Music is a continuum and the modern and avant-garde composers of today will be part of the standard repertoire 30 years from now.

Mozart has written opera, symphony, sacred and chamber music - not to mention his piano and violin concerti.

I just wish, maybe, that I'd started conducting earlier. I was about 40 when I started. Apart from that I don't really have any regrets. Is that bad?

The awful thing about a conductor becoming geriatric is that you seem to become more desirable, not less.

I would like new people with new ideas to come into it and change it.

If the (British) Arts Council give you money, they also tell you how to spend it.

Most Beethoven symphonies require 80 or more instruments, and the late romantics even more.

So I've never found there was any particular separation between the two cultures at all, musically speaking.

There are some sounds that English singers find quite difficult to manipulate.

We don't want other people poking into our artistic pie.

Initially we performed in halls with capacities of 1,000.

Yet as a team, we can pull together to do some incredible work.

It's important to learn the right lessons from the past.

Teach your heart that this is destiny

I was a traditional teacher for a time, but my students would ride the energy. I wanted to free people not give them a placebo.

The ready apology covers a multitude of social sins.

I mean, the old film critics just excoriated me.

The heart of mine is only one, it cannot be known by anybody but myself.

It is always by way of pain one arrives at pleasure.

I'm obsessed with trying to understand what somebody is talking about and trying to get them to understand me.