You must play for the love of music. Perfect technique is not as important as making music from the heart.
The artist must forget the audience, forget the critics, forget the technique, forget everything but love for the music. Then, the music speaks through the performance, and the performer and the listener will walk together with the soul of the composer, and with God.
There is too much emphasis on technical perfection nowadays, and not enough on what music is actually about - irony, joy, human suffering, love.
When I started learning the cello, I fell in love with the instrument because it seemed like a voice - my voice.
Capitalism, communism ... it's all garbage.
I would rather have ideas and some difficulties of technique than a perfect technique and no ideas.
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.
All my life I wanted to play music with love to every member of the audience.
The cello is a hero because of its register - its tenor voice. It is a masculine instrument, whereas the violin is feminine because of its soprano pitch. When the cello enters in the Dvorak Concerto, it is like a great orator.
I never studied, but I had the best teachers.
It is my aim, my destination in life to make the cello as beloved an instrument as the violin and piano.
In 1948 the first severe crash occurred in my life when Stalin put out his decree on formalism. There was a bulletin board in the Moscow Conservatory. They posted the decree, which said Shostakovichs compositions and Prokofievs were no longer to be played.
You know creators, composers, need a palette for life, a color for life.
Explain to me, please, why in our literature and art so often people absolutely incompetent in this field have the final word.
Baalbek is so beautiful. It is the heart of beauty in the Middle East - I want to embrace these people with my music. I will try so hard for them. Their president is a Christian, their prime minister is a Muslim. Music is for everyone.
I played with the best conductors of the world.
Now I want to use money in a good way. I make foundations back home in Russia, I have sponsored vaccinations for more than one million children in my homeland and I have founded scholarships in the names of my great Russian compatriots - Oistrakh, Richter, Gilels, Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Schnittke.
I like coming to the United States because the United States played an important role in my life.
I came to Moscow when I was 5 years old from Baku. To walk all night in Moscow will bring back my youth to me.
