His pagan barbarity, his explosive and angrily defiant melancholy, his demoniacal instinct . . . these are all echoes . . . of the thousand-year-old Hungarian psyche.

With maturity comes the wish to economize - to be more simple. Maturity is the period when one finds the just measure.

His pagan barbarity, his explosive and angrily defiant melancholy, his demoniacal instinct . . . these are all echoes . . . of the thousand-year-old Hungarian psyche.

Folk melodies are the embodiment of an artistic perfection of the highest order; in fact, they are models of the way in which a musical idea can be expressed with utmost perfection in terms of brevity of form and simplicity of means.

In art there are only fast or slow developments. Essentially it is a matter of evolution, not revolution.

Competitions are for horses, not artists.

It may well be that some composers do not believe in God. All of them, however, believe in Bach.