I wanted contemporary music to be treated the same as the traditional repertoire - performed regularly by people who knew each other and the music. That is the way you convince an audience.
Some members of the Vienna Philharmonic convinced me to try Bruckner, which I have never done before. And that was interesting to me to have this experience with this orchestra, which knows the repertoire very well, and to be confronted with this knowledge, and to learn from them.
I discovered 'Rite of Spring' when I was 21. As a matter of fact, not with orchestra first, because it was still a work which was not often performed. Don't forget that I was 19 in 1944, still the Occupation time. So it was performed slightly after the end of the war, in 1945.
'Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta' is a kind of expansion of chamber music.
In business, in the music world, people know that I can be very friendly and warm but that, after a certain moment, the business is closed. I like to be alone: in order to concentrate on my work, the social life does not exist. It has never existed for me, really. I have chosen instead the working life because I prefer that.
My parents were so far from the music world that they couldn't conceive how you could make a living. But for me, it was the only solution for the rest of my life.
