We've been performing with symphonies all of our career and it sounds so wonderful when they play 'My Girl' with the large string section, I want to turn around and look.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
As for the symphonic activities... when I was a student at the Eastman School of Music, I became exposed to a lot more musical forms, elements, opportunities, and I fell in love with strings and their uses.
I guess really what my goal is is just to enlarge the violin repertoire.
I'd always loved strings. When I was in high school and saw strings playing on stage, an orchestra or a symphony, all those bows moving at the same time... wow.
A symphony is a stage play with the parts written for instruments instead of for actors.
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.
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.
A Beethoven symphony should be rehearsed like chamber music, only for a lot more people.
I hear entire symphonies, oratorios, in my head, but I can't write a note.
I'm not interested in having an orchestra sound like itself. I want it to sound like the composer.
I approach everything as chamber music. Even with Beethoven symphonies, I lead from the violin and basically encourage the orchestra to think of it as a giant string quartet.