Sascha Goetzel

Merci à tous pour cette soirée inoubliable !! 🫶✨🎶
ONPL

CONDUCTING PILLS Nº 3 — MISTAKES

One of the greatest misconceptions in music is the idea that mastery means making fewer mistakes.

After thousands of rehearsals, performances, successes, and failures, I am no longer convinced.

The most memorable moments often happened when something unexpected occurred — and musicians listened, adapted, and transformed it into something alive.

A performance without risk may be clean.

But it can also become cold.

Music lives in the space between preparation and courage.

That is why I love the Japanese ideas of Wabi-Sabi and Kintsugi.

Not because they glorify imperfection.

But because they remind us that a crack does not diminish beauty.

Sometimes it reveals it.

As musicians, conductors, and human beings, we all make mistakes.

The question is not whether they happen.

The question is what we do next.

Do we hide them?

Or do we learn from them and fill the crack with gold?

What is a mistake that ultimately taught you something valuable?

👇

One month. Four orchestras. Three continents.

Beethoven in France 🇫🇷
Verdi in Slovakia 🇸🇰
Verdi again in Korea 🇰🇷
And Montréal to finish 🇨🇦

What a ride. ♥️

From our Beethoven Festival with my beloved , to a Verdi Requiem with the extraordinary and its exceptional Choir, our dear soloists, and an unforgettable audience.

Then the joy of sharing that same work again in Korea, with the wonderful and the Ulsan Metropolitan Chorus and Changwon City Chorus. Standing on stage alongside the choirs and soloists, next to the musicians of the orchestra, has always been the most rewarding and inspiring part of all — filled with humbleness and thankfulness.

And finally, my debut with , for the finals of the — violin. A great pleasure to make music with outstanding young talents, who proved once again that the future of artistry in classical music is bright✨🎶

Different countries, different orchestras, different cultures, different energies — and believe me - different weather ☀️☔️⚡️🌈🌤️but everywhere, the same gift: extraordinary musicians, generous audiences, and music that gives back more than one could ever expect.

Thankful for every moment.🙏

Next ➡️ Beethoven Festival continues with ONPL Nantes/Angers

The Art of Listening. Chapter 03.
learn.

Do you want to become famous, or do you want to become great?

The two get easily confused these days. From the outside, the applause sounds the same.

Witnessing half a century of creatives walking their path — becoming successful, some of them famous, some of them great, some of them both — I have learned that greatness does not need fame. And fame certainly does not need greatness.

The ones who remain curious, the lifelong learners, are the ones who ultimately reach a rare level of excellence. They never stopped asking questions. They still treat a score they have played a hundred times as if they had never seen it.

This is the whole idea behind to learn. Never stopping to ask. Never stopping to be curious. Accepting that you do not arrive in order to finish things, but only to begin the next journey, the next stop. You keep knocking on doors, and walking through them — again, and again, and again — only to find there will always be more doors than answers behind them.

Every week. One chapter. One word.
This is Chapter 03.
learn.

—

🎵 The Art of Listening is a weekly series. Every Tuesday/Wednesday
photo 📸

Thank Ulsan for a wonderful “Verdi-Requiem” 🕊️


・・・
많은 관객의 환호속에 성황리 마무리됐던
울산시립교향악단 호국보훈기념 제250회 정기연주회
😍

세계적인 성악가들과 울산시립교향악단,
울산시립합창단, 창원시립합창단이 함께한 엄청난 무대❗️

만나보시죠‼️🔎

감사합니다‼️




@소프라노여지원 @베이스바리톤사무엘윤

🎼 Conducting Pills Nº 2 — Beginning(s)

Nothing begins where you think it does.

By the time an orchestra plays its first note, the real beginning happened long before.

The musicians have practiced and performed the piece many times. The conductor brings his own package of experience — studying with the score open and a pencil in hand ✏️, going over the same pages, marking them again and again.

Studying until every voice, every instrument can be heard in the head, and artistically shaped.

On the podium, the hands come last. 🤲

They only answer what the ear has already heard — and reflect the moment of interaction between musicians and conductor.

The whole craft is to listen. Before, during, after. For everyone. 👂

Every orchestra has a breath of its own. We can shape it — but we can never take away its DNA. 🧬

Maybe all beginnings are like this.

💭 Where does the real beginning happen in your life — long before anyone notices?

Save this if it changed how you hear a first note. ↓

—
Conducting Pills Nº 2 — Beginning. A new pill every Sunday. 🎶
Follow for the next one.

🕊️Verdi — Requiem. Tonight.
인류를 위한 기도 · A Prayer for Humanity

Ulsan Philharmonic Orchestra · 250th Subscription Concert
29 May 2026 · 19:30 · Ulsan Culture & Arts Center #

MusiciansOfInstagram

Tonight

Viva Verdi 🎉🎶

Repost with .repost
・・・
3월 13일(금) 오후 3시

🎻울산시립교향악단 호국보훈기념 제250회 정기연주회 「인류를 위한 기도」
⏰05.29.(금) 오후 7시 30분
🏢울산문화예술회관 대공연장
🎟️R석 2만원, S석 1만5천원, A석 1만원
-

19세기 이탈리아 음악의 자존심이자,
역사상 가장 독보적인 대작!
베르디 레퀴엠!「Messa da Requiem」
-

지휘｜사샤 괴첼 예술감독
협연｜소프라노 여지원, 메조소프라노 이단비, 테너 박승주, 베이스바리톤 사무엘 윤
울산시립합창단, 창원시립합창단, 울산시립교향악단
-

🎟️티켓 예매 및 문의

☑️ 프로필 하단 링크 클릭
☑️ 울산문화예술회관 누리집
🔗 ucac.ulsan.go.kr
📞 052-275-962

Every day.
Every moment.
Every place.

Yours.

The Art of Listening — Chapter 02: understand.

To truly understand music is not about intelligence.

It is about honesty.

It is the quiet recognition of emotions we often hide:
fear, desire, loneliness, wonder, sorrow, peace, hope.

Music gives those feelings a voice before we can put them into words.

That is because music is not intellectual first.
It is primal.

Before we think, we feel.

A low note can awaken fear, mystery, vastness.
A melody can carry longing, tenderness, love.
A rhythm can create desire, tension, excitement, release.
Certain harmonies hold grief. Others ignite hope, joy, tenderness, awe.

The body reacts before the mind explains why.

And that is what makes music universal.

We do not fall in love with music through theory.
We fall in love because, suddenly, something inside us recognises itself in what we hear.

Schopenhauer believed music reaches beyond explanation.
Tolstoy believed art connects us through shared feeling.

I think every musician knows this in a very intimate way:
there are moments when a hall full of strangers suddenly seems to breathe together.
No one can explain it.
No one can control it.
But everyone feels it.
In the Here and Now.

No one in the audience has training for that.
But everyone brings the courage to listen openly.

Sometimes understanding is not connected with analysis.
Sometimes it is simply a feeling of being seen and heard.

The Art of Listening —
It is a choice.
Yours.

What piece of music has ever made you feel understood before you could explain why?

📸 .photo