When I finally got together with Rostropovich as a student, he was very focused, almost entirely focused on the music itself, on what the composer had in mind and what he knew about the composer. Many of the works that I played for him had in fact been composed and written for him; he was often the first performer of these works, having known the composers personally.

The zenith of virtuosity, a violinist like Jascha Heifetz, the supernatural in a pianist like Vladimir Horowitz, these are performers who were so idiosyncratic and personal that to imitate them would be like filling somebody else's bottle with your wine.

The realm of classical music is so vast - not only in terms of style but of era, age and the purposes for which it was composed - it is an enormous art form.

I think you can tell a lot from the lives of many of today's great soloists. Their participation and gravitation towards chamber music is ever increasing.

We all know that there are many people that can play the instrument perfectly today, up and down with technical perfection, but does the sound connect internally, do they touch people's hearts, how creative are they.... ?

Our interpretations through the years and generations have always changed, but the emotions, ideas, and the thoughts of the composers are still with us, and these are the premise of the music. The time factor has little to do with it because, after all, it is about human feeling, the Universe and who we are as people.

Beginning in the nineteenth century, with performers like Franz Liszt, were musicians who were able to excite an audience and communicate on a whole new level.