I think truth as an idea should be left to the philosophers and perhaps religious leaders and politicians, and professional people who deal with that idea.

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

Coming from a sort of very rigid European type of training to this culture which is just a little more open - a lot more open, and kind of curious, and asking different sorts of questions.Because the problem for me was that the European modernist movement in the '70s was all about right or wrong. Some things were right and you were dealing with the truth, as it were, and then some things were wrong and therefore not allowed.

The philharmonic became such a journey and adventure in my life, and a deeply satisfying thing.

The Northern idea of form is more of a process. The various units of the form overlap. You can't tell where some things stop and new things start. This is typical of Sibelius.

In the range of music that we play - roughly 300 years' worth-there really are more similarities than differences.

Somehow, conductor as this superhuman conduit between the masters and the masterpieces and the immortals.