"I have diminishing interest in posterity," Spano said. "I no longer feel that the test of the value of something is time. What's much more important is the power of a musical experience in a given moment. And that can happen with a Paganini violin piece that most of us agree shouldn't be called a masterpiece. I think of composers as setting up possibilities, not creating objects....Pieces of music are wormholes, which we can enter to escape our normal experience of time."

from Measure for Measure: Exploring the Mysteries of Conducting

Justin Davidson, The New Yorker, August 21, 2006