Quotes from Charles Hazlewood

When I was young, Tchaikovsky was ruined for me by conductors who made it slick and treacly. Hearing Valery Gergiev conduct Tchaikovsky has been a revelation - he brings out all its raw passion. And Gergiev with the super-virtuoso LSO - well, it's just the perfect combination.

In America, they have this nauseating habit of calling the conductor 'maestro'. I always slightly gag when the cor anglais player goes, 'Maestro, can I discuss bar 19 with you?'

I love the way Monteverdi's opera embodies the triumph of evil love in such a luscious way. The closing love duet is just pure amoral, liquid passion. The Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment sound great in the Albert Hall, and the Glyndebourne cast is fabulous.

I'm always up for music shows such as Jools Holland, but news more than anything, particularly Newsnight. And cookery: Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Rick Stein - it's down to him that I cook fish so much - and the great food alchemist Heston Blumenthal.

It still amazes me how many musicians aren't really interested in engaging with their audience at all. Alfred Brendel, a pianist for whom I have the greatest respect, has described performance as a sacred communion between the artist and the composer. But what about the audience? Music is communication, a two-way street.

Musical 'fusion' projects have earned themselves a bad name, but that's mainly because they often involve pop artists conscripting orchestras to play unimaginative backdrops to their acts. What's really exciting is when you spark off a dialogue between very different musical forces.

Mozart, Beethoven - how can you not want to share them with everyone and anyone? This stuff is of as great importance as the food we eat and the air we breathe.

I spend so much of my time working away, but I love being here. My family is in Somerset, and this is where my heart is.

I'd like to explode a few myths about what we call classical music. It's not high art for the titillation of a chosen few.

It's Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony I'm really looking forward to. Simon Rattle does it perfectly: he understands its primal rhythmic life force, and he and the wonderful Berliners make it a sheer riot of orchestral colour.

I want people to hear really exciting music played by the best, but in a context where they can clap when they want to, chase their toddlers, drink beer, take photos, get lost in the music and generally be themselves. And because a field has no rules, it's the perfect place to create unlikely combinations of musical genres.

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.

Somerset desperately needs more high-end music making on its doorstep, so the chance to share great music spanning genres as diverse as orchestral classics, trip hop and jazz, in the utterly relaxed and cathartic environment of a Somerset field, is for me the fulfilment of a long-term dream.

Our pop scene is among the best in the world because there are 300 languages spoken on the streets of London, compared with 200 in New York. Our diversity is our strength.

Music is about communication, and the chemistry between an audience and the orchestra is absolutely essential; the performance does not exist in a bubble.

I abhor the words 'classical music.' Few things satisfy me more than a really good cover version.

For too long, musicians have been the greatest enemy of music. Their lack of desire to proselytize is a kind of betrayal.