NK

Quotes by Nigel Kennedy

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I think Bach is equally a romantic composer because he laid the seeds harmonically for people like Chopin and the great Romantics, Brahms, so it's difficult to you know all this like labelling and putting - I think Bach is attractive to musicians because he supersedes the labels.
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I can think and play stuff in classical music that possibly violinists who didn’t have access to other types of music could never do. It means I’m more flexible within classical music, to be a servant to the composer.
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I think Bach is equally a romantic composer because he laid the seeds harmonically for people like Chopin and the great Romantics, Brahms, so its difficult to you know all this like labelling and putting – I think Bach is attractive to musicians because he supersedes the labels.
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You can’t learn pathos or profundity.
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Even if you’re playing Brahms or a Beethoven concerto, you’ve got to have a different vantage point, slightly, each time.
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Maybe it’s egocentric or whatever, but when I’m playing Beethoven, Bach, Hendrix, or whoever it is, in the end, it just feels like my own music and I’m making it up as I’m going along.
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If you do the same thing every night, that’s the death of music.
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I’ve learnt new scales through playing different types of music, like Indian raga scales, gipsy scales and harmonically-based jazz scales.
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The Beatles are a classical group because they’re classic.
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If you’re playing within your capability, what’s the point? If you’re not pushing your own technique to its own limits with the risk that it might just crumble at any moment, then you’re not really doing your job.
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