In my imagination yes, I remember, when I was six years old, I was conducting all this concert in my house. But now it's real.

The challenge is not so much to change the sound. The challenge is to connect and to create something special.

When people feel that something really special is happening on the stage, things change.

I love to read different books on completely different subjects at the same time. I cannot focus on one. I read a few pages of literature, then I jump to philosophy and at the same time I'm reading biographies of Mahler.

For me to rehearse with a children's orchestra a Mahler symphony was to really work. We had three or four weeks of rehearsal with the orchestra, every day eight or nine hours, putting the First together. I had been conducting Tchaikovsky a lot and Beethoven, but Mahler was different.

I want to work with the big orchestras. I want to have a big family.

You learn a lot about each other from a tour, musically and humanly.