Then, after the war it was impossible to travel, after so many years of Hitler and Stalin.

I was fifteen years old, and I hardly knew how to play a simple Bach prelude on the piano when I began to compose music, and at the most advanced level. I had never studied such things as harmony.

I think it was when I was nineteen, by that time the Jewish laws were already in force and the split was beginning to come about which isolated the Jewish culture.

But if you go from Moscow to Budapest you think you are in Paris.

First of all I listen to music. I like music.

Once, in London, the BBC asked me what was my favorite English book. I said Alice in Wonderland

There was a very famous musician in our family. He was a great violinist, an internationally known teacher. He was Leopold Auer.