Musician

'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.

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.

'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.

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.

With these big Wagner pieces, if I haven't started three years before, I'm screwed. You need time to look at the piece again and again and again, and then, like some fantastic casserole or spaghetti sauce, put it back in the fridge and let the flavours get together.

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.

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.

Oh Lord... I don't really do pride.

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

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

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.

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

Yes, I was a weird duck, no doubt.

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

Learning music is a birthright. And you have to start young.

Conductors make too much fuss about conductors! Humility and hard work are virtues. We're nothing without our musicians.

We have to be evangelists for music. We couldn't just be high priests of music.

I think Beethoven means dissonances to be more stressed than consonances - it's the shock tactician in him.

Conductors start getting good when everybody else retires.

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