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" I was a harpsichordist in my teens, and there was a bunch of us in Liverpool who got together every week to play Bach. "

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" There are a few great orchestras in the world, thank goodness. Although some people do put them in ranking order, it's not like a snooker match. Each orchestra has different things to offer. "

" I love Mozart, but I often make a terrible hash of it. "

" Learning music is a birthright. And you have to start young. "

" As a Liverpool boy, it is impossible not to think of the Beatles' question, 'Will you still need me when I'm 64?' "

" What really counts isn't whether your instrument is Baroque or modern: it's your mindset. "

" Always the journey, never the destination. "

" Conducting 'Tristan' is like floating in amniotic fluid, but having worked on it for three months, I now know why people who go near it go so strange. "

" You don't like Liverpool: you either loathe it or you love it. And I don't know anyone who loathes it and comes from it. "

" Orchestras are like people. They're the sonic embodiment of their community. "

" You would never train people to play football by telling them to watch football. You make them play football. "

" In my mid-twenties, I was with a conducting career, but I had never been to university and I wanted to. There were things I wanted to study in depth. I also wanted to see if I could survive without music. "

" My worst and best qualities are rashness: the good part of it is due to youth, which is, of course, why I'm not a great conductor. "

" I've always loved French music. My parents adored it; my father played it on the piano. "

" I think the English are an unbelievably musical nation and always have been. "

" The necessity for rules and strictness is a way of dealing with an enormously powerful impulse: Germans are among the most emotional people on the planet. Maybe it has to do with the fact that, as a nation, they are always drawn back to nature and the forest. "

" Nobody has Francis Bacon on their walls in their house - or very few people - but sometimes people listen to Beethoven as though it was background and a comfort, and I think that is very dangerous. "

" I've always had a profound conviction that great music is about joy, even in the face of tragedy. "

" Liverpool is off the side of the known universe, and it always was. New York is the only other place comparable. "

" With these big Wagner pieces, if I haven't started three years before, I'm screwed. You need time to look at the piece again and again and again, and then, like some fantastic casserole or spaghetti sauce, put it back in the fridge and let the flavours get together. "

" Oh Lord... I don't really do pride. "

" In England, unless I am mistaken, I think some of the politicians who love classical music and opera are a bit loath to be seen there in case people think it is elitist. That is a real shame because it also means we are not allowing our politicians a hinterland that an earlier generation, a Denis Healey, would have taken for granted. "

" Sometimes, musicians worry too much about how beautifully they are playing. "

" One of the most difficult things in opera is for people to suspend disbelief. "

Difficult Things

" I believe if you're not completely in love with what you're doing, you'd better find another profession. "

" I think Beethoven means dissonances to be more stressed than consonances - it's the shock tactician in him. "

" The music lovers of London and the country deserve to have something where orchestras can flourish. You have no idea how wonderful an orchestra like the London Symphony Orchestra can sound in a great concert hall. "

" Yes, I was a weird duck, no doubt. "

" Conductors make too much fuss about conductors! Humility and hard work are virtues. We're nothing without our musicians. "

" If you receive a whole string of bad reviews, you have to say, 'O.K., maybe there's something here we should pay attention to.' "

" There is a mysterious way in which orchestras keep a sense of their history and what they've done. I still listen to the L.A. Philharmonic and feel that Giulini was there. "