Quotes by Charles Hazlewood

About Charles Hazlewood:

Charles Matthew Egerton Hazlewood is a British conductor and advocate for broadening access to orchestral music. Renowned for his widespread presence across the BBC, he conducts orchestras around the world, making his debut with the Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in London. Hazlewood lives on a farm in Somerset from where he hosts his own music festival "Orchestra in a Field".
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

I love the way Monteverdi's opera embodies the triumph of evil love in such a luscious way. The closing love duet is just pure amoral, liquid passion. The Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment sound great in the Albert Hall, and the Glyndebourne ...

Charles Hazlewood

The Southbank Centre Unlimited Festival was a distinct moment in time, an amazing counterpoint to the London 2012 Paralympics. There is no question that a major shift in perspective is taking place, that the world is waking up and greeting - as if fo...

Charles Hazlewood

I have loads of issues with the way classical music is presented. It has been too reverential, too 'high art' - if you're not in the club, they're not going to let you join. It's like The Turin Shroud: don't touch it because it might fall apart.

Charles Hazlewood

I'd like to explode a few myths about what we call classical music. It's not high art for the titillation of a chosen few.

Charles Hazlewood

Our pop scene is among the best in the world because there are 300 languages spoken on the streets of London, compared with 200 in New York. Our diversity is our strength.

Charles Hazlewood

I want people to hear really exciting music played by the best, but in a context where they can clap when they want to, chase their toddlers, drink beer, take photos, get lost in the music and generally be themselves. And because a field has no rules...

Charles Hazlewood

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 Blumentha...

Charles Hazlewood

Mozart, Beethoven - how can you not want to share them with everyone and anyone? This stuff is of as great importance as the food we eat and the air we breathe.

Charles Hazlewood

I spend so much of my time working away, but I love being here. My family is in Somerset, and this is where my heart is.

Charles Hazlewood

The rest of my family are obsessed by 'The X Factor:' I'm intrigued by it, although its musical values are far away from mine, like a cup of tea with 400 lumps of sugar in it. There's something very strange about Simon Cowell's lips, isn't there?

Charles Hazlewood

Somerset desperately needs more high-end music making on its doorstep, so the chance to share great music spanning genres as diverse as orchestral classics, trip hop and jazz, in the utterly relaxed and cathartic environment of a Somerset field, is f...

Charles Hazlewood

Music is about communication, and the chemistry between an audience and the orchestra is absolutely essential; the performance does not exist in a bubble.

Charles Hazlewood

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...

Charles Hazlewood

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

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

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 danc...

Charles Hazlewood

All roads for me lead back to Mozart. In his tragically short life, he breathed new life, fire and meaning into every form of music that existed in his time.

Charles Hazlewood

It's Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony I'm really looking forward to. Simon Rattle does it perfectly: he understands its primal rhythmic life force, and he and the wonderful Berliners make it a sheer riot of orchestral colour.

Charles Hazlewood

I hate playing the piano! And it's so hard to fight for Beethoven's soul! But that's what I have to do!

Charles Hazlewood

I free-form it, rock n' roll it. I'm a creature of risk, so I don't know how I'm going to explore a Beethoven symphony until I'm doing it.

Charles Hazlewood

Author Bio

  • NameCharles Hazlewood
  • DescriptionBritish conductor
  • BornNovember 14, 1966
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionConductor