A performer cannot move others unless he is also moved. He must feel all of the affects he hopes to arouse in his audience.

A mere technician can lay no claim to the rewards of those who sway the heart rather than the ear … one meets technicians who astound us with their prowess, without ever touching our sensibilities. They overwhelm our hearing without satisfying it, and stun the mind without moving it.

Here are the Beethoven symphonies, arranged as [piano] duets … I would not claim that I have ever got any tremendous emotional excitement out of playing these duets, because as soon as the main theme is announced one gets so excited that one forgets to count.

Concerts used to be much more of a free-for-all … Somewhere along the line, we have forgotten that great music can be rude and visceral; we have put conductors on pedestals, and turned our audiences into passive subjects.

Further reading:

Why classical concerts need a breath of fresh air in The Guardian

Play the Field, "a new breed of orchestral festival"

Classical music remains deeply unfashionable.
That’s why it has lasted.

Further reading:

Is classical music trying to be fashionable? in the Financial Times

There were at least five discernible attacks, because [the musicians] had such different assumptions about where "now" is.

Let’s … imagine one of Brahms’s piano concertos played on a harpsichord.   Absurd idea — but is it any more absurd than Bach’s harpsichord concertos played on the modern grand?

I didn’t know so many cliches existed until the last half-hour.

(Birtwistle was addressing an assemblage of mostly pop and top-40 musicians as he accepted a lifetime achievement award from the Ivor Novello Awards.)