Julian Bream
The guitar speaks for me and it says things - hopefully - for everybody that I play for.
When I feel like improvising, I always improvise on the guitar, never on the lute. It's as natural to me as breathing.
When I was 18, I went into the army as a payroll clerk because otherwise I was headed for Korea.
My father played one of the first electric guitars in England. He built his own in 1940, because you couldn't buy them in those days. He used three telephone pickups under the strings, which gave chronic distortion on chords but was quite good on single notes.
When I began playing the lute, in 1950 there were not too many lutenists around. I had to work hard, writing out music in museums and libraries. It was before the days of photocopying. And I had just picked up the lute, adapted my guitar technique to it and went from there.
I think that Bach has a very nice sound on the lute. But I find that what I want to do with Bach is best revealed on the guitar.
The cult of the instrument is O.K. for people who are mad about the guitar. But I love music. The guitar is just the instrument I happen to play.
Your experience of life is to a large part distilled into your performing. As you grow older, you concentrate on aspects of music that you perhaps only touched on earlier.
You're never static as a performer. You either get better or you get worse. As I see it, you have an equal chance at either.
Quite often, I have to work hard to improve my technical capacity, if you will, before the demands of a new work come within reach. And I find that very stimulating.
I've always played a lot of Spanish music, but not as much as most guitarists do.
You have to be serious, and you must have a constantly inquiring mind. But I find it's new music that really stretches me, both technically and as an interpreter.
Michael Berkeley's 'Sonata' is very - what can you say - melodious.
Midwesterners make good audiences.
It's quite a feeling to be all alone on the stage!
I suppose that when I started to play the lute it was fairly esoteric.
The guitar was not treated very seriously as a concert recital instrument.
I practice more than ever ... mostly scales and arpeggios ... and anything I can't do.Collection: Music
I practiced two or three hours, sometimes none, sometimes six. It was very varied.Collection: Player
Hearing Andres Segovia in person was quite a revelation ... It was a knockout.Collection: Music