Do you think he's more properly thought of as a kind of surrealist composer rather than a serialist?

I think that because he doesn't wear his... or never wore his emotion on his sleeve in any way, that many people...

And, and also with this extraordinary sort of emphasis on precision that was connected with his performing, there was a sense that, you know, one of the headlines in a New York paper announcing his arrival at the New York Philharmonic was "The Iceman Cometh," right? And I think there's that sense of things.

But I...

While I can understand where that came from, I never really saw that side of him.

And in fact, what was fascinating, m- doing a number of his works, I remember in Japan I had given the...

I was lucky enough to fall into the opportunity to give the world premiere of Explosions fixes, and that was because he had knee problems and so the tour that we had made for Italy and Germany, he was just not going to be able to do because of waiting around for airplanes, and it was extremely painful.

To be a great conductor, what is it you need to read? In fiction or history or other non-musical areas? Anything? A lot? Or...