Our industry [classic music] has kind of retarded into this kind of endless cover-producing thing, and it's a pity.

Of course, if you think of a European or American household in the '50s, so what were the things that when people started climbing up the ladder, what did they buy? A fridge, a TV, I think piano was the number three item in say '53 or '54.

Los Angeles is just a more open place. The way L.A. functions is that people give you a forum. They say, Show us what you can do.

When an artist works today or whenever, it's not about creating immortal masterpieces, because that's the one thing we don't decide ourselves.

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

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

You know, in some ways conducting is counter-intuitive. It's like winter driving in Finland - if you skid, the natural reaction is to fight with the wheel and jam on the brakes, which is the quickest way to get killed. What you have to do is let go, and the car will right itself. It's the same when an orchestra loses its ensemble. You have to resist the temptation to semaphore, and let the orchestra find its own way back to the pulse.