Percivale Concerto Quotes

I wanted a trumpet concerto that reflected Native American music because, well, there aren't any. I looked around for one but couldn't find anything. So it's a wide-open field. ~ Christopher Moore

Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto gives us for the first time the hideous notion that there can be music that stinks to the ear. ~ Eduard Hanslick

Broken glass showered from the windows. Chunks of the walls bounced off the pavement and the cars parked along the curb, crushing into smaller pieces. The asphalt on the street split in places into long ribbon-like slashes. The ground continued rolling like the deck of a ship. The noise of the destruction, screams of terrified people, and the car alarms mixed into a concerto of horror. ~ A.O. Peart

The symphony had its origin not in instrumental forms like the concerto grosso, as one might have expected, but in the overture of early Italian opera. The overture, or sinfonia, as it was called, as perfected by Alessandro Scarlatti consisted of three parts: fast-slow-fast, thus presaging the three movements of the classical symphony. ~ Aaron Copland

You get more nervous in front of a lot of people. That's why, when you play a concerto, you play with a small orchestra, in some place where you don't feel that it is as important as Carnegie Hall. ~ Itzhak Perlman

Sitting on Rosa's moth-littered bed, he felt a resurgence of all the aches and inspirations of those days when his life had revolved around nothing but Art, when snow fell like the opening piano notes of the Emperor Concerto, and feeling horny reminded him of a passage from Nietzsche, and a thick red-streaked dollop of crimson paint in an otherwise uninteresting Velazquez made him hungry for a piece of rare meat. ~ Michael Chabon

It's nice not to have the majority of the attention on me like there is when playing a concerto with an orchestra. ~ Leila Josefowicz

Oh don't concern yourself about that," Cassandra said earnestly. "Pandora's not going to marry at all. And I certainly wouldn't want a man who would scorn me just because my sister was a strumpet."
"I like that word," Pandora mused. "Strumpet. It sounds like a saucy musical instrument."
"It would liven up an orchestra," Cassandra said. "Wouldn't you like to hear the Vivaldi Double Strumpet Concerto in C? ~ Lisa Kleypas

I loved the idea that looking at a painting or listening to a concerto could make you somehow "transcend" the day-in, day-out bullshit that grinds you down: how in one instant of pure attention you could draw something inside that made you forever larger ~ Mary Karr

So it is with the concerto of our lives. Individual notes must be learned and played and practiced before we achieve harmony. And above all, we must learn how to pause. ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach

The cicada lies in the earth for seventeen years. It is warm and dark there, it is soft and wet. Its little legs curl underneath it, and twitch only once in a little while. What does the cicada dream when it is folded into the soil? What visions travel through it, like snow flying fast? Its dreams are lightless and secret. It dreams of the leaves it will taste, it composes the concerto it will sing to its mate. It dreams of the shells it will leave behind, like self-portraits. All its dreams are drawn in amber. It dreams of all the children it will make.
And then it emerges from the earth, shaking dust and damp soil from its skin. It knows nothing but its own passion to ascend - it climbs a high stalk of grass and begins to sing, its special concerto to draw the wing-pattern of its beloved near. And as it sings it leaves its amber skin behind, so that in the end, it has sung itself into a new body in which it will mate, and die.
The cicadas leave their shells everywhere, like a child's lost buttons. The shells do not understand the mating dance that now occurs in the mountains above it. The shell knows nothing of who it has been, it does not remember the dreaming of self, that was warm in the earth. The song emptied it, and now it simply waits for the wind or the rain to carry it away.
You are the cicada-in-the-earth. You are the shell-in-the-grass. You do not understand what you dream, only that you dream. And when you begin to sing, the song will separate you ~ Catherynne M. Valente

Mozart's first work regarded today as a masterpiece, with its status confirmed by the number of recordings available, is his Piano Concerto No. 9, composed when he was twenty-one. That's certainly an early age, but we must remember that by then Wolfgang had been through eighteen years of extremely hard, expert training. ~ Geoff Colvin

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

The room was two-tiered,
its marble balconies filled with rams and water nymphs in fancy
dress; a kaleidoscope of colours swayed in time to the beat of
hypnotic music. A concerto of absent musicians, it played only in
her mind. The numerous chandeliers with sculptured metal frames
hung down from chains, with endless fireflies attached. At the far
end stretched a grand staircase, dressed with a plush velvet carpet
in deep cerise, and ceiling paintings edged with gold embossed
dado rails clung to the walls.
Then Eve honed in on herself and saw that she wore a crushed
white taffeta A-line gown that fit her trim figure like a glove. Her
butterfly mask with floral patterns embroidered in red and gold
silk sat against her pale skin, her reflection like that of a porcelain
doll. A matching shawl rested softly on her shoulders. Everything
was so beautiful that she almost totally lost herself in the mirror's
reflection."

