A Quote by Simon Rattle

Some of my favorite music in the world is Haydn. I had a sabbatical one year and made myself one promise: to play a different Haydn piano sonata each day - they are inexhaustible treasures.
Beethoven I take twice a week, Haydn four times, and Mozart every day.
Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart, none of them were born in Vienna. They all moved there. It became a magnet, but what made it magnetized in the first place? There has to be a seed there. In the case of Vienna of about 1780, it was this deep-seated love of music.
I always see Beethoven as having been influenced by Haydn. Yet he started a revolution - not just to be different, but also because he lived in a revolutionary era.
My musical genius reached its apex thirty years ago when I played the triangle in Haydn's children's symphony, so I could not play unless you needed someone to make one sustained note!
How did Haydn and Mozart produce such vast quantities of formally perfect art? They worked from a perfect formula. In music, Beethoven was the Great Emancipator.
The first dramatic experience I had of music was when I was five. The electricity had gone out in Georgia, and my mum played the 'Moonlight Sonata' on the piano.
When I was a little kid wanting to play music, it was because of people like Pete Johnson, Huey Smith, Allen Toussaint, Professor Longhair, James Booker, Art Neville ... there was so many piano players I loved in New Orleans. Then there was guys from out of town that would come cut there a lot. There was so many great bebop piano players, so many great jazz piano players, so many great Latin piano players, so many great blues piano players. Some of those Afro-Cuban bands had some killer piano players. There was so many different things going on musically, and it was all of interest to me.
You need some reason why Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn in the 18th century all flocked to Vienna. What was it about Vienna? They must have known on some level that that is where they would flourish. It's what biologists call "selective migration."
One of the defining moments in my life was when I had the privilege to speak to him over the phone. I couldn't say anything - I was tongue tied. I just cried out of sheer happiness. That day I made a promise to myself; One day I will play for Sachin's team- I'll play for team India.
These days I think the composers of music influence me more than any photographers or visual creators. I see something exciting or lovely and think to myself: 'If Papa Haydn or Wolfgang Amadeus or the red-headed Vivaldi were here with a camera, they'd snap a picture of what's in front of me.' So I take the picture for them.
Many Christians dread the thought of leaving this world. Why? Because so many have stored up their treasures on earth, not in heaven. Each day brings us closer to death. If your treasures are on earth, that means each day brings you closer to losing your treasures.
A Haydn symphony had a meaning for the social group that listened to it. A Mahler symphony had a meaning for the man who composed it. Here is the difference between the classical and romantic attitudes to art.
In the 1950s in the United States, few music lovers were listening to chamber music. Daddy played Bach and Haydn on our phonograph for me. Not only did I become familiar with the form; he discussed the concerti. My own head start. My own Head Start.
It seemed to me that had Haydn lived to our day he would have retained his own style while accepting something of the new at the same time. That was the kind of symphony I wanted to write: a symphony in the classical style. And when I saw that my idea was beginning to work, I called it the Classical Symphony.
For one person, Haydn is most exciting. Or Bach is the most exciting. For another, it's Carter or Strauss. For me - and for any musician - all of the music is exciting. And if you don't approach it with excitement, we can't be musicians.
The first music-learning thing that I took seriously was piano lessons when I was a kid. I guess that was probably the only time that I was forced to perform music, because I had piano recitals, and my school also had mandatory music classes that had some performing required.
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