I started university with the thought of becoming some kind of scientist - maybe a physicist - but gave that up when I saw what that entailed at the university level. Music was something that had come easily to me. I had begun studying it at age 10. So at university I thought, ‘Maybe this is something I should really try to do.’ I majored in music composition, and after university, I went to Paris for a year on one of those wonderful, generous scholarships, and had a great time. There, I studied composition with Olivier Messiaen, and conducting with Charles Bruck. Bruck was an experienced conductor, Hungarian by birth, but a long-time French citizen. He was a protégé of Pierre Monteux, serving as his assistant in the 1930s. So he gave his students first-hand knowledge of the great Debussy, Ravel and Stravinsky works that Monteux championed, and added his own passion for Bartók and many more contemporary composers.

Messiaen's class was fascinating. He was such a profound and gentle man. Composition lessons have given me insight into the brains of composers. Hopefully, I have some sympathy for how they work and some real enthusiasm for new music. I don't compose any more. It’s not because my studies turned me off, but because when it comes to looking at a blank page in the morning... well, it's hard enough to look at a page filled with notes - great notes written by great composers. The blank page problem gives me tremendous respect and admiration for writers of all sorts.

When I returned to the States, I studied piano with Leon Fleisher, with whom I had already studied for two years in high school. He was a very strong influence on me, showing me the great German tradition that stretches back to Beethoven through Schnabel, Liszt and Czerny.

Then, after graduate school I got my first job: assistant to Mstislav Rostropovich at the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington DC. Working with him was an immersion in Russia repertoire and his unique visceral, emotional approach. In retrospect, having French, German and Russian traditions working on my brain was really great. And I also had the benefit of being an American of the generation directly inspired by Leonard Bernstein. For the first time really, Americans could study and absorb the great European traditions, and remain American as well.