This country, and the West Coast, especially, is bad at preserving any cultural legacy.

There was this kind of mildly annoying mythology about conductor Like biker should riding a Harley-Davidson on an LP cover, and wearing a sort of a leather suit.

I feel that this is my artistic home, and I'm very happy to be a California artist together with many others who are not from here originally but who decided to make this the center of their activities. There's something about that that I find very inspiring and satisfying.

Pulse as an active means of expression, Stravinsky and Beethoven are the two masters of that.

With American orchestras, in particular, because they play in such huge halls, getting a true pianissimo is very hard.

The philharmonic became such a journey and adventure in my life, and a deeply satisfying thing.

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.