In 1986 I made six programmes about The Mysterious Art of the Conductor for the BBC's World Service. These derived from Interviews with nine conductors, among them Pierre Boulez, Colin Davis, Bernard Haitink and Charles Mackerras. Each programme lasted half-an-hour and included music examples. The interviews were much longer, but each was filleted and spliced so as to juxtapose – and sometimes contrast – the views of different conductors on particular aspects of their art. The interview with Pierre Boulez, reproduced here in full, was recorded in Broadcasting House on 25 October 1986. It gave me special pleasure and is, I believe, of special interest.

In music's huge jungle somebody, once, wanted to build a road: a road you can walk on and one which leads somewhere. Such a road is Bartók's Mikrokosmos. A conceptual work, not a mere succession of pieces: each of them is part of a total vision based on similar elements and unfolding according to similar principles. If you are even a little familiar with them, you will recognize their flavor even if you turn on the radio in the middle of a piece.

The project of introducing an unknown repertory into discourses on music can be approached in a range of ways. The writer can make a case about its regrettable neglect and its unjustified exclusion from a historical canon, or can argue for its (political) relevance to the present. Or s/he can simply try to persuade readers of its aesthetic qualities: this third desire might well drive the first two, however covertly. The path I take here is unabashedly more ambitious. In attempting to open the hearts and minds of the uninitiated reader to a composer little-known outside Switzerland and Hungary, I will suggest that he offers us a significantly new way of thinking about music history in the 20th century as a whole.

• London, Royal Albert Hall Proms 2007 Robert Stein, Rodney Lister, Malcolm Miller, Martin Anderson

• Tallinn: Estonian Music Days Benjamin Broening

• Gloucester: Three Choirs Festival Roderic Dunnett

• Cheltenham Festival 2007: MacMillan and Payne Paul Conway

• Cardiff, Welsh National Opera: ‘The Sacrifice’ Roderic Dunnett

• London, Almeida Theatre: Streetwise Opera Jill Barlow

• Pretoria: Stefans Grové Annemie Stimie

• Mendham, Suffolk: A Pastoral Revelation John Wheatley

• Brussels, La Monnaie: Henze's ‘Phaedra’ Roderic Dunnett

• St. Albans, Maltings Arts Centre: Stephen Dodgson's ‘Nancy the Waterman’ Jill Barlow

• Further Reports Rodney Lister, Raymond Head

• Messiaen's ‘Oiseaux Exotiques’ Christopher Dingle

• Hungarian Music Tim Rutherford-Johnson

• Theology in Cage and Stockhausen Clemens Gresser

• Twenty Years with Cage and Cunningham Rodney Lister

• Arthur Wills Memoir Bret Johnson

• Philip Grange Rodney Lister

• Oboe Plus James Weeks

• Rorem Concertos Bret Johnson

• Maconchy and Musgrave Guy Rickards

• Claudia Molitor James Weeks

• Bruno Skulte Bret Johnson

• Zeitsprünge Michael Graubart

• Jonathan Little John Wheatley

• Roussel's ‘Padmâvatî’ Guy Rickards