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" If people had told me that I would have the stamina to conduct 'Ring Cycles,' I would have been amazed. I still am. "

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" I frequently find after a rehearsal of a performance that I have more breath, and can walk better and climb stairs better than I could before. It's as if I've expanded my lungs doing it. Basically speaking, conducting is quite a healthy profession. "

" I was told when I went for a life-insurance exam when I was 18 that I was not likely to live past 50, so I refused to pay the premium. "

" People still call me the eternal amateur. After all, professionals are supposed to be able to conduct everything. But I can't unless I feel some connection inside. Conducting is not an end in itself for me. "

" Basically speaking, conducting is quite a healthy profession. "

" The most perfect expression of human behavior is a string quartet. "

" I don't like to hurry. I'm not a conductor of the fast, fiery romantic type. I prefer Bruckner, with the sincerity of his musical language and the huge time spans in which his ideas develop, to Mahler, with his hysteria and self-indulgence. "

" I guess, as a conductor, one goes in and out of fashion. Your career starts with a bang, everyone thinks you're wonderful, and then with middle age, something happens and you go into the wilderness. "

" I can't even touch another conductor's baton. The center of gravity, the feel of the handle, puts me totally off. "

" I had a sense of debt to the medical profession and to surgery particularly. I would not be as ambient as I am without it. "

" Concert-going has become much less the thing to do, while people are still going to opera. This might be a harsh judgment, but it could easily happen that orchestras could slowly atrophy. "

" Beethoven, Schubert, Schoenberg, Berg imply a type of pianist who is intellectual. That's not always associated with female soloists. "

" So I observe life a little bit, rather than participating in it. "

" In Hamburg, there are three major orchestras, an opera house, and one of the great concert-hall acoustics in Europe at the Laeiszhalle, in a town a fifth the size of London. And that's not unusual. In Germany, there are dozens of towns with two or three orchestras. The connection with music goes very, very deep. "

" On the grounds of prestigious musical organizations that come and go, New York has the edge. "