Vienna Philharmonic Quotes

From time to time, the Vienna Philharmonic could play without a conductor because they are so good. ~ Bernard Arnault

The alarm in the morning? Well, I have an old tape of Carlo Maria Giulini conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in a perfectly transcendent version in Shubert's seventh symphony. And I've rigged it up so that at exactly 7:30 every morning it falls from the ceiling onto my face. ~ Stephen Fry

Some members of the Vienna Philharmonic convinced me to try Bruckner, which I have never done before. And that was interesting to me to have this experience with this orchestra, which knows the repertoire very well, and to be confronted with this knowledge, and to learn from them. ~ Pierre Boulez

There was an opinion expressed in the newspapers that, after 20 years, maybe the Israel Philharmonic should consider asking me to leave. I thought they might have a point, so I asked my orchestra. They told me overwhelmingly that they wanted me to stay. ~ Zubin Mehta

The closest Western Civilization has come to unity since the Congress of Vienna in 1815 was the week the Sgt. Pepper album was released ... At the time I happened to be driving across country on Interstate 80. In each city where I stopped for gas or food - Laramie, Ogallala, Moline, South Bend - the melodies wafted in from some far-off transistor radio or portable hi-fi. It was the most amazing thing I've ever heard. For a brief while the irreparable fragmented consciousness of the West was unified, at least in the minds of the young. ~ Langdon Winner

This, the dream and the dreamer, wandering in the desert from Hopkinsville to Vienna in love with a streetwalker named Music. ... ~ Langston Hughes

It is wonderful to see how happy all my friends in the LA Philharmonic are in their new home. ~ Emanuel Ax

And I'll dance with you in Vienna,
I'll be wearing a river's disguise.
The hyacinth wild on my shoulder
my mouth on the dew of your thighs.
And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook,
with the photographs there and the moss.
And I'll yield to the flood of your beauty,
my cheap violin and my cross. ~ Leonard Cohen

At one dinner, Peter was telling the company that in Vienna he had been getting fat, but on his return the nature of the fare in Poland had made him quite slender again. The Polish ambassador, a man of great girth, disputed this, saying that he had been brought up in Poland and owed amplitude to the Polish diet. Peter shot back, "It was not in Poland, but here in Moscow that you crammed yourself" - the Pole, like all ambassadors, was provided with his food and expenses by the host government. The Pole, wisely, let the matter drop. ~ Robert K. Massie

I started piano lessons at age six but didn't take music seriously until I was a teenager, when I thought about a career in music. I studied classical music, and my instruments were guitar and piano. I played keyboards in bands, and after high school I went to Vienna to study at the Academy of Music. I also became a session player, which culminated in my work with Tangerine Dream. ~ Paul Haslinger

Freud was the son of a Jewish merchant who had to move his whole family to Vienna because he couldn't get work. He, as a boy, had to watch his father be mocked and abused on the street for being Jewish ... You develop a thick skin and you develop a certain kind of wit to defend yourself. ~ Viggo Mortensen

So these - these were the Wanderings for which the youth of Vienna had yesterday sent him their thanks. Had he deserved them? He would not have been able to say. The whole sorry life that he had led now passed through his mind. Never had he felt so deeply that he was an old man, that not only the hopes, but also the disappointments lay far behind him. A dull hurt rose up in him. He put the book aside, he could not read on. He had the feeling that he had long since forgotten about himself. ~ Arthur Schnitzler

I am an Egyptian Muslim, educated in Cairo and New York, and now living in Vienna. My wife and I have spent half our lives in the North, half in the South. And we have experienced first hand the unique nature of the human family and the common values we all share. ~ Mohamed ElBaradei

I write of love and death. What other subjects are there? ~ Arthur Schnitzler

Meredith's father, the composer, who shot himself in this house. Came all the way from Vienna to shoot himself in LA. Escaped the Nazis but not himself. ~ Janet Fitch

My idea was to go to Vienna to study conducting and perhaps play in an orchestra first, so I thought before I got to Vienna I could do with a little training in Paris. ~ Harry Mathews

The Minister-President or the richest magnate could walk the streets of Vienna without anyone turning around, but a court actor or an opera singer was recognized by every salesgirl and every cabdriver. ~ Stefan Zweig

I'm sure that being an applicant from the American School in Vienna helped get me into all seven colleges I applied to. ~ Thomas G. Stemberg

