Virginia Graham Quotes

Beethoven's symphonies are not 'relaxing.' They are the most exciting things that have ever been created by a human being.

Pulse as an active means of expression, Stravinsky and Beethoven are the two masters of that.

Beethoven always sounds to me like the upsetting of a bag of nails, with here and there an also dropped hammer.

When you hear Bach or Mozart, you hear perfection. Remember that Bach, Mozart and Beethoven were great improvisers. I can hear that in their music.

I think that of my 21 symphonies, each has its own place.

I was proud to work with the great Gershwin, and I would have done it for nothing, which I did.

When I think of Boris Diaw, I think of Beethoven in the age of the romantics

I mean, if Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at twenty-two, the history of music would have been very different. As would the history of aviation, of course.

Undoubtedly [Beethoven's] music often verges on kitsch

Beethoven was just music, and it didn't matter if he could hear it or not - he could feel it. He could hear it in his mind. He could write it down hearing it in his mind. He was just music. Yeah, he's one of my favorite writers of all times.

If you look back, Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven were mixing music and humor all the time.

Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.

Bach and Beethoven, all of them, they had to write something to please the upper structure, those with money and power.

Mozart, Beethoven - how can you not want to share them with everyone and anyone? This stuff is of as great importance as the food we eat and the air we breathe.

To me, Mozart is our Shakespeare, the one who wrote the most dramatic, psychologically most baffling music. He combined ideas that no one else would have thought of putting together.

Mozart has written opera, symphony, sacred and chamber music - not to mention his piano and violin concerti.

If they had Mozart today, they couldn't work with him, although he was a very adaptable man.

If you want to find the source of much of the music of modern day Russia, you will find it in the incredible compositions of that crazed lunatic Berlioz.

If Mozart were around now he would write a killer rock song.

Beethoven's importance in music has been principally defined by the revolutionary nature of his compositions. He freed music from hitherto prevailing conventions of harmony and structure.

To my mind and ear, there is simply nothing that compares to the musical sophistication of a late Beethoven, Bartok, Schubert or Brahms work for minimal forces.

There used to be a certain condescension to Mozart. His music was regarded as pleasant. He was a porcelain figure playing a porcelain harpsichord.

All roads for me lead back to Mozart. In his tragically short life, he breathed new life, fire and meaning into every form of music that existed in his time.

Looking back on it now, I felt that I was blessed much like the masters, I guess - the guys who wrote the concertos.

Shostakovich was one of the great symphonists of all time, and maybe the last great symphonist.