My music wouldn't sound the way it does if I hadn't had the experience of conducting.

Conducting is intensely social. You work with a hundred people every day. You collaborate, you try to focus their thoughts, you try to give them a concept, you try to inspire them, and it's actually exhausting.

It would be very tempting to say that why paint because we have Michelangelo, we have Leonardo [Da Vinci], we have all these guys. Why waste your time, because most likely you're not going to be on that level anyway.

Every day we make more progress toward understanding the concert hall.

I'm still disturbed if a chord isn't together, but your priorities change as you get older.

The underlying process in Northern music tends to be slower and continuous, whatever's happening on the surface; in Southern music the underlying process is always faster.

The philharmonic became such a journey and adventure in my life, and a deeply satisfying thing.