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To me, Mozart is our Shakespeare, the one who wrote the most dramatic, psychologically most baffling music. He combined ideas that no one else would have thought of putting together.

If they had Mozart today, they couldn't work with him, although he was a very adaptable man.

Most people in the Western world grow up with the received wisdom that Mozart was a genius. But few people necessarily know why. More than anyone else, he captured this something which is the human condition, the fine line that we all constantly dance between joy and pain, between absolute happiness and absolute heartbreak.

Why should be elite, music? Excuse me. Music must be for everybody.

For anyone who doesn't have that connection with Mozart, I urge those people to go and find some of his music, because it can quite genuinely make you just glad to be alive.

Mozart has written opera, symphony, sacred and chamber music - not to mention his piano and violin concerti.

If Mozart were around now he would write a killer rock song.

Bach and Beethoven, all of them, they had to write something to please the upper structure, those with money and power.

Mozart is my first strength.

One of the problems that we face through the media attention that these artists receive is that there has been an awful lot of talk about opera and classical music being elite and being for an elitist group.