5, 2012, my friend Elliott Carter died in New York at the age of 103. For me, he was and remains one of the most interesting figures of music history in the past century.

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