…I consider it my fortune that I have a great many likes: Russian and foreign writers and composers, classical and contemporary. And I think that this is an attitude that every person and every musician should foster in himself. That is my advice to everyone, for one can lose so much otherwise… Someone once reproached me for being omnivorous, saying that I devoured all music ‘from Bach to Offenbach’. But I consider this to be my good fortune. I enjoy both the great music of Bach and the melodies of Offenbach. Thus I cannot name a favourite composer or a favourite writer. I derive real pleasure from very many things and very many writers, composers, artists and sculptors. Though I am a fair age and know and have heard a great deal, I could listen to, let us say, Eugene Onegin or a modern opera over and over again. I have no favourite genres either: I love them all, from Bach’s Masses to the operettas of Johann Strauss.