If you're curious, if you have a capacity for wonder, if you're alive, you know all that you need to know [about music].

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.

If you're curious, if you have a capacity for wonder, if you're alive, you know all that you need to know [about music].

It's easier to interest a conservative audience in pushing the musical boundaries than to involve a young audience used to very noisy, assertive music in something like Schubert or Bach because the further back you go, the less bells and whistles there are.

The world changes when there's music in it.

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!