We have conservatories, opera houses, concert halls, orchestras, and festivals in every major city. Our conservatory, which was founded by Hindemith in the 1930s, is quite good, I must say. But we also have a very strong community of classical-music listeners and performers. Great teachers, too. At times, I actually wanted to be a composer more than a pianist.
Few children grow up wanting to compose serious music.
My parents are intellectuals. I began at 5 to improvise on a 2 octave elektro-orgel and a blockflute. He instilled in me not only the skill of learning music directly from the score, but he also encouraged me to continue to improvise in an intelligent way. I had to play throughout my whole lesson in a way that communicated what I saw on the street, the alarms of the city traffic, the school games that I played, etc. I had to make them speak on the piano.