Sound is often talked about in a very subjective way, as if it had a colour. This is a bright sound, this is a dark sound. I don't believe in that because I think that is much too subjective.

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.

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

I have the greatest respect for the survivors of the Holocaust. We can't even imagine what these people went through.

Music means different things to different people and sometimes even different things to the same person at different moments of his life.

In the long term, Israel's security rests on only one pillar: the Palestinians' acceptance of the country. It isn't the atom bomb that makes Israel secure.

I don't believe that the entire world is constantly anti-Semitic.