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.

The reason why Schubert is celebrated so much today, lies rather in the fact that there has been nobody else like him - not before him, not after him.

One has to get through a big pile of mail every day. I don't pass my letters on to a secretary; rather, I try to take care of all of them myself.

In fact, the element of play has an important role in my life, and I think that should be the case in the life of every artist. Our life is occupied with playing, whether we play an instrument or a role.

What concerns me, is the general social tendency to enforce a level, above which nothing rises and stands out.

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

The future? Like unwritten books and unborn children, you don't talk about it.