Joshua Bell Playing Quotations

I grew up in a musical environment. My parents played music and had it playing on the radio. They brought me to a concert at the age of 5, the same age I started violin lessons.

Playing the Beethoven symphonies, for example, is a consummate experience for a musician because Beethoven speaks so directly to who we are as people.

The symphonies are the things that, as a soloist, I've not gotten to play. I used to travel the world playing concertos, and then I would sit and listen to the symphony.

In concertos, I stand up, and I conduct with the bow when I'm not playing. During symphonies, I sit, but sometimes I stop playing to conduct. Being seated in a section allows me to feel more like we're playing chamber music, which is how I like to approach it.

I'm in a position where, theoretically, I could play the same ten concertos and make a very good living bouncing around playing Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky and Barber, but I really think artists should keep pushing limits and trying new things.

I kind of alternate between conducting and playing and kind of juggling those things, but I don't use a baton.

After every concert, I greet young people in the lobbies. And I see a huge surge of young people playing music.

As far as I'm concerned, the stakes are always very high. Whether it's playing at the White House or playing for a group in my own house - you know, one of those soirees I play in. Once I start playing, the stakes are somehow higher, in a way, than any of the context.

The great secret is that an orchestra can actually play without a conductor at all. Of course, a great conductor will have a concept and will help them play together and unify them. But there are conductors that actually inhibit the players from playing with each other properly.

As my career has gone on, I guess I've become more well known. I'm playing to fuller halls in general, which is a nice feeling. When you're doing that, you're going to have a certain number of people who are not just the hardcore classical fanatics, and this makes me very happy.

I do basically what a conductor does with a baton, except I also play along with the orchestra. So I have to juggle the roles of playing the concertmaster; sometimes I drop the violin and wave my arms.