Culture is a little like dropping an Alka-Seltzer into a glass - you don't see it, but somehow it does something.
Culture is a little like dropping an Alka- Seltzer into a glass- you don't see it, but somehow it does something
My wife has to be the worst cook. I've got the only dog who begs for alka-seltzer.
That was the Alka-Seltzer moment, the moment when the tablet hits the water and begins to fizz.
I have an Alka-Seltzer bat. You know-plop, plop, fizz, fizz, when the pitcher sees me walking up there he says, 'Oh, what a relief it is'.
If you mess up the tiniest little thing in the Beethoven concerto, or the phrasing isn't just exactly perfectly executed, Beethoven brings out the worst in the best violinist. You almost never hear a satisfying performance, because it doesn't play itself.
Beethoven, Wagner, Bach, and Mozart settled down day after day to the job in hand. They didn't waste time waiting for inspiration.
I just loved going fast. So I started out with Alka-Seltzer and soda water in a bottle and attached it to the skateboard. That didn't do much. I would try a leaf blower. I was searching for anything that would go fast. Then, the lawnmower engine.
I find little in the works of Beethoven, Berlioz, Wagner and others when they are led by a conductor who functions like a windmill.
Even if you're playing Brahms or a Beethoven concerto, you've got to have a different vantage point, slightly, each time.
Western culture is what gave us Mozart, and Da Vinci, and Wagner, and Beethoven.
I never thought home runs were all that exciting. I still think the triple is the most exciting thing in baseball. To me, a triple is like a guy taking the ball on his 1-yard line and running 99 yards for a touchdown.
Richard Wagner commenting on the music of Ludvig Van Beethoven: He was a Titan, wrestling with the Gods.
There's a man in Mobile who remembers that Honus Wagner hit a triple in Pittsburgh 46 years ago. That's baseball.
My parents once caught me conducting Beethoven's 'Fifth Symphony.'
In Bach, Beethoven and Wagner we admire principally the depth and energy of the human mind; in Mozart, the divine instinct.