- "...your approach to the piece
has to convey what the music means to you. I would rather hear an old-fashioned but honest interpretation of a Bach sonata that uses way too much vibrato than somebody who is trying to play in a Baroque style where there's a huge gap between the music and the performer."
- Host: Joshua...now you play a violin that is made by the most famous violin maker that ever lived in the world, Antonio Stradivari...
- "I have no problem with record companies' wanting to make a profit, but that's not what this is about. My so-called crossover projects are actually very interesting to me musically. "
- "I really respect who really do love certain pieces by Schoenberg or Beno or Boulez which I just do not get. I'll keep giving it a chance, but if I don't get it, I certainly won't play it. "
- "I love string quartets, the repertoire is the greatest and of course it takes so much more time, even more than a piano trio, to get it right. But I still don't believe that you have to be a formed quartet to be allowed to play string quartets. My dream would be sometimes to take a
couple of years, or a few months of each year, and just do quartets."
- "So many people want to be shown something they've never heard before. That is definitely not my approach. Hopefully I play in a way that seems natural, organic and unmannered. Gingold taught me the virtue of honesty and sincerity, that music should come
directly from one's heart and one's mind."
- "It was made in 1732 and it's from the very last period in Stradivari's work - those instruments tend to be a lot darker in sound than other Strads. It's a little more robust, maybe a tiney bit less refined than the 1720 Gold Period instruments. I find it somewhere between a Strad and Guarneri in sound quality, which is ideal for me, so I really fell in love with it..."
Joshua: It's a good brand...yeah... ("From the Top")
-"Style should be personal, it should be honest. I think there is room for many different interpretations."
- "Crossover....I hate that word. You know, music is just music. What Edger has written is all new, written by him, and it is his music. It is influenced by bluegrass, but Dvorak was influenced by folk music, and Bartok too, and you don't call that 'crossover'."
- "In the days of Mozart and Beeethoven, composer had all come from something and were definitely moving forward. You could feel the progression. Nowadays it's as though people don't really have anything to come from, because it's such a diverse period in time. I think so many composers don't know what their own voice is. They have to invent something artificial, which I think is how 12-tone music came about. Or minimalist music. I'm not saying it's bad, but it had to be invented. And everyone is looking for a way. It's a difficult time."
- "Recording, frankly, is not my favorite thing to do, and I'm never particularly happy with the results. It's the way records are done, it's the permanence, it's a lot of things. You do it over and over again. I like just shooting for it in a performance. I really love the performance atmosphere, the risk taking."
- "I don't feel you have to be a certain age to play Mozart. I got tired of people saying 'You play well for your age - I can't wait to hear you in ten years.' Sometimes people who say that are the ones who don't know anything about music, who feel they have to say something."
