No, no. I never practised medicine. Well, only for a couple of weeks; my father was a doctor and when he went on holiday I filled in for him a couple of times. Of course I worked in a hospital as a psychiatrist during my studies, but, no, I never had a practise.

Those of us principally concerned with early music tend to think of you as “one of us”, but of course this is today far from the truth, for you now divide your time three ways between early music, principally based around Bach, classical and 19th-century music, and contemporary repertoire...

....Yes, but you have to remember that originally the early music movement was very focussed on certain periods of musical history, more precisely the Baroque—Bach, Lully, Marais and so on. And that’s little more than fifty years of music. But two things happened. Firstly, there were people whose interest was in earlier music, Renaissance music, which was fantastic. Then some of those working in baroque music, like me, also became interested in later music like C.P.E. Bach, Haydn, and Beethoven. And so we came to Schubert and other 19th century composers by a process of natural evolution. In fact, I don’t understand why people find it perfectly acceptable for “normal” conductors, so to say, to conduct Debussy, Strauss, Lutoslawski, and of course Beethoven, yet are surprised when people like me do the same. But I think those frontiers are gradually disappearing. After all, conducting is nothing more than standing in front of a group of musicians in rehearsals and concerts and trying to get them to reach a certain musical point. I don’t see why one person should be expected to do that with Bach and another with a different composer. I’m simply interested in music. For a long time one of my problems with baroque music is that I find there is less good music in that period than in other epochs. In the 19th century you have so many great composers, but in my opinion the only really worthwhile music for the forces of the Collegium Vocale is Bach. You can, of course, do Telemann, who is OK, but if a choice has to made between Brahms and Telemann my own is very clear. We did recently do a disc of Graupner, Kuhnau and Bruhns...

...Yes, I was going to mention that, because for me that disc alone contradicts your contention that there is little other worthwhile German baroque music. And surely if we don’t know composers like Telemann, Kuhnau, and Graupner we have no context within which to place Bach.

Of course, that’s absolutely true. And for myself and other musicians it’s very interesting to know Graupner because after hearing such music, which might be lovely or pretty good, you realise just how fantastic Bach is. For that reason from time to time it is our duty to perform the music of such composers. But I’m a musician and hungry for music, music that is as good as possible. The problem is that I’m now conducting a lot of Beethoven, which may not be a very original idea, but the music is just so much better than Graupner. There is bad music, good music, excellent music, and fantastic music. Life being very short, I want to be working with the best music. You cannot do everything and have to focus your attentions. That’s what I want to do now in the baroque field. Take Handel, for example.