And what unity is to be had, at a time when orchestras are dying out, and when opera houses are about to close their doors; what's going to come next - when nothing new in music, for the orchestra, is truly lasting: pieces are performed once, and then they're thrown away.

Some critics have written that I wanted to teach through singing. Not at all. I was learning I went to school every time I gave a song recital.

It is desirable that people make music on the breath, with the breath.

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.

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

Anyone who draws attention to himself as an individual, is viewed with suspicion. We acquired this tendency, of course, from America, and we must resist it: levelling, and imitation of what others are already doing.

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.