[…] the most important was the idea that one day I would work with Georges Enesco. He came to San Francisco when I was seven or eight, to conduct his own symphony and play the Brahms Concerto, and before a note was sounded he had me in thrall. His countenance, his stance, his wonderful mane of black hair – everything about him proclaimed the free man, the man who is strong with the freedom of gypsies, of spontaneity, of creative genius, of fire. And the music he then began to play had an incandescence surpassing anything in my experience.