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

Competitions are for horses, not artists.

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.

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

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

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

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