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

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

" Every orchestra has its own sound. "

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

" Conductors start getting good when everybody else retires. "

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

" American economists can't understand the German fear of inflation and the effects of inflation when dealing with the world economic crisis. They wonder why Germany pursues such a different course - 'Why can't they agree with us?' I would have thought it was fairly obvious. "

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

" As an older dad you can certainly get down on the floor. The problem is can you get up again? "

" If you think the music business is the be-all and end-all of life, you're in big trouble. "

" 'Pelleas et Melisande' is one of the saddest and most upsetting operas ever written. If you love the opera as I do, then you love it to pieces, obsessively. "

" 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 was thrilled that Sadiq Khan was so in support of the idea of culture being at the centre of a city and the idea that it is everyone's right. It can't be a matter of privilege or chance. It should be something everyone can have in their life, and that means knowing what it is. "

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

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

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

" As a nation, we English tend to be self-deprecating, looking down on ourselves. We're insular but also flexible, whereas in Germany, it's a case of besser wissen - we know better. That's very Deutsch. People are never frightened to tell you what you're doing wrong, in a way that would never happen in England. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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.' "

" 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. "

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

" Passionate musicians only come from passionate five-year-olds. "

" I am old enough to remember the enormous fight over Tate Modern. It is such a part of our cultural landscape now, we forget the opposition to it. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "