Performance has nothing to do with the score, because in a performance something is coming into existence for the first time, even if you have played it 300 times before. If that doesn’t happen, if it isn’t the first time, then the creative act is not authentic, not true. We are just making music from memory … Anyone who still hasn’t got past the stage of the beauty of music still knows nothing about music. Music is not beautiful. It has beauty as well, but the beauty is just the bait. Music is truth.
Sergiu Celibidache, in “LA Philharmonic Notes,” April, 1989
Nr. 35
