A critic can serve as guide. I think there's an understanding amongst the public that critics have their own preferences and dislikes.

As a young composer I had a particular fondness for Liszt's Beethoven Symphony arrangements for the piano, and to this day I enjoy playing non-piano music at the piano.

If people want insights, if they want to swim in the currents of their own time and share the experiences of their time, then it makes sense to engage with the artists of one's own time.

The American new music scene is remarkably vibrant.

I write because the act of writing itself is what drives me. It's a private communication within myself - nothing more or less. This doesn't mean I do not want to share with people.

A lot of my approach to the instrument, especially as I've gotten older, is to treat the piano in ways that are not very pianistic - to consider the sounds I'm after first, and to deal with technical considerations later.

Of course, all people have their own reasons for believing what they do about gender. In my case, in over two decades of collaborating with men and women in music - conductors or otherwise - I have seen no distinction.