Daniel." Luce gripped his shoulder. "What about the library you took me to? Remember?" She closed her eyes. She wasn't thinking so much as feeling her way through a memory buried shallowly in her brain. "We came to Vienna for the weekend…I don't remember when, but we went to see Mozart conduct The Magic Flute…at the Theater an der Wien? You wanted to see this friend of yours who worked at some old library, his name was-"
She broke off, because when she opened her eyes, the others were staring at her, incredulous. No one, least of all Luce, had expected her to be the one to know where they would find the desideratum.
Daniel recovered first. He flashed her a funny smile Luce knew was full of pride. But Arriane, Roland, and Annabelle continued to gape at her as if they'd suddenly learned she spoke Chinese. Which, come to think of it, she did.
Arriane wiggled a finger around inside her ear. "Do I need to ease up on the psychedelics, did LP just recall one of her past lives unprompted at the most crucial juncture ever?"
"You're a genius," Daniel said, leaning forward and kissing her deeply.
Luce blushed and leaned in to extend the kiss a little longer, but then heard a cough.
"Seriously, you two," Annabelle said. "There will be time enough for snogs if we pull this off."
"I'd say 'get a room' but I'm afraid we'd never see you again," Arriane added, which caused them all to laugh.
When Luce opened her eyes, Daniel had spread his wings wide. T ~ Lauren Kate

In his thoughtful and complex style of analysis, Hitler continued on to note the following: "Since the newspapers in question did not enjoy an outstanding reputation ... I regarded them more as the products of anger and envy than the [representation] of a principled, though perhaps mistaken, point of view." In the lines above, we see Hitler begin to wrestle with anti- Semitism, flatly reject religious anti-Semitism as unworthy of Austrian cultural tradition, and suspect that the arguments of the anti-Semitic press and gutter pamphlets were exaggerated beyond credibility by too much subjective and too little objective and principled argument. The view of virtually every Hitler biographer that he based his anti-Semitism on arguments derived from the gutter press and pamphlets of Vienna does not hold up in the face of the words above. To the contrary, we see Hitler take the measure of that literature.

--Hitler: Beyond Evil and Tyranny, pp. 103-104 ~ Russel H.S. Stolfi

In America, even your menus have the gift of language ... The Chef's own Vienna Roast. A hearty, rich meat loaf, gently seasoned to perfection and served in a creamy nest of mashed farm potatoes and strictly fresh garden vegetables. Of course, what you get is cole slaw and a slab of meat, but that doesn't matter because the menu has already started your juices going. Oh, those menus. In America, they are poetry. ~ Laurie Lee

An indescribable sadness emanated from the white splendour of the staircase and balustrade; the blood-red, now almost black splendour of the carpets. The huge palms in their huge pots looked like they had recently arrived from the cemetery. Their dark green leaves also looked blackish, like wizened, perished weapons from olden days. ~ Joseph Roth

Do you want to go back to Vienna?" he said.
Alec didn't answer, just stared into space.
"Or we could go somewhere else," said Magnus. "Anywhere you want. Thailand, South Carolina, Brazil, Peru – Oh, wait, no, I'm banned from Peru. I'd forgotten about that. It's a long story, but amusing if you want to hear it. ~ Cassandra Clare

But since those days in Vienna I had been aware that Austria was lost, not yet suspecting, to be sure, how much I had lost thereby. ~ Stefan Zweig

That Beethoven was capable of producing the ultimate musical definition of heroism in this context is itself extraordinary, for he was able to evoke a dream of heroism that neither he nor his native Germany nor his adopted Vienna could express in reality. Perhaps we can only measure the heroism of the Eroica by the depth of fear and uncertainty from with it emerged. ~ Maynard Solomon

Vienna wasn't just a city, it was a tone that either one carries forever in one's soul or one does not. It was the most beautiful thing in my life. I was poor, but I was not alone, because I had a friend. And Vienna was like another friend. When it rained in the tropics, I always heard the voice of Vienna. And at other times too. Sometimes deep in the virgin forests I smelled the musty smell of the entrance hall in Hietzing. Music and everything I loved was in the stones of Vienna, and in people's glances and their behavior, the way pure feelings are part of one's very heart. You know when the feelings stop hurting. Vienna in winter and spring. The allés in Schönbrunn. The blue light in the dormitory at the academy, the great white stairwell with the baroque statue. Morning ridings in the Prater. The mildew in the riding school. I remember all of it exactly, and I wanted to see it again... ~ Sandor Marai

It seems always to have been difficult to have been a New York Philharmonic conductor because of the nature of New York. We are in direct competition with the great orchestras in the world who come to play in our hall or in Carnegie, and we are constantly compared. I think that 's a good thing. ~ Zubin Mehta

Stop being afraid of what could go wrong and think of what could go right. ~ Yoana Dianika

The Romanians really do lead the world when it comes to cursing. "What have you got for me?" I asked a woman from Transylvania who was now living in Vienna.
"Shove your hand up my ass and jerk off my shit," she offered.

