I can't imagine how many first performances I've done, perhaps 500. Some of them have been very good, and some of course very bad.

Once you get over the first hill, there is always a new, higher one lurking, of course.

I've learned a lot from the masters of orchestration, like Ravel and Stravinsky.

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.

After 30 years I have realized the greatest pleasure I can get is to have learnt.

Pulse as an active means of expression, Stravinsky and Beethoven are the two masters of that.

I discovered that the people of the North are different and there's no way you can make a person from the North similar to a Southerner. They're two different worlds.