If I were to run around the world playing just the cello concertos - and believe me, I love playing them - I would be counting my entire repertoire from year to year on my two hands.

We all know that there are many people that can play the instrument perfectly today, up and down with technical perfection, but does the sound connect internally, do they touch people's hearts, how creative are they.... ?

I would say that for the younger musicians, technical proficiency is necessary and a given these days. But the study and the way you function in society, your beliefs and the way you live, that is where you will find a real musician, a real artist.

The realm of classical music is so vast - not only in terms of style but of era, age and the purposes for which it was composed - it is an enormous art form.

Our interpretations through the years and generations have always changed, but the emotions, ideas, and the thoughts of the composers are still with us, and these are the premise of the music. The time factor has little to do with it because, after all, it is about human feeling, the Universe and who we are as people.

The zenith of virtuosity, a violinist like Jascha Heifetz, the supernatural in a pianist like Vladimir Horowitz, these are performers who were so idiosyncratic and personal that to imitate them would be like filling somebody else's bottle with your wine.

A lot of my musical education was done simply by listening. If you really want to excel on your instrument, it's almost impossible to not develop and analyze what you see and hear and to incorporate all of it into your own playing.

Even if you are a pianist, your concerto repertoire is very limited compared to what your chamber repertoire would be if you were a chamber music pianist.

I think you can tell a lot from the lives of many of today's great soloists. Their participation and gravitation towards chamber music is ever increasing.