you are in london to play mahler, and mahler i know is very important to you.was born in what we now call the czech republic, he spent much of his life in vienna making music. yes, yes. are you saying that you couldn't properly understand and interpret mahler without knowing a great deal about the way czechs think, the way they behave, their humour, their culture, and you have to bring that to the music? it's a... it's a hard question because it's complex. there are people who are not able to speak the language of the country in which piece of music or work of art has originated, and yet they have an instinct that will enable them to interpret it in a way that the natives of that country will feel being authentic in spirit, and there is plenty of that in music. when i think of karajan, when he came with the berliners and played shostakovich symphony number 10 in moscow and leningrad at the time, the russians went crazy, they couldn't imagine anything like it. shostakovich was one of them, and yet... karajan captured the spirit? he captured the spirit even thoug