The artist must forget the audience, _x000D_ forget the critics, forget the technique, forget everything but love for the music._x000D_ Then, the music speaks through the performance,_x000D_ and the performer and the listener will walk together_x000D_ with the soul of the composer, and with_x000D_ God.
Interpretation
True artistry involves immersing oneself in the creation process without distraction and connecting deeply with the music and its essence.
In this quote, Mstislav Rostropovich emphasizes that an artist should transcend the distractions of audience expectations, critical feedback, and technicalities to create from a place of pure love for the music. By doing so, the performance becomes a profound shared experience between the performer and the listener, allowing them to connect with the soul of the composer and something greater, symbolically referenced as God.
In practice
This quote can inspire musicians during a performance to focus on the expression of music rather than external validation.
Every man must have the right fearlessly to think independently and express his opinion about what he knows, what he has personally thought about and experienced, and not merely to express with slightly different variations the opinion which has been inculcated in him.
People are craving this great progress in electronics, going after computers, the Internet, etc. It's a giant progress technologically. But they must have a balance of soul, a balance for human beauty. That means art has an important role.
When I started learning the cello, I fell in love with the instrument because it seemed like a voice - my voice.
I know that after my letter there will be undoubtedly an 'opinion' about me, but I am not afraid of it. I openly say what I think. Talent, of which we are proud, must not be submitted to the assaults of the past.
Now I come to 75 years of age, I think what's most important in life is your conscience. If you told a lie and made other people suffer, I think that's very difficult when you reach this age.
All my life I wanted to play music with love to every member of the audience.
I always have a basic plot outline, but I like to leave some things to be decided while I write.
I never wanted to be a painter; I wanted to be a tap dancer.
I often think of random melodies. And I pretty much hear in my head what I want to do with the orchestra as I'm writing on the piano.
Form follows function - that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.
There was a beauty in the trash of the alleys which I had never noticed before; my vision seemed sharpened, rather than impaired. As I walked along it seemed to me that the flattened beer cans and papers and weeds and junk mail had been arranged by the wind into patterns; these patterns, when I scrutinized them, lay distributed so as to comprise a visual language.
As artists, we belong to an ancient and holy tribe. We are the carriers of the truth that spirit moves through us all. When we deal with one another, we are dealing not merely with our own human personalities but also with the unseen but ever-present throng of ideas, visions, stories, poems, songs, sculptures, art-as-facts that crowd the temple of consciousness waiting their turn to be born.
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