David Finckel Quotes

#1. Being an artist and a musician, I have witnessed the previous generation taking the art form, not as a way of making a living, but as a belief, an almost maniacal, sometimes insane devotion and commitment to communication.

David Finckel

#2. The realm of classical music is so vast - not only in terms of style but of era, age and the purposes for which it was composed - it is an enormous art form.

David Finckel

#3. For Rostropovich, every single note that he played had a special kind of human meaning behind it. And this was something that he expressed and demanded of everyone who worked with him, who wanted to rise up to that level.

David Finckel

#4. I would say that for the younger musicians, technical proficiency is necessary and a given these days. But the study and the way you function in society, your beliefs and the way you live, that is where you will find a real musician, a real artist.

David Finckel

#5. If I were to run around the world playing just the cello concertos - and believe me, I love playing them - I would be counting my entire repertoire from year to year on my two hands

David Finckel

#6. The pieces that have survived, the ones that we all love, were not all popular in their time. Just look at Beethoven's late string quartets. The music that the musical community selects, however, is usually the very best.

David Finckel

#7. I think one of the most wonderful things we can do as performers is to remind audiences that they can still relate to the emotions and feelings, as though the music had been written yesterday.

David Finckel

#8. The zenith of virtuosity, a violinist like Jascha Heifetz, the supernatural in a pianist like Vladimir Horowitz, these are performers who were so idiosyncratic and personal that to imitate them would be like filling somebody else's bottle with your wine.

David Finckel

#9. Beginning in the nineteenth century, with performers like Franz Liszt, were musicians who were able to excite an audience and communicate on a whole new level.

David Finckel

#10. I think you can tell a lot from the lives of many of today's great soloists. Their participation and gravitation towards chamber music is ever increasing.

David Finckel

#11. A lot of my musical education was done simply by listening. If you really want to excel on your instrument, it's almost impossible to not develop and analyze what you see and hear and to incorporate all of it into your own playing.

David Finckel

#12. Even if you are a pianist, your concerto repertoire is very limited compared to what your chamber repertoire would be if you were a chamber music pianist.

David Finckel

#13. We all know that there are many people that can play the instrument perfectly today, up and down with technical perfection, but does the sound connect internally, do they touch people's hearts, how creative are they ... ?

David Finckel