I was stunned. "Anyone else would say, 'Shove your hand up my ass,' and then run out of imagination," I told her. "You people, though, you just keep going. And that's what makes you the champions you are." Maybe it's not too late to learn how to drive, I thought, watching as she walked out the door and onto the unsuspecting streets of Vienna, this poet, this queen, this glittering jewel in a city of flint. ~ David Sedaris

You think about, like, [20th-century classical composers] Alban Berg, Schoenberg, and Webern sitting around in some living room in Vienna and being like, "We are the end of music. We are the end of this tradition. Music is done." ~ David Longstreth

When you set out to take Vienna, take Vienna. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

There were 117 psychoanalysts on the Pan Am flight to Vienna and I'd been treated by at least six of them. And married a seventh. ~ Erica Jong

The Congress of Vienna does not walk, but it dances. ~ Michel, 14th Prince Of Ligne

In Vienna, when I was a year-and-a-half or two years-old. I remember it because I remember the little blue raincoat I used to wear, and how the buttons felt. I liked to walk on the street in front of our house when it was raining, and jump into all the puddles. That's weird, but that's my earliest memory. ~ Boris Kodjoe

Open rehearsals reach people who might not otherwise hear the Philharmonic - people on fixed incomes, people who can't move easily at night, students. ~ Zubin Mehta

I've been to Bali twice and Marrakech twice. I thought Vienna was great. I will take girlfriends to places they've never been before. ~ Eion Bailey

For almost thirty years I repeatedly saw one and the same dream: I would arrive in Vienna at long last. I would feel really happy, for I was returning to my serene childhood. ~ Alfred Schnittke

Some search for the North Pole. Others seek to split the atom. They are both perilous journeys. When it comes to the former, it is up to the men and women involved to consider risking their lives. I throw up my hands and leave them to it. However, when it comes to the latter, these nuclear adventurers risk the future of mankind, and I, for one, fear for us all. ~ Aaron Edelstein 18681939 The 1933 Chancellor S Lecture University Of Vienna

If somebody had told me when I was starting composition in Helsinki in the '70s that I would end up in L.A. and to describe that journey, those 17 years with the philharmonic and building the hall and this and that, I would have said, "This is a fairy tale of the first order." ~ Esa-Pekka Salonen

I employ 20 people in Vienna. The other 130 coworkers are pilots and flight companions. The Overhead is limited with me. Reduces naturally the costs of my fliers. ~ Niki Lauda

My parents said I'd always been attracted to music from an early age. The classic story is I started singing before I talked. My Mom would play me tapes, and I'd be able to sing them back perfectly. She said my pitch was dead on, but I'd fill in nonsense syllables for all the rest of it. The words would be all garbled, because I didn't know how to talk yet. ~ Vienna Teng

Tonight the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come marched in goose-step and raised a hand to salute "Heil Hitler!" Tonight the ghost wore a swastika on his armband instead of the simple red and white colors of Austria. And yet, on this silent night, the horrible specter seemed all but invisible in Vienna. Murphy could only wonder if he was the sole person at Sacher's who could hear the anthem of Hitler's hordes echoing distantly from beyond the mountains. ~ Bodie Thoene

The streets of Vienna are paved with culture, the streets of other cities with asphalt. ~ Karl Kraus

Let us assume that the Turks in whose ranks Europeans were fighting as well, even in high positions, would have conquered Vienna and Europe in 1683 instead of having been forced to withdraw. If the Mohammedans would have gained the victory at the time and Islam would have swept victoriously over Europe, then the Christian churches would have been depoliticized. ( ... ) For the Turks were religiously tolerant, they allowed each religion to continue to exist, provided it was no longer involved in politics - otherwise it was finished. ~ Heinrich Himmler

Gold is a great thing to sew into your garments if you're a Jewish family in Vienna in 1939, but I think civilized people don't buy gold, they invest in productive businesses. ~ Charlie Munger