There are probably many people in Israel who believe that Wagner, who died in 1883, lived in Berlin in 1942 and was friends with Hitler.

You can't expect someone born into a family with no music...to understand when I'm conducting the Schönberg Variations.

An hour of violin lessons in Berlin is an hour where you get the child interested in music. An hour in a violin lesson in Palestine is an hour away from violence, is an hour away from fundamentalism.

Music has the capacity to create a greater reality.

I always maintain that playing in an orchestra intelligently is the best school for democracy. If you play a solo, the conductor and everybody in the orchestra follows you. Then, a few bars later, the main voice goes to another instrument, another group, and then you have to go back into the collective [sound]. The art of playing in an orchestra is being able to express yourself to the maximum but always in relation to something else that is going on.

The Germans are prisoners of their past.

Today, conducting is a question of ego: a lot of people believe they are actually playing the music.