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After he became a follower of Russian Orthodox Christianity, he spoke critically of Western Christian beliefs, and of the sacred music they yielded, including the works of Bach. In recent years this view softened: in 2007, he told a New York Times interviewer that he had reconsidered some of his beliefs and had returned to playing Bach on the organ. "I reached a point where everything I wrote was terribly austere and hidebound by the tonal system of the Orthodox Church," he said, "and I felt the need, in my music at least, to become more universalist: to take in other colors, other languages."