Lorin Maazel

“I come to a performance of music that I know very well as if I were performing it for the first time. Every day is a new day, a new experience. This is the way I approach a masterpiece. A masterpiece can never age - it's only the people who perform it or listen to it who become insensitive to it. If you come with a fresh feeling toward a masterpiece, it will always feel fresh and give you the benefit of its genius.”

“I don't want to be conducting Mahler with my head stuffed full of 10 million notes from other composers.”

“In fact the hardest part is trying to forget music when I'm not conducting it.”