Everyone says you have to be a specialist, and if you conduct Wagner you cannot conduct Mozart - this is nonsense.
Interpretation
Being a specialist is not necessary for artistic expression; versatility can enhance creativity.
Georg Solti's quote challenges the notion that a conductor must confine themselves to a single style or composer to be effective. He argues that the ability to interpret varying musical styles, such as Wagner and Mozart, can coexist within one artist, emphasizing the importance of versatility and the limitless nature of artistic expression.
In practice
A speaker at a music seminar discussing the importance of versatility among musicians.
But one day, when I was still young, I was parted from my family and left my native country. I hunted and searched for music, and destiny turned me into the object of my hunt. The circumstances of life became my 'antlers' and prevented me from returning home.
Writing is to descend like a miner to the depths of the mine with a lamp on your forehead, a light whose dubious brightness falsifies everything, whose wick is in permanent danger of explosion, whose blinking illumination in the coal dust exhausts and corrodes your eyes.
To sing you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs, and a little knowledge of music. It is not necessary to have an accordion, or a guitar. The essential thing is to want to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.
I decided at 15 that I didn't want to be one of those artists that gets up and sings love songs they don't mean. I decided that I was going to be me to the fullest extent, that my songs were going to reflect relationships I've had, things I've been through, and even the stuff I'm embarrassed about.
So, then, the best of the historian is subject to the poet; for whatsoever action or faction, whatsoever counsel, policy, or war-stratagem the historian is bound to recite, that may the poet, if he list, with his imitation make his own, beautifying it both for further teaching and more delighting, as it pleaseth him; having all, from Danteβs Heaven to his Hell, under the authority of his pen.
Literature is the most noble of professions. In fact, it is about the only one fit for a man.
Many attempts have been made by writers on art and poetry to define beauty in the abstract, to express it in the most general terms, to find some universal formula for it.
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