When you play a violin piece, you are a storyteller, and you're telling a story.
I hope I will always have the chance to play the violin.
I want to do everything. That's my problem. Life is short, and I hate the idea of turning down anything. You never know what interesting experience might happen.
Good conductors know when to let an orchestra lead itself. Ninety percent of what a conductor does comes in the rehearsal - the vision, the structure, the architecture.
I kind of alternate between conducting and playing and kind of juggling those things, but I don't use a baton.
What drew me to the violin was mastering the instrument technically, which I'm continuing to do.
We live in a very chaotic world that sometimes we - it just seems like a mess. One of the reasons why we listen to music, and to great classical music in particular, is that everything is in an order and in a place and has a beauty that you see in nature, that you see and that people look for when they look for God.
You don't have to have lots of love affairs to know what love is.
No one tells you what to do if you completely flop at the beginning of a performance.
Beethoven's fourth and seventh symphonies have a certain amount in common. Well, of course they're both written by Beethoven, but besides that, I would say their overall effect and idea is to provide the listener with an incredible sense of joy.
The orchestra confides in me about their music director or their conductor, and I've never seen a conductor that's been liked by everyone.
Conducting is a strange thing to teach. There are very few great conducting teachers, and most great conductors don't teach. Look at Valery Gergiev - what he does is not teachable. A lot of it is on-the-job training, what works and what doesn't work.
I love the outdoor festival feeling.
I'm addicted to the adrenaline of performing, and I think when you're used to having that high, you look for it in other things.
I think, as an artist, it's very important to continue to be challenged and feel challenged all the time.
In concertos, I stand up, and I conduct with the bow when I'm not playing. During symphonies, I sit, but sometimes I stop playing to conduct. Being seated in a section allows me to feel more like we're playing chamber music, which is how I like to approach it.
I always have loved the Stradivarius. My teacher, Josef Gingold, he had a Stradivarius. As a treat, he would put it under my chin and let me play a few notes, and I remember that feeling of the overtones, the complexity of the sound. It's like a great wine.
My whole life, I've been watching conductors. I was 7 the first time I played with a conductor. Seeing the ones that do it well, it's an amazing thing.
I don't want to portray myself as a daredevil. I'm not at all.
I've been touring for 25 years. I'm used to it, so I love it. Although I feel the tug of home, as I have three little kids, I don't suffer like some artists who constantly complain about how much they hate traveling.
