The songs of Bizet are by a French peer of Rossini. When Rossini stopped composing, he was living in Paris. He also wrote some beautiful songs in French.
I've got great joy from rediscovering Western music. I love Schumann and Chopin, and those amazing symphonies of Bruckner.
I think we have a lot in common with classical composers of the 19th century, although I'm not claiming to have their intelligence. They wanted to create a musical explosion, to blow the crowd away.
I'm homeless, in a funny way. My culture I think is completely rooted in German 19th century music I suppose.
Schumann's 'Quintet in E flat for Piano and Strings' is one of the sublime moments in Romantic music.
I love all types of music - jazz, great pop music, world music and folk music - but the music I listen to most is piano music from the 18th, 19th and 20th century. Russian music in particular.
I started with very tonal 19th-century music because I wanted to be a violinist as a child. So this was my first music, and then I was very much influenced by Stravinsky and Shostakovich in the 1950s. But I was starting to develop my own style.
The colors of 'The Nutcracker' ballet score have become a part of the vocabulary of film music. It's where so much of the 19th-century romantic music that I call upon as a film composer is rooted.
Conducting is a natural way to participate in one's own music. Almost every 19th-century composer Mendelssohn, Mahler was conducting or playing his own music. Mozart did both.
