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.

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

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

I was born and trained to communicate music, just as the sons were born and trained to hunt, and I was lucky to have grown up in Hungary, a country that lives and breathes music-that has a passionate belief in the power of music as a celebration of life.

The joy of working with the Chicago Symphony was immeasureable.

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.