I guess, as a conductor, one goes in and out of fashion. Your career starts with a bang, everyone thinks you're wonderful, and then with middle age, something happens and you go into the wilderness.

The most perfect expression of human behavior is a string quartet.

I was told when I went for a life-insurance exam when I was 18 that I was not likely to live past 50, so I refused to pay the premium.

In Hamburg, there are three major orchestras, an opera house, and one of the great concert-hall acoustics in Europe at the Laeiszhalle, in a town a fifth the size of London. And that's not unusual. In Germany, there are dozens of towns with two or three orchestras. The connection with music goes very, very deep.

So I observe life a little bit, rather than participating in it.