(little snippet from our book) ~ L. Wells

Jennifer now understood the meaning of the cadence: the black and white drawing, the watercolor painting,and the notes. The cadence had at last developed into a concerto for violin, the instrument of gypsies, with a prevailing rhapsodic "leitmotif". The final movement had revealed itself when they were at the gypsy camp. And now it was complete. ~ Barbara Casey

Years later, in 1987, I wrote a violin concerto for Ben. I knew he loved the Mendelssohn violin concerto, so I wrote it in a way that he would have liked. In his actual lifetime I didn't have the knowledge, skill, or inclination to compose such a work. I missed that chance by at least fifteen years. But when I could, I wrote it for him anyway. ~ Philip Glass

Psychologists call it "defocused attention," where you broaden your horizons, let your mind float and drift a bit. Coffee keeps us sharp and alert. It's great if you're driving at 3 o'clock in the morning. It's not so great if you're trying to come up with the next violin concerto. ~ Eric Weiner

Beauty doesn't have to be about anything. What's a vase about? What's a sunset or a flower about? What, for that matter, is Mozart's Twenty-third Piano Concerto about? ~ Douglas Adams

It's fine with me if people want to applaud between movements of a concerto. It doesn't bother me - it's part of performance experience. Sometimes when they applaud if I'm still playing it's not as good, but there's always a way around it. Actually the applause gives me a little rest and chance to stretch, too. ~ Hilary Hahn

At conception, we start as a single cell that contains all the DNA needed to build our body. The plan for that entire body unfolds via the instructions contained in this single microscopic cell. To go from this generalized egg cell to a complete human, with trillions of specialized cells organized in just the right way, whole batteries of genes need to be turned on and off at just the right stages of development. Like a concerto composed of individual notes played by many instruments, our bodies are a composition of individual genes turning on and off inside each cell during our development. ~ Neil Shubin

Even if you're playing Brahms or a Beethoven concerto, you've got to have a different vantage point, slightly, each time. ~ Nigel Kennedy

The room, as she saw it, was a web of motion, a symphony of mischievou dancing particles quite like the smooth and placid notes of a fine concerto. ~ Mark Helprin

I play a lot chamber music.As for something that's hard for me to play, before I leave this Earth I'm hoping to play Brahms' Second Piano Concerto. ~ Condoleezza Rice

Dagny listened to the Fourth Concerto, her head thrown back, her eyes closed. She lay half-stretched across the corner of a couch, her body relaxed and still; but tension stressed the shape of her mouth on her motionless face, a sensual shape drawn in lines of longing. ~ Ayn Rand

My life is a creative act
like a painting, or a concerto. ~ Ram Dass

When you play a concerto with a small orchestra, you don't feel it is as important as Carnegie Hall. You try to work out all the little problems. Once that's all done, trust comes in. ~ Itzhak Perlman

It was Vivaldi's Mandolin Concerto, Francesca Abraham realized as the radio alarm went off. Lively, unrelentingly upbeat, it was the perfect tempo in which to start the day. Covering her head with a pillow, she reached out blindly and urgently, desperate to shut the damn thing off. ~ Naomi Ragen

Second violins can play a concerto perfectly if they're in their own home and nobody's there. ~ Garrison Keillor

He would much rather hear a piano being demolished by illegal bulldozers than a Mozart concerto ~ Andy Stanton

Concerto soloists need applause. Though virtue is said to be its own reward, no one ever said that about virtuosity. ~ Joseph Kerman

A wedding is earth and water and a species of irreducible light and the flat belly of a harbor and a mango about to ripen and fall into gravity's caress and the waves subsiding and resuming their concerto in a minor key and the rush hour canceled by the stun of auspicious beginnings. ~ Mark McMorris

He had always wanted to write music, and he could give no other identity to the thing he sought. If you want to know what it is, he told himself, listen to the first phrases of Tchaikovsky's First Concerto
or the last movement of Rachmaninoff's Second. Men have not found the words for it, nor the deed nor the thought, but they have found the music. Let me see that in one single act of man on earth. Let me see it made real. Let me see the answer to the promise of that music. Not servants nor those served; not altars and immolations; but the final, the fulfilled, innocent of pain. Don't help me or serve me, but let me see it once, because I need it. Don't work for my happiness, my brothers
show me yours
show me that it is possible
show me your achievement
and the knowledge will give me courage for mine. ~ Ayn Rand

