When you perform, I always say the audience is part of a performance.

You need that emotional exchange.

It's not just at the end of a piece, the applause.

It's what you sense while you perform a piece.

You get the vibrations from the audience, what they feel, what you hopefully have conveyed to them.

Our mission basically is to inspire and enrich lives with our music.

So we had to find a way.

Going dormant for months and months simply was not an option.

The audience we had was the people with the cameras filming us, and it took a lot of imagination from everyone.

No winds on stage and only 42 players.

For me personally what was so great and positive in that experience that after that year, I felt musically, I had so much more interaction with every musician who was playing on stage.

I don't think that digital will reduce live attendance.

There is a way to do this by demystifying some of what classical music or symphonic music is.

And I think that's going to make it perhaps more intriguing for people to give it a try and actually come to the hall.

So as I introduce the orchestra and they came on stage one by one, the audience gave them this standing ovation that felt like about five minutes long.

And it was so incredibly moving for me to witness this.

Everyone is just so excited and over the moon that it's possible again.

To go back to live performances actually tells you everything what music is about, it's about sharing.

When we talked about what to program for the coming season, a lot of orchestras said we have to play safe.

I think that our audience is so hungry to hear the orchestra again so we can feed them actually sometimes with more adventurous stuff.

To discover great new music, new in the sense that you have never heard it before and that might be 400 years old or two weeks old, it's especially an enriching experience.

Music was missed.

Music making was missed dearly during this year.

We all know more than ever before that we have to care for each other.

We proudly always talk about the Cleveland Orchestra, a family which includes our audience, of course.

The performer needs the audience.

The audience needs the performer.