Whenever I listen to a children's orchestra, I learn. They feel everything, they enjoy everything, they have amazing energy.

I think it's a very important collaboration between the conductor and the orchestra - especially when the conductor is one more member of the orchestra in the way that you are leading, but also respecting, feeling and building the same way for all the players to understand the music.

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.

It's a physical challenge. It's a spiritual challenge. I'm studying almost every day a different symphony, not returning to any one for a week.

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.

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.

For me, Venezuela is very important, not just because it's a place I go to conduct, but because my family is there - my wife, my parents and my musical family.