Somewhere in the city, an orange cat finished chewing on a marjoram plant next to his studio apartment's door and leapt purring onto the shoulder of his owner, home early from work. Somewhere in the city, a young Chinese pianist sat down at a rehearsal hall and let his fingers play the first opening notes of the Emperor Concerto, notes that would envelop the small girl in row D of the Philharmonic that night in a shimmering cloud. A boy in Staten Island touched his finger to the lower back of the girl who had been just a friend until then. A woman in Hell's Kitchen stood in her dark attic garret, her paintbrush in hand, and stepped back from the painting of chartreuse highway and forest-green sky that had taken her two years to complete. A clerk in a Brooklyn bodega tapped her crimson fingernail on a box of gripe water, reassuring the new mother holding a wailing baby, and the mother's grateful smile almost made both of them cry themselves. ~ Stephanie Clifford

I've brought you some things from home,' I said, gesturing at the bag on the floor. 'Some clothes and books – things like that.'
'Books – great! That'll make things easier. You know I can't read worth a damn right now!'
'There's also some music. Schubert's fifth, Mendelssohn's third, Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, Mahler's fourth - '
'I would have preferred his sixth.'
'You're not well enough for his sixth'. ~ Gavin Extence

Taste and smell are often the beggars among our five senses - they leave no written language and therefore no standards other than wholly personal ones. Tasting a superlative Moselle wine can be an aesthetic experience no less genuine than hearing a Mozart piano concerto or seeing for the first time an original Breughel painting. ~ Frank Schoonmaker

The virtuoso element in jazz playing, all those very fast runs in the upper extremes, simply doesn't appeal to me. That's why I don't want to make my concerto "virtuosic" in the sense of a technical show-off. I want a beautiful sound and a melodic and lyrical line. I am more interested in the way someone can play musically. ~ Gavin Bryars

It is possible to enjoy the Mozart concerto without being able to play the clarinet. In fact, you can learn to be an expert connoisseur of music without being able to play a note on any instrument. Of course, music would come to a halt if nobody ever learned to play it. But if everybody grew up thinking that music was synonymous with playing it, think how relatively impoverished many lives would be. Couldn't we learn to think of science in the same way? ~ Richard Dawkins

This kind of prelude was succeeded by the concerto itself which he executed with a degree of spirit and firmness that no one has ever pretended to equal. ~ John Hawkins

Have you forgiven me?' I asked.
'How can I say I have, when I never had anything to forgive?'
'Well then, I must go unforgiven for I cannot forgive myself.' I said.
'O Mrs. Percivale! If you think how the world is flooded with
forgiveness, you will just dip in your cup, and take what you want. ~ George MacDonald

I'm not crying about anything or anyone in particular. The life I live I created for myself, and I wouldn't want it any different. I cry because in the universe there is something as beautiful as Kremer playing the Brains violin concerto. ~ Peter Hoeg

Graceful. Lean. Coordinated as she whirls, though how she knows what dancing is, [her grandfather] could never guess.

The song plays on. He lets it go too long. The antenna is still up, probably dimly visible against the sky, the whole attic might as well shine like a beacon. But in the candlelight, in the sweet rush of a concerto, Marie-Laure bites her lower lip, and her face gives off a secondary glow, reminding him of the marshes beyond the town walls, in those winter dusks when the sun has set but isn't fully swallowed, and big patches of red pools of light burn - places he used to go with his brother, in what seems like lifetimes ago. ~ Anthony Doerr

The air was warm and heavy as sprinkles began to fall from the clouds high above. The Triton glided through the waters and the whoosh of the ship combined with the steady beat of the rain to make a concerto, like a pianist fluttering his fingers on the keys at one end and running his fingers up and down the scales at the other. Expectancy hung in the air as the tune moved to a crescendo. ~ Victoria Kahler

now routinely listen to her. To have your mind explode, search "Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No 1 FULL Argerich Charles Dutoit" and check out minute 31. ~ Timothy Ferriss

When we hear a Mozart piano concerto today, we're most likely to hear the piano part played on a modern concert grand. In the hands of a professional pianist, such a piano can bury the strings and the winds and hold its own against the brass. But Mozart wasn't composing for a nine-foot-long, thousand-pound piano; he was composing for a five-and-a-half-foot-long, hundred-and-fifty-pound piano built from balsa wood and dental floss. ~ Robert Greenberg

I usually listen to the same thing over and over again: Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D Major. And Leonard Cohen. ~ Sue Townsend

A storm of fruity sweetness!
A concerto of seafood and herbs!
And a fragrant duet of thick lamb mousse and creamed root vegetables!
All three glasses present their own colorful tableau that unfolds across your tongue! ~ Yuto Tsukuda

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. ~ Joshua Bell