Everyone says you have to be a specialist, and if you conduct Wagner you cannot conduct Mozart - this is nonsense.

The experience awakened 'my tremendous musical ambition, which has never subsided to this day.

Fight the tendency to become complacent and do one kind of music - that is the death of a musician.

I can only hope that neither of them was scarred by their upbringing.

Although both sides of my family were religious, I was never forced to practice the Jewish faith. I did not really rebel against it, but then, as today, I disliked organized religion. I have a strange inhibition about praying with others.

During the first six years of my life, Hungary was one of the most important components of the Habsburg dynasty's vast Austro-Hungarian Empire, but after World War I it became an independent national entity.

I have a theory that there is something abnormal about children who like to practice instruments They are either geniuses or, more often, completely untalented. I certainly did not like to practice, and the teacher who hit me, and the view of the park, did not help to improve my attitude.