You know, in some ways conducting is counter-intuitive. It's like winter driving in Finland - if you skid, the natural reaction is to fight with the wheel and jam on the brakes, which is the quickest way to get killed. What you have to do is let go, and the car will right itself. It's the same when an orchestra loses its ensemble. You have to resist the temptation to semaphore, and let the orchestra find its own way back to the pulse.

I can't imagine how many first performances I've done, perhaps 500. Some of them have been very good, and some of course very bad.

I'm still disturbed if a chord isn't together, but your priorities change as you get older.

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

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.

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

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.