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'm trying to conduct only five months a year, and the rest will be composing time. I'm trying to spend as much as I can out of those months here in L.A., because for creative work, this is a fantastic place.

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.

The players never think they project enough. In a hall that seats 3,300 people, it's a very scary thing to play so quietly that you can barely hear yourself.

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

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.

There is such a suspicion in today's world of people who do more than one thing, who aren't specialized.