I just conducted the best Tchaikovsky 4th Symphony in all of my years performing that work. It happened at the New Hampshire Music Festival where I just concluded my second tenure as Music Director. My first tenure was from 1993-2009. And then I was asked to come back in 2016 and it has been a labor of love for all these years. The revelation was that for the first time the Tchaikovsky 4th was completely my own. There were no ghosts of past great conductors and their ideas hanging around influencing what I was doing, not even my own past ideas. It was purely me, creating totally in the present and it felt so good. And everyone on stage was caught up, making it the best performance of a major warhorse at the Festival ever. Although I remain intensely interested in the ideas of my professional colleagues, any power that I have as artistic resides in me.