If you go to Japan for instance, you should know that they have a different way of playing Beethoven or Brahms. But if you play with them Mozart, Debussy, Mendelssohn, they have a wonderful light feeling for that.
I put together the influences of my life in as clear a way as I possibly can, in the same way that Beethoven or Schoenberg or Bach put their influences together.
I'm very eclectic in my music tastes - anything from Nina Simone to Beethoven to Talvin Singh.
And it's a crime because the great plays of history, going all the way back to the Greeks, are part of everybody's heritage. It's just like in music, Beethoven or Mozart, that's everybody's heritage.
Pulse as an active means of expression, Stravinsky and Beethoven are the two masters of that.
What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.
Composers most identified with the chamber music form are Corelli, Vivaldi, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and, of course, Bach. Of course, Bach. If there is any one composer who gives us reason and emotion, it is Bach.
I find little in the works of Beethoven, Berlioz, Wagner and others when they are led by a conductor who functions like a windmill.
I occasionally play works by contemporary composers and for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven.
There was one thing Beethoven didn't do. When one of his string quartets was played, you can believe the second violin wasn't improvising.
In science, if you don't do it, somebody else will. Whereas in art, if Beethoven didn't compose the 'Ninth Symphony,' no one else before or after is going to compose the 'Ninth Symphony' that he composed; no one else is going to paint 'Starry Night' by van Gogh.
I'm a Beethoven freak. I listen to him all the time.
The Beethoven Experience provided the opportunity to solidify the relationship between the Orchestra and me, the Orchestra and me and the public, between all of us and the city of New York, because Beethoven after all is a really amazing point of reference.
With copious evidence ranging from Plato's haughtiness to Beethoven's tirades, we may conclude that the most brilliant people of history tend to be a prickly lot.
If you look back, Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven were mixing music and humor all the time.
Bach and Beethoven, all of them, they had to write something to please the upper structure, those with money and power.
Beethoven suppressed everything, his personal life disappeared until he was locked inside. That is a figure quite extreme.
It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.
Nobody has Francis Bacon on their walls in their house - or very few people - but sometimes people listen to Beethoven as though it was background and a comfort, and I think that is very dangerous.
There is a reactionary conservative side of classical music, which is not the most exciting side of it. The side that draws me in, there's a real encouragement of risk-taking, going back to masters of that tradition like Beethoven and Bartok and Stravinsky.
I hate playing the piano! And it's so hard to fight for Beethoven's soul! But that's what I have to do!
If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music and of aviation.
I really like the Doors. I like Kevin Spacey, Bruce Springsteen, Will Farrell, Reggie Watts, Tina Turner, who is also very hot, Tracy Chapman. Beethoven.
Learning great works like the Liszt Sonata or Beethoven's 'Hammerklavier' should be a struggle to a certain extent, where you need to labor intensely with your own brain and soul for the meaning of the work instead of cutting and pasting a bunch of stuff together from the Internet and - boom! - there you are with a performance ready to go.
In my younger days, I used to visit record shops and covet boxed sets of Beethoven symphonies, Wagner operas, Bach cantatas, Mozart piano concertos. Only rarely was I able to find the money for such luxuries.
Bach and Beethoven erected temples and churches on the heights. I only wanted to build dwellings for men in which they might feel happy and at home.
I free-form it, rock n' roll it. I'm a creature of risk, so I don't know how I'm going to explore a Beethoven symphony until I'm doing it.
Beethoven's reputation is based entirely on gossip. The middle Beethoven represents a supreme example of a composer on an ego trip.
If a professional musician in a symphony orchestra is playing Beethoven. But this particular orchestra have played this particular chestnut so many times, they can play it in their sleep. Does the genius remain present in the music or not?
Anybody can build a building, putting some doors into it, but how many times have you been in a building that moves you to tears the way Beethoven's 'Eighth' does?
While I'm working, I stick with music that won't distract me - the dub stylings of Scientist and King Tubby, maybe some Beethoven string quartets.
I think a great piece, whenever it was written, gets under our skin, makes us feel something. That's what Beethoven was trying to do.
If Beethoven could write his 'Eroica Symphony' stone deaf, then William Wyler can do a musical.
My mom and I were super tight. I think she really wanted me to be an artist, you know? She used to like to tell people she wanted to be Beethoven's mother. That was her thing. She wanted to be the mother of this person.
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.
The feeling about a soldier is, when all is said and done, he wasn't really going to do very much with his life anyway. The example usually is: he wasn't going to compose Beethoven's Fifth.