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.

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.

I would say that for the younger musicians, technical proficiency is necessary and a given these days. But the study and the way you function in society, your beliefs and the way you live, that is where you will find a real musician, a real artist.

I don't think too much about the past when I am actually playing, I prefer to concentrate on the present. The performance of a piece, no matter how long ago or where it was written, is always a new production, something that comes alive in the present. And it doesn't matter if the piece was written two or three hundred years ago if it is alive in us.

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.... ?

If I were to run around the world playing just the cello concertos - and believe me, I love playing them - I would be counting my entire repertoire from year to year on my two hands.