Top 53 Masur Quotes
#1. If you go to Japan for instance, you should know that they have a different way of playing Beethoven or Brahms. But if you play with them Mozart, Debussy, Mendelssohn, they have a wonderful light feeling for that.
Kurt Masur
#2. She [Susan Lucci] was extraordinary. She wouldn't look at the scene until you walked in to rehearse it. It was amazing to me. That's the impression I got anyway.
Richard Masur
#3. As I came to New York, it was for me a new beginning. To discover what people are living here. What do they need, what do they expect, what would they like to be the image and the performance of the New York Philharmonic?
Kurt Masur
#4. I'm grateful I got the opportunity to do it because I know this now. If anybody ever asked me to do a daytime show again I would go no, no. I can't do that. Not because it's beneath me. It's above me. It's beyond my resources.
Richard Masur
#5. I used to be the youngest person on the set [of Bored To Death]. Now I'm very often the oldest person on the set. I feel lucky about that, to be honest. Lena [Dunham], by the way is a doll to me. So much fun to work with and really open.
Richard Masur
#6. I nodded sagely. "If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure." Masur looked at me quizzically. "Dan Quayle said that," I added. Whether he actually did or not, I liked the quote.
Joseph Finder
#7. I've worked with a ginormous number of people over the years. What happens when you've been around for a while, when you run into people whose work you've seen and liked and they have seen and liked your work, there's a sense of you kind of know each other even though you don't.
Richard Masur
#8. You have to change your mind with every orchestra because every orchestra has a different character.
Kurt Masur
#9. I wouldn't say I've changed my mind. I changed some of my natural habits, some of my natural character.
Kurt Masur
#10. I can go in front of an orchestra. I can go in front of an audience. But if you see me walking through an audience in the reception or through a lot of people, I'm still shy.
Kurt Masur
#11. In South America, I heard the 8th Symphony of Beethoven. And the young conductor thought, Beethoven must be heroic. But this is piece which shouldn't be heroic. And this was such a misunderstanding, such a deep misunderstanding.
Kurt Masur
#12. I did my first movie,a movie called Whiffs, which very few people ever saw.
Richard Masur
#13. I consider anybody who has been able to make a living in this business [movie business] without having to do something else for a living for any period of time let alone 43 years would be a miracle.
Richard Masur
#14. And to understand this, I think this is a most important point where I would like always to be understood what we do with the New York Philharmonic. That the meaning of the music is number one.
Kurt Masur
#15. I have to say I was very lucky in this [movie] business. I was in the right place at the right time when I first got started.
Richard Masur
#16. At the age of 16, something happened with my finger and the doctor told me, you never can be a organist or pianist, so think about what you do with music.
Kurt Masur
#17. The deaf community is in a favorable position because they have a national theatre and training groups of their own to get them started. Deaf actors have often acquired very valuable skills and experience before they get their break.
Richard Masur
#18. If every school would hire two more music teachers, we would need two fewer police officers.
Kurt Masur
#19. I actually then went on to direct an after-school special where one of the characters was deaf. They hired me without even knowing I had any connection to the community.
Richard Masur
#20. And at the same time, I had my very first concert at the age of 16. I hadn't heard a symphony orchestra before, and I was so deeply impressed I said I have to be a conductor.
Kurt Masur
#21. I believe so, but at first he must know. He must know in which spirit Beethoven has composed this piece. He must try to study that. And he must find out in which station of life of Beethoven he did.
Kurt Masur
#22. Being an actor myself I realize that all actors believe they are qualified to play any role. If you showed me a script with a black woman character I would tell you that I could do it. That is what we do. We act as if we are someone else.
Richard Masur
#23. Even my family laughed at me because they thought this young guy who's always stuttering in front of other people should be in front of 100 musicians and talk to them and leading them.
Kurt Masur
#24. The message of music was also the first thing what I learned from my first teacher. She was an organist too and she was very devoted to what she played, so she had a respect for every piece and she felt that she is not allowed to add something of her own.
Kurt Masur
#25. I was different from most young conductors today.
