How do you rehearse a piece of music? How do you learn it by heart?
Firstly, we don't have to memorize it. We have the sheet music in front of us on the lectern. That avoids a lot of struggle. I usually just start with the tricky passages. I look at the score, the sheet music of the first violin part that I get and then I immediately see at a glance what I really need to study and what will work out. It's a process of routine and experience. Some pieces come back and then you also know that it is a piece of cake.

If you are so involved with music, can it still affect you?
Certainly, because they remain snapshots that touch your being or not. That always brings healing to me. It always has to do with emotions and they come and go. Emotions keep moving and in that respect it always keeps flowing.

When you're on tour, do you ever study in your hotel room?
It may happen that I need it. Then we usually use a hotel sourdine, a damper, so you can study in the hotel. There are also special agreements about this during tour, from when you can and cannot study. So that people around you, colleagues and of course other hotel guests, can relax.

What is really characteristic of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra?
The drive. It seems as if some kind of switch is activated the moment we are on stage with the conductor. For example, we had a conductor competition, in which we also received back from certain jury members that we do not immediately lose our own autonomous sound or our way of playing with various conductors. At first I thought it was something positive, but it could also be something negative. It is of course quite an art as an orchestra to give what a conductor asks, beyond our habits. And in that sense, all humans are creatures of habit. You can say: 'We just play like that.' But it remains a challenge to get yourself to do other things based on your habits.