The act of conducting in itself, of waving my arms in the air and being in charge, I didn't miss. I missed the sensual pleasure of being in contact with music.

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

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

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

If you think of the history, in the days of Brahms and Beethoven and all these guys, almost every concert was a new music concert. To play something old was really an exception.

Every orchestra I know, every opera house I know, is desperately looking around trying to find new talent, new composing talent, supporting young composers, supporting new ideas, supporting new ways of getting the message across.

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.