Emanuel Ax

I have been coming to Los Angeles since 1975 to perform.

Everyone is different. Sometimes it's very exciting; sometimes very scary.

It is wonderful to see how happy all my friends in the LA Philharmonic are in their new home.

The stage is close to being in the middle of the hall, so that the performers are surrounded by the listeners. I feel that we are all experiencing the music together.

All of us love applause, and so we should - it means that the listener likes us!

If the audience walks out of a concert thinking, What a wonderful experience, then we have done our job.

Mozart often wrote to his family that certain variations or sections of pieces were so successful that they had to be encored immediately, even without waiting for the entire piece to end.

Applause should be an emotional response to the music, rather than a regulated social duty.

Pianists don't argue too much generally because we have such a hard time just getting things right; arguing is for string players.