As a trumpet player, I was playing Xenakis, Lindberg: very challenging, technical, atonal, and I enjoyed it.
People talk very much about, 'What can we do with the orchestra in the 21st century?' We should think about the 21st century, of course.
Every week we have a concert, what we are performing is my favorite music in the world.
I think it's very important to be part of the Boston society and the people who live in Boston.
I can't say I'd like to concentrate on one particular composer. I'm looking forward to doing a variety.
The two most important things is, one, the music in my life, and the family. It's somehow connected because music is about human beings, about love, about hate, about everything that happens in life.
It's so important which musicians we choose for being in the orchestra.
You could almost write an opera about the selection of music directors for orchestras. The intrigues are really interesting, and then, at the end, the results are completely unexpected.
I really think that the music is the food for our souls.
I think first thing and the most important thing, for me, is that Boston becomes my musical home, my musical family.
Some people will always gossip.
We can understand each other with music without words - and that's so important in these times when walls are built. In music, there are no walls.
I'm sure the atmosphere at Tanglewood and the space there and nature - I think it absolutely fits Wagner's music.
I'm European, and my roots are in Europe. But Boston is one of the most, in a way, European American cities. And I think I'll find a lot of similarities, historically and architecturally and tradition-wise.
Though involvement in music and the arts can't cure all the ills of society, I do believe that the inspiration they provide has the potential to help us reflect, at times, on the better angels of our natures.
Bernstein was everywhere - Vienna, London - and everyone admired him. Of course he loved Boston, and he did so many great things at Tanglewood. He was the best example of what a conductor should be.
Shostakovich was one of the great symphonists of all time, and maybe the last great symphonist.
Conducting is about communication. You don't play any notes, but you communicate with the musicians.
Through conducting, you express through your arms, through your face and even the body, what you want to tell, so the musicians of the orchestra understand.
Music is something so mystical, so unexplainably a thing you cannot put in the rules or boundaries, you know? It speaks about our feelings about questions of life and death. It goes absolutely beyond any kind of rules.
