Within each individual young person you meet, you have the same fields to plough. The trick is just to wake them up, to sharpen their ears for what's already there in the music.

Unfortunately, it happens all too seldom that you really disappear behind a work, that you are no longer audible as an interpreter.

Brahms believed that there was no need to publish absolutely everything that Schubert ever wrote.

When you go out onto the stage, all the preparation has to be forced into your subconscious. For the moment of the performance, we all have to return to a new level of unconsciousness. All the reflection and all the doubts have to be laid aside before you start.

The work is the most important thing.

...in my lieder concerts, I always strove, when possible, to sing only the works of a single composer, so that the audience could be gradually drawn into a particular creative genius' way of thinking, and could follow him.

Many, many composers have only found their way to a certain form, through familiarizing themselves with texts.