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

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

Classic music somehow changed, and it changed between the first and the second world wars, and somehow what happened was that the hero that had been the composer, the hero now was the performer, and especially the conductor.

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

I always felt that one day I would have to make the change in my own life, bite the bullet and see what it is to be a composer who conducts rather than the other way around.

I started conducting lessons and I realized that this is actually something I like doing.

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