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.

I like this idea of identification with the local team. I think it's great. That's what an orchestra should be. It's an orchestra for its hometown, and it serves the people.

There is something very special about this part of the world [U.S], which is the openness and the curiosity and the lack of prejudice and the lack of generally accepted norms as to what art should be and how an artist's career should go and all that.

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

In Europe, there is so much tradition, and everyone has established ideas as to what art should be and what it has always been.

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.

If we always thought like that, why would we study physics, why would we think of cosmology, why would we do any kind of research? Because we know already so much that there is no one person who can contain all that information.