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.

But one day, when I was still young, I was parted from my family and left my native country. I hunted and searched for music, and destiny turned me into the object of my hunt. The circumstances of life became my 'antlers' and prevented me from returning home.

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

Mozart makes you believe in God because it cannot be by chance that such a phenomenon arrives into this world and leaves such an unbounded number of unparalleled masterpieces.

My entire learning process is slow, because I have no visual memory.

From Toscanini I learnt the essential and desperate seriousness of making music.

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