Jewish intellectuals contributed a great deal to insure that Europe became a continent of humanism, and it is with these humanist ideals that Europe must now intervene in the Middle East conflict.

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

Every great work of art has two faces, one towards its own time and one towards future, towards eternity.

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.

The Germans are prisoners of their past.

And in English you have this wonderful difference between listening and hearing, and that you can hear without listening, and you can listen and not hear.

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.