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" It's interesting: composers can be very funny ducks. "

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" One of the most extraordinary and all-encompassing forms of communication is music. It reaches places that all kinds of other things cannot reach. I'll put my cards on the table: I think it is our greatest language. "

" I first heard Mahler's second symphony aged 11 in Liverpool, and it inspired me to become a conductor. "

" 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. "

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

" We have to be evangelists for music. We couldn't just be high priests of music. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Some of my favorite music in the world is Haydn. I had a sabbatical one year and made myself one promise: to play a different Haydn piano sonata each day - they are inexhaustible treasures. "

" The better the orchestra, often the harder it is to conduct, not the other way around. "

" Every orchestra has its own sound. "

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

" My only interest is in sharing great music with more and more people. "

" I'd be much more likely to watch the latest Tarantino movie than to listen to a Mahler symphony. "

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

" Conductors start getting good when everybody else retires. "

" We need to bring music to the people, even to those who normally do not listen to classical music. "

" 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. "

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

Difficult Things

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

" 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. "

" The grapevine in England is an extraordinary thing. When there is a really brilliant young composer or soloist, we all hear about it. "

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

" 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. "

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

" The jazz records come out a lot. You find that with many musicians - we don't listen to our own music for relaxation. "

" 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.' "