Evgeny Mravinsky
Quotations
"Is it possible to live without music ? It does not appear to be among man's primary needs. But to go without it is to forgo happiness. I put my faith in the transcendental power of music. One day, immersed in music, I was stirred to the very depths of my being. It was like a stroke of lightning or thunderclap. Art must affect people in this way, for if it doesn't, it isn't art. To sear art and music into the minds of the people - audiences and performers - that is my principal concern, my ultimate aim."
-Evgeny Mravinsky
"As a man virtually 'condemned' to music for a lifetime, he had been brought up to display the highest degree of artistic responsibility and looked upon conducting as a calling. Whenever he studied a score, he sought to enter into the atmosphere of a composition and to penetrate the composer's spiritual world, for he felt that his overriding task was to bring that world back to life... His wide intellectual compass (mastery of European languages, study of natural philosophy, love of poetry, compositional skills, infallible musical memory) led him to perceive the truth in everything. This applied both to his work and to life in general."
-Alexandra Vavilina, flautist at the St. Petersburg Conservatory
and widow of Evgeny Mravinsky, speaking in 1995
