I feel that the Jews have always had a special connection to this part of the world, which in geographical terms was called Palestine for so many centuries.
I liked very much when we lived in Hampstead. We would go for walks on the Heath. I liked it better than living in the centre of town.
Beethoven's importance in music has been principally defined by the revolutionary nature of his compositions. He freed music from hitherto prevailing conventions of harmony and structure.
Beethoven's music tends to move from chaos to order, as if order were an imperative of human existence.
Music is an art that touches the depth of human existence; an art of sounds that crosses all borders.
Jewish intellectuals contributed a great deal to insure that Europe became a continent of humanism, and it is with these humanist ideals that Europe must now intervene in the Middle East conflict.
For me personally, Elliott Carter was and remains one of the most meaningful composers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries because he represents substance. He was the living proof of uncompromising, complex music, which at first seems inaccessible. But it becomes accessible if one digs in and sees the development through.
We need a certain amount of energy to produce the sound. But then to sustain it, we have to give more energy, or otherwise, it goes and it dies in silence. And therefore, sound is absolutely, inextricably connected to time, the length of time.
No one can be an artist without a rich inner life.
I'm one of the ones who believed the Iraq War was a complete mistake from the very beginning.
We need to take music out of the ivory tower - both for musicians and for the public. Otherwise, classical music will not survive the 21st century.
When you get to be 103, modernism is a very wide concept.
I cannot be music director at La Scala and at Staatsoper. This would be unfair to one of the two institutions.
US presidents can make all the commitments and declarations they want until they are blue in the face, in the Muslim world they will always be perceived as partisan.
The thing about Wagner is we're always wrong about him, because he always embraces opposites. There are things in his operas which viewed one way are naturalistic, and viewed another way are symbolic, but the problem is you can't represent both views on stage at once.
'Tristan' is a very unique case, not just in Wagner's output, but in music in general. It remains contemporary no matter what else surrounds it. There is something self-renewing about it.
Music is not a profession. Music is a way of life - one that requires much professionalism.
You used to queue for three days and two nights for tickets for Rubinstein. People stayed in the queue for the whole day.
To have real knowledge, one must understand the essence of things and not only their manifestations.
The tempo is the suitcase. If the suitcase is too small, everything is completely wrinkled. If the tempo is too fast, everything becomes so scrambled you can't understand it.
