For people who are really talented, what you don't say becomes extremely important. You have to judge what to say and what to leave alone so you can let the talent develop.
Another thing that I don't like to do is show too much how it goes. I do it once in a blue moon. Sometimes there are lessons when I don't pick up a violin at all.
When you are 8 or 9, you should have a childhood. You should have adolescence. You should go through everything in a normal way.
When I came to the United States, I appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show as a 13-year-old, and I played a Mendelssohn Concerto, and it sounded like a talented 13-year-old with a lot of promise. But it did not sound like a finished product.
I'm now doing three things: concerts, conducting, and teaching, and they each support each other. I learn to see things from different perspectives and listen with different ears. The most important thing that you need to do is really listen.
My oldest daughter is a pianist; she plays concerts. We play together, also.
A lot of people ask me, 'What is your goal now that you have done everything?' And I always say that my goal is to not be bored by what I do. The only way that I cannot be bored by what I do is if I play something and it's all new to me.
I can tell you that many soloists probably wish they could sit.
I think that music has to do with what kind of passion do you have.
I'm an acoustical person.
I have just one fiddle. It works, and that's it. It has been an old friend.
Only one of my grandchildren is serious about a musical instrument. The others dabble in it.
Television will always err on the side of making something not quite as classy as it could be.
I've been lucky to conduct the very best orchestras in the world: New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Berlin, the London Philharmonic.
If you can read, then you can recite Shakespeare. But that's not acting.
Believe me, I've had interviews where the person says, 'So when did you start and why? What about your parents?' I say to them, 'Please, have you heard of the word 'Google?'
The thing about talent is that it comes at different ages, sometimes at a very early age. That's when I find it to be the most challenging.
An amazing gift in a young child is, in some ways, an abnormality.
A lot of society tries to put people with disabilities into one cube, and when you think about it, many, many people have different types of disabilities, and you cannot put a code that applies to towards everyone - generally, they can be guidelines, but in the long run, interior designers and architects need more education on the subject.
I met my wife in music camp. She's got great ears, and we have a relationship where she's not afraid to tell me anything. If something's going on in my playing, she will tell me about it, and that's very, very important.
