We are doing a program this season of music by Schubert, Schoenberg, Rachmaninoff, and Ravel, music which is totally -- on paper -- incompatible,

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.

In these confused times, the role of classical music is at the very core of the struggle to reassert cultural and ethical values that have always characterized our country and for which we have traditionally been honored and respected outside our shores.

I think I infuse the music with a new passion. Part of this is because I have fallen in love: I am in love with the New York Philharmonic. The chemistry has just been right. Beyond expectation.

The collaboration with the musicians of the New York Philharmonic is sheer joy. The Orchestra is so professional, so prepared, so motivated. I float from day to day, concert to concert, masterpiece to masterpiece, supported by the sound of the New York Philharmonic.

So many things can hinder one. Think you are up in a hot air balloon with sandbags. As you get older, keep throwing those sandbags overboard. The more sandbags you throw, the higher you soar, the higher the balloon goes.