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

The music I turn out these days is the kind of music I want to hear myself.

Anyone who composes and conducts at the same time is immediately suspect, because he must be faking one or the other.

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

Classic music somehow changed, and it changed between the first and the second world wars, and somehow what happened was that the hero that had been the composer, the hero now was the performer, and especially the conductor.

As we watch TV or films, there are no organic transitions, only edits. The idea of A becoming B, rather than A jumping to B, has become foreign.

I don't believe in an annual dose of film music for the sake of it being film music. If we program film music, it will be because there is a real artistic reason for doing so.