Kurt Masur
#26. I moved out to L.A. in July and Hot L Baltimore started in September or October. So I had done a few things. I'd done a Mary [Tyler Moore]. I'd done a Waltons. I hadn't done a Rhoda yet I don't think.
Richard Masur
#27. Very often, if I know the orchestra doesn't know a piece or it's a new piece, I have main ideas about it. But then we start to play and I never talk about places where they played so beautiful and so clear in the beginning that there is nothing to say.
Kurt Masur
#28. Young conductors who are confident enough, they very often have success.
Kurt Masur
#29. Spelling is very easy to practice yourself whereas signing is not. So I would sit on the subway riding around New York and I would spell whatever I would see. When I watched a movie I would spell words as they came up.
Richard Masur
#30. And if you are strong enough, then you can grow as a conductor more and more.
Kurt Masur
#31. But people who think they can project themselves into deafness are mistaken because you can't. And I'm not talking about imagining what a deaf person's whole life is like I even mean just realizing what it is like for an instant.
Richard Masur
#32. If people don't actively knock the scenery over and they get the words out in something approximating the right order, you're moving on.
Richard Masur
#33. I did a film many years ago called The Man Without A Face.Gaby [Hoffmann] was in with Mel Gibson. That was his directing debut. He did a great job.
Richard Masur
#34. What I never overcame is a kind of shyness.
Kurt Masur
#35. I always imagined that to bring an orchestra to play together is not enough for a conductor.
Kurt Masur
#36. I'm one of the handful of survivors of the guys I came up with.
Richard Masur
#37. And I always tried to be not a star. To be someone who people like to talk to.
Kurt Masur
#38. You have to give access to people with disabilities but there is no requirement to hire them. What I mean by affirmative obligation is that producers must take the necessary steps to include opportunities for people with disabilities and a vast majority of them do.
Richard Masur
#39. I worked on scores. I went to the musical library in Berlin which is very famous. I discovered that we had scores of Beethoven, printed scores of Beethoven, that are full of mistakes. Not the wrong or false notes, but the wrong dynamic, understandable things.
Kurt Masur
#40. An orchestra full of stars can be a disaster.
Kurt Masur
#41. There is no relation to sound for deaf people. It is a totally different mental process.
Richard Masur
#42. I am so grateful for One Day At A Time, even though for years and years and years people would go, "Oh, you were on One Day At A Time." I [am on the show] for about seven months and then this haunts me for the rest of my life. No, I had no regrets.
Richard Masur
#43. You know as I started as a shy young conductor, I always wanted to cooperate. To build up the musicians. To help them to be better than without a conductor. And sometimes young talented musicians have to be encouraged.
Kurt Masur
#44. Sometimes if you have very confident people, you have to tell them please, be polite, there are other players are good enough as you and you should never speak out of an orchestra.
Kurt Masur
#45. In a very real way Norman [Lear] godfathered me into my career. He was the best mentor anybody could have ever had.
Richard Masur
#46. Most profoundly deaf people have speech that is very difficult to understand.
Richard Masur
#47. Since the composer has said everything, if you discover everything, it will be enough and you will be a happy man. Don't try to say it's your taste, and because of that you are changing this or that. And I must say this respect is still there.
Kurt Masur
#48. No one will ever argue that someone could have played Helen Keller better than Patty Duke. It was an incredibly demanding role and I don't think anyone can argue that it was a false performance.
Richard Masur
#49. For example, the first time McDonald's put a deaf person in a commercial they saw a jump in sales. I think that happens with other kinds of disabilities and products and that is something that is being realized more and more.
Richard Masur
#50. I had a very low voice for the character in the show. I said, "That's not actually my voice. That's the character's voice." I'm being such an actor.
Richard Masur
#51. You have to give people the opportunity to prove themselves.
Richard Masur
#52. I know deaf people. I have discussed the issues with them I've also thought about them a lot so I have some insights that go a little further than people who haven't had contact with the deaf community.
Richard Masur
#53. Even I had no opportunity to conduct very many concerts after World War II.
Kurt Masur
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