The Argentine composer was sixty-five years old when I met him in Budapest but he looked considerably older. He spoke slowly and haltingly, perhaps because he found it difficult to express his ideas in English. His wife, the cellist Aurora Natola-Ginastera (who had played the world premiere of Ginastera’s Second Cello Concerto that very year, in Buenos Aires) was sitting next to us, watching over her husband with a motherly, anxious look in her eyes. Perhaps he was no longer in good health: he died two years after our interview. He would like to have checked the transcript of the conversation—sadly, he passed away before he could have done so.

I.

An aspect of a work by another composer may set my fantasy in motion: I imagine the way I would approach it. This is of common occurrence among composers. I think this is one explanation for the presence of so many different styles in contemporary music, in contrast with the past.

When I was young, Bartók and Berg influenced me in this way. What struck me about Bartók was the way he incorporated imaginary folk music in his Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta as well as in his string quartets. Something similar is present in my own string quartet as well. When I was feeling my way toward dodecaphony, I was gripped by the expressive power of Berg’s music. My first opera, Don Rodrigo, bears traces of the influence of Wozzeck, especially in its structure, in the use of closed forms.

Lutosławski’s style did indeed undergo a radical transformation. My own development toward a personal idiom was much slower. Today, we have one thing in common: a kind of extended tonality. It characterizes his double concerto for oboe, harp, and strings, just as my piano sonata which I completed recently. In both pieces, you will find a new folklore. In his case, it is the polonaise. This particular work of his did not influence me: I heard it on the radio on the day I completed my sonata.

Changes in musical structure are to be found the world over. Composers like Lutosławski, Dutilleux, Petrassi, myself, and others are moving toward a much clearer kind of music. My new cello concerto, for instance, may not be easy but it is very pure music.