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.

Stravinsky is masterly: his harmony is conceived so precisely that it can only be the way it is.

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

Coming from a sort of very rigid European type of training to this culture which is just a little more open - a lot more open, and kind of curious, and asking different sorts of questions.Because the problem for me was that the European modernist movement in the '70s was all about right or wrong. Some things were right and you were dealing with the truth, as it were, and then some things were wrong and therefore not allowed.

The sort of commercial parameters of classical music changed after the [World War II] , and the whole industry became more backward-looking.

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

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