It still amazes me how many musicians aren’t really interested in engaging with their audience at all. Alfred Brendel, a pianist for whom I have the greatest respect, has described performance as a sacred communion between the artist and the composer. But what about the audience? Music is communication, a two-way street. Charles Hazlewood Read Quote
I’m always up for music shows such as Jools Holland, but news more than anything, particularly Newsnight. And cookery: Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Rick Stein – it’s down to him that I cook fish so much – and the great food alchemist Heston Blumenthal. Charles Hazlewood Read Quote
I’m a bit of a Luddite, really: I don’t use email much, as I started drowning in it. So I said ‘screw this’ and dumped my laptop, though I’ve begun to re-engage with it. Charles Hazlewood Read Quote
Classical music has become rarefied, like a maiden aunt that nobody wants to talk to. Charles Hazlewood Read Quote
A hundred years ago, concerts were far more come-what-may – people played cards, drank beer and appreciated the music. If we go some way towards restoring that spirit, I’ll be happy. Charles Hazlewood Read Quote
I admire Tom Ades: he’s a brilliant conductor, and he gets just the right hard, brilliant sound from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra for Russian music. Charles Hazlewood Read Quote
There is a terrible conservatism, like a cancer, right in the heartlands of music-making, a tremendous resistance to change, an absolute horror of the idea that more people might connect with music. That infuriates me more than I can say. Charles Hazlewood Read Quote
Most people in the Western world grow up with the received wisdom that Mozart was a genius. But few people necessarily know why. More than anyone else, he captured this something which is the human condition, the fine line that we all constantly dance between joy and pain, between absolute happiness and absolute heartbreak. Charles Hazlewood Read Quote
In America, they have this nauseating habit of calling the conductor ‘maestro’. I always slightly gag when the cor anglais player goes, ‘Maestro, can I discuss bar 19 with you?’ Charles Hazlewood Read Quote
It’s wonderful doing concerts in places like New York and London, but I feel a responsibility to also bring my work home, to bring world-class, classical music to Somerset. Charles Hazlewood Read Quote
