You must play for the love of music. Perfect technique is not as important as making music from the heart.

You must play for the love of music. Perfect technique is not as important as making music from the heart.

I would rather have ideas and some difficulties of technique than a perfect technique and no ideas.

I came to Moscow when I was 5 years old from Baku. To walk all night in Moscow will bring back my youth to me.

It is my aim, my destination in life to make the cello as beloved an instrument as the violin and piano.

Now I want to use money in a good way. I make foundations back home in Russia, I have sponsored vaccinations for more than one million children in my homeland and I have founded scholarships in the names of my great Russian compatriots - Oistrakh, Richter, Gilels, Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Schnittke.

There is too much emphasis on technical perfection nowadays, and not enough on what music is actually about - irony, joy, human suffering, love.