...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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.