‘To be perfectly fair, it’s not their fault. The modern forms, they’re so complex now. Kazan, Mullery, Yoshimoto. Even for a trained musician such as myself, it’s hard now, very hard. The likes of von Winterstein, the Countess, what chance do they have? They’re completely out of their depth. To them it’s just crashing noise, a whirl of strange rhythms. Perhaps they’ve convinced themselves over the years they can hear something there, certain emotions, meanings. But the truth is, they’ve found nothing at all. They’re out of their depth, they’ll never understand how modern music works. Once it was simply Mozart, Bach, Tchaikovsky. Even the man in the street could make a reasoned guess about that sort of music. But the modern forms! How can people like this, untrained, provincial people, how can they ever understand such things, however great a sense of duty they feel towards the community? It’s hopeless,

‘My own view is that Kazan never benefits from formalised restraints. Neither from the circular dynamic, nor even a doublebar structure. There are simply too many layers, too many emotions, especially in the later works.’

One should not, in any case, attempt to make a virtue out of one’s limitations.’