If you're playing within your capability, what's the point? If you're not pushing your own technique to its own limits with the risk that it might just crumble at any moment, then you're not really doing your job.

I see it as my job to try to keep Bach in the mainstream and present his music with, rather than without, its emotional core.

I can think and play stuff in classical music that possibly violinists who didn't have access to other types of music could never do. It means I'm more flexible within classical music, to be a servant to the composer.

You can't learn pathos or profundity.

I'm always improving and I want to get better and never hit a plateau. I find it an amazing adventure.

Bach was a top harmonist geezer, which is why the jazz cats love him.

Maybe it's egocentric or whatever, but when I'm playing Beethoven, Bach, Hendrix, or whoever it is, in the end, it just feels like my own music and I'm making it up as I'm going along.