Almost every one of my various zero numbered birthdays has had a big concert in London and often in Paris.

Right at the end of the war I wrote a piano sonata, which was written at a time when Sam Barber used to come down here and we used to have lunch together in a very nice old hotel that's now not there.

Talking about a materialistic thing, I get about 13 times more royalties from Europe than I do from America.

That was one of the big problems when I was at Harvard studying music. We had to write choral pieces in the style of Brahms or Mendelssohn, which was distressing because in the end you realized how good Brahms is, and how bad you are.

Silences between movements are employed only in order to bring the opposing duo to the fore.

Why write for the orchestra? For one thing it's a very challenging problem.

When I was in Paris, all of the German refugees began to flow in and it was a very sad time.