About the interviews

"For me, it has always been a critical issue how authentically and closely the disclosing reporter, photographer, cameraman or even sound engineer could convey the musical and other thoughts and ideas I addressed at the world. There are few things that bring me down more than sitting in for an interview and then, when it is published or broadcast – being confronted with the fact that my discussion partner had not glimpsed the faintest idea of what I meant. Unfortunately, this happens more and more often.

In this respect, my greatest favorites are the morning programs of commercial television channels. I imagine that there must be some wicked internal directive issued telling the talk-show hosts that it is strictly forbidden to learn things about the background of their guests, and a heavy fine is to be paid for intelligent questions and curiosity. Well, this selection was made from another interview pool." E.g., I do know that Gyuri Maróthy habitually, moves around in a musical environment completely different from ours, and yet I could sense that he was interested in and fascinated by what he heard, and eventually our expressed opinion was reflected in his writings in a suitable, correct form. I was above all impressed to see his pre-WW2 working methods: a little college writing pad with grid chart pages, no dictaphone, no mp3 recorder, or other nonsense stuff. He was like a composer who could still score music in the 21st century without a sequencer."