It isn't false modesty when I say this, but although I am supposed to be a famous person it doesn't mean anything to me. I just sit at home and work.Collection: Famous
Then, after the war it was impossible to travel, after so many years of Hitler and Stalin.Collection: Travel
There is a wonderful Hungarian literature, especially in lyric poetry.Collection: Poetry
When I was younger I was completely without money - when I was studying in Budapest, when I was a refugee.
People often thought Leopold Auer was Russian because he lived in St. Petersburg so long, almost fifty years.
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.
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 continued to study Math and Physics on my own, but one and a half years later I realized that I did want to be a composer, and after that I never changed my mind.
Well I live in Vienna with my wife and son, and I teach in Hamburg, there will be no changes in that respect.
Now there is no taboo; everything is allowed. But one cannot simply go back to tonality, it’s not the way. We must find a way of neither going back nor continuing the avant-garde. I am in a prison: one wall is the avant-garde, the other wall is the past, and I want to escape.Collection: Wall
Stravinsky used Mother Goose. He was influenced by Mother Goose, indirectly, but very beautifullyCollection: Mother
Perhaps the better word is emotional yes, I am an emotional manCollection: Men
When I was younger I was completely without money - when I was studying in Budapest, when I was a refugeeCollection: Budapest
Once, in London, the BBC asked me what was my favorite English book. I said Alice in WonderlandCollection: Book
There was a very famous musician in our family. He was a great violinist, an internationally known teacher. He was Leopold Auer.Collection: Teacher
In my piano concerto I developed this polyphony to much higher complexityCollection: Piano
New York is the dream world, the center of jazz and rockCollection: Dream