I like this idea of identification with the local team. I think it's great. That's what an orchestra should be. It's an orchestra for its hometown, and it serves the people.

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

There is more openness in LA to possibilities than on the East Coast of America. There is a pioneering spirit there that stems from the reason people went out there in the first place-to find something new.

The biggest difference between U.S and most European big cities is that in a place like London, for instance, there are five orchestras, and there's a bloody competition between these five orchestras.

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

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

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.