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

I love a visceral sound, the kind that hits you in the belly.

The Royal Festival Hall in London is nice; people hang out there. I think this inviting, non-exclusive character is very important.

Orchestras have become used to the emphasis on the separation of layers, of the ultimate precision and clarity.

I always had, deep down, a slight aversion toward the purely cerebral in music.

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.

I discovered that the people of the North are different and there's no way you can make a person from the North similar to a Southerner. They're two different worlds.