I'm composing more than before. I'm cutting down on conducting.

I'm trying to conduct only five months a year, and the rest will be composing time. I'm trying to spend as much as I can out of those months here in L.A., because for creative work, this is a fantastic place.

Stravinsky is masterly: his harmony is conceived so precisely that it can only be the way it is.

If you think of the history, in the days of Brahms and Beethoven and all these guys, almost every concert was a new music concert. To play something old was really an exception.

Somehow, conductor as this superhuman conduit between the masters and the masterpieces and the immortals.

The Royal Festival Hall in London is nice; people hang out there. I think this inviting, non-exclusive character is very important.

There will have to be times when I'm not conducting because I'm composing. I haven't solved that problem, and perhaps I never will.