If you only do little clusters - three or four songs by one, and another, and then yet another - you lose the opportunity to think your way into the composer's mind, since, after all, most of these pieces are quite brief.

But, on the other hand, if Schubert were alive today, he would find even richer fields to plow.

Admittedly, it is really our duty, as artists, to hold up a mirror to our own era; but, on the other hand, these works have lives of their own, and they're still alive today.

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

Particularly at around the age of 70 you reach a stage where you have to be very careful. If, at that point, you abandon the work you have been doing, there is a good chance that you will just collapse and drift.

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.

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.