I think that of my 21 symphonies, each has its own place.
I remain extraordinarily proud of the Vaughan Williams symphonies I recorded with the LSO, and in the 1980s and '90s, I made an almost complete cycle of orchestral works by Richard Strauss with the Vienna Philharmonic.
I'm thankful to Deutsche Grammophon, our partners - we are going to record the complete Shostakovich symphonies and hopefully some other things as well.
If some of our works are symphonies, then wrapped walkways was chamber music.
It's a fundamental, social attitude that the 1% supports symphonies and operas and doesn't support Johnny learning to program hip-hop beats. When I put it like that, it sounds like, 'Well, yeah,' but you start to think, 'Why not, though?' What makes one more valuable than another?
People who go to concerts hear Beethoven's symphonies hundreds of times, but 'Star Trek' is recorded, so it's not played all the time.
Now I'm having the time of my life being on the road with one of the world's all-time great big bands, and performing with symphonies. I wouldn't trade it for anything.
All these tales of people sitting down and composing symphonies just as though they were writing a letter are very much exaggerated; at least, it isn't that way in my work.
I love symphonies. I love string sections.
We can't afford big symphonies but we commission works that sound rich and symphonic because of the nature of the instrumentation and the people we work with.
