Whenever I play recitals, the part where I talk about music and my experiences of music, audiences always like it. They feel more involved with an artist who talks to them. It's a nice experience for me as well.
Interpretation
Engaging with an audience through personal stories enhances the overall experience for both the artist and the listeners.
In this quote, Itzhak Perlman highlights the importance of connection between the artist and the audience during recitals. By sharing personal anecdotes about music and his experiences, he brings listeners closer to the artistry, making them feel more involved and enriched by the performance. This interaction not only benefits the audience by deepening their appreciation for the music but also creates a fulfilling experience for the artist.
In practice
In a speech to aspiring musicians about the importance of connecting with their audience.
I say to string players in small chamber orchestras, 'it's always easy to become a passenger on the journey in sound, just adding volume to the whole. But if you play in an individual way, it makes the difference between good and great sound in an orchestra.'
In difficult times, people just like to hear music. They like to be moved by what they hear. And music speaks different languages.
Sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.
For every child prodigy that you know about, at least 50 potential ones have burned out before you even heard about them.
I am playing the violin, that's all I know, nothing else, no education, no nothing. You just practice every day.
Israel is the country of my birth. When I come here, I feel I'm coming home.
I'll get cast occasionally as sort of the jerk version of myself, and I have fun doing that. But it's really better for everyone if I stay behind the camera.
A painter's tastes must grow out of what so obsesses him in life that he never has to ask himself what it is suitable for him to do in art.
There's a crystallization that goes on in a poem which the young man can bring off, but which the middle-aged man can't.
Creativity is putting your imagination to work, and it's produced the most extraordinary results in human culture.
If you write interesting roles, you get interesting people to play them. If you write roles that are full of nuance and contradiction and have interesting dialog, actors are drawn to that.
The greatest poets are those with memories so great that they extend beyond their strongest experiences to their minutest observations of people and things far outside their own self-centeredness.
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