Simon Rattle

The music lovers of London and the country deserve to have something where orchestras can flourish. You have no idea how wonderful an orchestra like the London Symphony Orchestra can sound in a great concert hall.

I've always had a profound conviction that great music is about joy, even in the face of tragedy.

Orchestras are like people. They're the sonic embodiment of their community.

The necessity for rules and strictness is a way of dealing with an enormously powerful impulse: Germans are among the most emotional people on the planet. Maybe it has to do with the fact that, as a nation, they are always drawn back to nature and the forest.

With these big Wagner pieces, if I haven't started three years before, I'm screwed. You need time to look at the piece again and again and again, and then, like some fantastic casserole or spaghetti sauce, put it back in the fridge and let the flavours get together.

I think we will find more and more ways in which technology invades our artistic spaces, so music is something you will need more than ever because it is there in time and in space and for that moment only.

What really counts isn't whether your instrument is Baroque or modern: it's your mindset.

Parsifal' is one of the great examples in art of a work that transcends the personality of the man who wrote it.

Conductors make too much fuss about conductors! Humility and hard work are virtues. We're nothing without our musicians.

I am old enough to remember the enormous fight over Tate Modern. It is such a part of our cultural landscape now, we forget the opposition to it.