Daniel Barenboim

“I don't believe in changing the unchangeable.”

“I cannot be music director at La Scala and at Staatsoper. This would be unfair to one of the two institutions.”

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

“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.”

“To have real knowledge, one must understand the essence of things and not only their manifestations.”

“Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity.”

“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.”

“I know so many Irish musicians. They're all over, because there has been so much emigration from Ireland. Like the Jews.”

“I have music in my brain all the time, all sorts.”

“Most of the time I spend looking for the 25th hour in the day, the ninth day in the week, the 32nd day in the month and the 367th, eighth or 70th day in the year because I feel I have a very rich life.”

“I don't think I'm anti-Israeli.”

“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.”

“I believe education is much more important than we assume.”

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

“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.”

“No one can be an artist without a rich inner life.”

“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.”

“Music is not a profession. Music is a way of life - one that requires much professionalism.”

“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.”

“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.”