Well I live in Vienna with my wife and son, and I teach in Hamburg, there will be no changes in that respect.
Once, in London, the BBC asked me what was my favorite English book. I said Alice in Wonderland.
There is a wonderful Hungarian literature, especially in lyric poetry.
But I do not want to use Hungarian verses for British people.
But if you go from Moscow to Budapest you think you are in Paris.
I lived under the Nazis and under the Communists.
When I was younger I was completely without money – when I was studying in Budapest, when I was a refugee.
Perhaps the better word is emotional yes, I am an emotional man.
New York is the dream world, the center of jazz and rock.
I think it was when I was nineteen, by that time the Jewish laws were already in force and the split was beginning to come about which isolated the Jewish culture.
I was fifteen years old, and I hardly knew how to play a simple Bach prelude on the piano when I began to compose music, and at the most advanced level. I had never studied such things as harmony.
People often thought Leopold Auer was Russian because he lived in St. Petersburg so long, almost fifty years.
My grandfather was not a musician but he was an artist – a painter, a decorative painter.
In January 1944 I was called up by the Forced Labor Service, but I deserted on October 10, 1944.
I think a composer is always interested in his last work.
I only want to give a metaphysic for my music.
I don’t use old music.
First of all I listen to music. I like music.
For the past ten years I have had no financial problems.
I know already the music I will write. But the words? I have not yet decided.