I think that peace is, in many ways, a precondition of joy.
When people ask me how they should approach performance, I always tell them the professional musician should aspire to the state of the beginner.
Things can fall apart, or threaten to, for many reasons, and then there's got to be a leap of faith. Ultimately, when you're at the edge, you have to go forward or backward; if you go forward, you have to jump together.
You must have a reason to be in the places to which you go, and you must do only things that you really care about.
One of the things I love about music is live performance.
I think the purpose of a piece of music is significant when it actually lives in somebody else. A composer puts down a code, and a performer can activate the code in somebody else. Once it lives in somebody else, it can live in others as well.
Practicing is not only playing your instrument, either by yourself or rehearsing with others - it also includes imagining yourself practicing. Your brain forms the same neural connections and muscle memory whether you are imagining the task or actually doing it.
One of the marks of a great teacher lies not only in an ability to impart knowledge but also in knowing when to encourage a student to go off on his own.
With every year of playing, you want to relax one more muscle. Why? Because the more tense you are, the less you can hear.
Once something is memorable, it's living and you're using it. That to me is the foundation of a creative society.
I want to investigate different cultures, to see how their identities and values affect their music. It's one way I can get to know our world, at least to a certain depth.
I remember when I was growing up. My great wish was to understand who I was and how I fit in the world.
I think there are so many ways to become interested in music. I believe signs of sustained interest gives a sense of the right time. Music, if thought of as a language, would perhaps indicate that as early as possible is not so bad. I do believe that a really nurturing first teacher that makes the child love something is crucial.
I learn something not because I have to, but because I really want to. That's the same view I have for performing. I'm performing because I really want to, not because I have to bring bread back home.
Music is powered by ideas. If you don't have clarity of ideas, you're just communicating sheer sound.
You go through phases. You have to reinvent reasons for playing, and one year's answer might not do for another.
People will ask, 'Are you famous?' And I always answer, 'My mother thinks so.'
Children, in a way, are constant learners. Certainly sponge-like. Absorbing everything without careful analysis, even though, at the same time, they are certainly capable of incredible insights.
I don't always have a five-year plan. One thing you must do in life is keep your learning curve as high as possible.
My involvement in the political arena is to make sure there's a place for culture.
One is that you have to take time, lots of time, to let an idea grow from within. The second is that when you sign on to something, there will be issues of trust, deep trust, the way the members of a string quartet have to trust one another.
Music has always been transnational; people pick up whatever interests them, and certainly a lot of classical music has absorbed influences from all over the world.
As a child, you respond physically, tactically. You're delighted by sound, you're delighted by recognizing something. It's like hide and seek. Is it there? Is it not there? Is it this note? Is it not this note? It's one fantastic game.
There's a part of me that's always charging ahead. I'm the curious kid, always going to the edge.
I think of a piece of music as something that comes alive when it is being performed, and I feel that my role in the transmission of music is to be its best advocate at that moment.
