If you're alive, you have all the experience necessary to understand classical music.

And what classical music does best and must always do more, is to show this kind of transformation of moods, to show a very wide psychological voyage. And I think that's something that we as classical musicians have underestimated.

Extreme volume in music very often disguises a lack of actually important content.

The big difference between human happiness and sadness? Thirty-seven freakin' vibrations.

They are representations of many shared hours of collaboration between us all. That's the real nature of the relationship the orchestra and I are trying to build.

You can't have Bach, Mozart and Beethoven as your favorite composers. They simply define what music is!

Part of my big message with all this is that if you are alive, you know all you need to know about the message of classical music, because more than any other music, it is about the way life really is.