Stephen Schwarzman heads one of Wall Street’s most successful private equity firms, The Blackstone Group, which he launched together with Peter Peterson in 1985. Today with assets under management in excess of $98 billion, it is the largest firm in its field. According to Forbes Magazine, Schwarzman himself is a multibillionaire.

How Schwarzman learned classical music was unique. While in college, he had a fatalistic injury playing touch football that would trigger an encounter with classical music. Laid up over the summer, he set out “to listen to literally every composer”. In this revealing discussion with host Gilbert Kaplan, Schwarzman recounts that experience and also talks about:

• His attempt at the violin as a child that lasted only three months when it became clear “I had no talent.”
• How he became an impresario while attending Yale, launching a ballet program on campus for the first time.
• Although he was once sighted reading financial reports throughout a concert at Carnegie Hall, he usually cannot work when music is on in the background.
• He “got close” to making a gift to a New York musical institution, a “very, very large one and for whatever reason that one didn’t go forward.” Earlier he had made a $100 million gift to the New York Public Library.
• His musical choices include works by Tchaikovsky, Brahms and Beethoven, “a very difficult character, probably the most muscular of the composers.”
• In his fantasy he’d have been a star conductor.