If I belong to a tradition it is a tradition that makes the masterpiece tell the performer what he should do and not the performer telling the piece what it should be like, or the composer what he ought to have composed.

The word 'listen' contains the same letters as the word 'silent.'

Silence ought also to be the core of each concert. Remember the anagram: listen = silent.

Silence... is the essence of the music itself, the vital ingredient that makes it possible for the music to exist at all.

A work of art is like a person: it has more than one soul in its breast.

In his larger forms, Schubert is a wanderer. He likes to move at the edge of the precipice, and does so with the assurance of a sleepwalker. To wander is the Romantic condition; one yields to it enraptured, or is driven and plagued by the terror of finding no escape. More often than not, happiness is but the surface of despair.

You need three or five hands to play Ligeti.