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

Classical music in Venezuela is now something like a pop concert. You can see people screaming or crying because they don't have a ticket.

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 think that I need to learn a lot, a lot.

A friend gave me a CD of the 'Pathetique' Symphony as a Christmas present. I went home, and I put on the CD expecting to listen to Tchaikovsky. But it started 'ta ta ta taaa.' It was too long for me. I didn't understand it at first, but then I fell in love, in love, in love.

My material life is simple.

I set out to create a means whereby music could be a way of vindicating the rights of the masses.