But those musics do not address the larger kind of architecture in time that classical music does, whatever each one of us knows that classical music must mean.

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].

But a large symphony orchestra basically is a repertory company and it has a very enormous repertoire and it is important for the performers to be able to know how to shift focus so that they instantly become part of the sound world that a particular repertoire demands.

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.

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.

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.

Classical music is a wonderful 1200 year-old tradition that witnesses everything that it has meant and what it means right now to be human.