Brahms Quotes

• I once sent him a song and asked him to mark a cross wherever he thought it was faulty. Brahms returned it untouched, saying 'I don't want to make a cemetery of your compositions.'

  Hugo Wolf

  Music, Song, Want

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• Brahms stayed an extra day to hear my [Fifth] Symphony and was very kind ... I like his honesty and open-mindedness. Neither he nor the players liked the finale, which I also think rather horrible.

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Honesty, Player, Thinking

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• There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Music, Witty, Powerful

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• The real Brahms is nothing more than a sentimental voluptuary

  George Bernard Shaw

  Music, Art, Real

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• Brahms' Variations are better than mine, but mine were written before his.

  Franz Liszt

  Variation, Composer, Mines

  "Remembering Franz Liszt" by Arthur Friedheim and Alexander Siloti, (p. 138), 1961.

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• The real Brahms is nothing more than a sentimental voluptuary. rather tiresomely addicted to dressing himself up as Handel or Beethoven and making a prolonged and intolerable noise.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Real, Noise, Sentimental

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• Even if you're playing Brahms or a Beethoven concerto, you've got to have a different vantage point, slightly, each time.

  Nigel Kennedy

  Different, Vantage Point, Ifs

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• When Brahms is in extra good spirits, he sings, "The grave is my joy".

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Music, Joy, Spirit

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• The Germans have four violin concertos. The greatest, most uncompromising is Beethoven’s. The one by Brahms vies with it in seriousness. The richest, the most seductive, was written by Max Bruch. But the most inward, the heart’s jewel, is Mendelssohn’s.

  Joseph Joachim

  Heart, Jewels, Seductive

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• A landscape, torn by mists and clouds, in which I can see ruins of old churches, as well as of Greek temples - that is Brahms.

  Edvard Grieg

  Clouds, Greek, Church

  Edvard Grieg, Finn Benestad (2000). “Letters to colleagues and friends”, Peer Gynt Pr

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• I listen to music when I write. I need the musical background. Classical music. I'm behind the times. I'm still with Baroque music, Gregorian chant, the requiems, and with the quartets of Beethoven and Brahms. That is what I need for the climate, for the surroundings, for the landscape: the music.

  Elie Wiesel

  Writing, Musical, Needs

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

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• The only work that can be compared to Chopin's Etudes, innovatively, where every note is essential and one becomes completely exposed, is the Brahms-Paganini variations. These are etudes - not as interesting musically as, say, the Brahms-Handel - but they are incredible.

  Carlo Grante

  Interesting, Essentials, Variation

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• I think Bach is equally a romantic composer because he laid the seeds harmonically for people like Chopin and the great Romantics, Brahms, so its difficult to you know all this like labelling and putting - I think Bach is attractive to musicians because he supersedes the labels.

  Nigel Kennedy

  Thinking, People, Musician

  "The Music Show" with Andrew Ford, www.abc.net.au. February 20, 2010.

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• Classical pianist Awadagin Pratt. I first heard this eccentric and introverted performer when I was living in the Midwest. He was playing Brahms ballades - haunting.

  Daniel Breaker

  Midwest, Haunting, Eccentric

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• If you think of the history, in the days of Brahms and Beethoven and all these guys, almost every concert was a new music concert. To play something old was really an exception.

  Esa-Pekka Salonen

  Thinking, Play, Guy

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Every orchestra is different. Sometimes, you're blown away by a particular musician. If I'm playing the Brahms concerto, it's crucial to have a great oboe player, because we work in tandem.

  Joshua Bell

  Player, Musician, Oboes

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• I saw Brahms's Hungarian Rhapsody on television when I was two. Tom and Jerry were playing it together. I thought, 'Hey, if a cat can play like that, why can't I?'

  Lang Lang

  Cat, Play, Two

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• The Detroit String Quartet played Brahms last night. Brahms lost.

  Bennett Cerf

  Night, Lasts, Detroit

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• Brahms once remarked that the mark of an artist is how much he throws away. Nature, the great creator, is always throwing things away. A frog lays several million eggs at a sitting. Only a few dozen of these become tadpoles, and only a few of those become frogs. We can let imagination and practice be as profligate as nature.

  Stephen Nachmanovitch

  Artist, Practice, Eggs

  Stephen Nachmanovitch (1991). “Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art”, p.69, Penguin

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• I can't stand being in Chicago anymore and hearing the Brahms Violin Concerto in the elevator. Because that shows me that when they come to the concert hall they listen to it in the same way.

  Daniel Barenboim

  Chicago, Violin, Way

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• I stick to playing Brahms, but I love listening to Led Zeppelin, and I've also been a big fan of Earth Wind and Fire since the Seventies and of The Gap Band since the Eighties.

  Condoleezza Rice

  Fire, Wind, Listening

  Source: www.pittsburghurbanmedia.com

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• Fortunately, I started very young, so I read music very well. And my favorite composers to play are Brahms and Mozart.

  Condoleezza Rice

  Play, My Favorite, Young

  Source: www.pittsburghurbanmedia.com

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• the writer must resist this temptation [to quote] and do his best with his own tools. It would be most convenient for us musicians if, arrived at a given emotional crisis in our work, we could simply stick in a few bars of Brahms or Schubert. Indeed many composers have no hesitation in so doing. But I have never heard the practice defended; possibly because that hideous symbol of petty larceny, the inverted comma, cannot well be worked into a musical score.

  Ethel Smyth

  Emotional, Practice, Temptation

  Ethel Smyth (1922). “Streaks of life”

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• You don't see the European classical musicians allowing the music of Bach, Brahms, or Beethoven to become extinct. That music has gone on for centuries and centuries. We have the same obligation. Why do we have to become so 'hip' that we can say, 'Bebop is square,' or "New Orleans is square'? This, to me, is a shame.

  Rahsaan Roland Kirk

  Squares, New Orleans, Hips

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• We'll win, of course," he said. "You don't want that," said the demon. "Why not, pray?“ “Listen," said Crowley desperately, "how many musicians do you think your side have got, eh? First grade, I mean." Aziraphale looked taken aback. "Well, I should think-" he began. "Two," said Crowley. "Elgar and Liszt. That's all. We've got the rest. Beethoven, Brahms, all the Bachs, Mozart, the lot. Can you imagine eternity with Elgar?

  Neil Gaiman

  Taken, Mean, Winning

  Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett (2011). “Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch”, p.45, Harper Collins

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