Critics Quote by Edward Abbey

When I was 20, Shostakovich was my favorite composer. I still find his Fifth Symphony wonderful, with its outstanding themes and rhythms. That's the…

— Dave Brubeck

“Outside Soviet Russia, and following the last symphonies of Mahler, Nielsen and Sibelius, an element of obsolescence has unmistakably attached itself to the genre.…

— Pauline Fairclough

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

— Neville Marriner

It seemed to me that had Haydn lived to our day he would have retained his own style while accepting something of the new…

— Sergei Prokofiev

I attempt to compose symphonies, although it is clear to me that logically it is pointless.

— Alfred Schnittke

I don't pretend to want to write the Great American Symphony.

— Henry Mancini

Shostakovich's final pieces, his quartets, are scratching the surface of another world.

— Simon McBurney

“In a regime where words are watched, lies are rewarded, and silence is survival, there is no truth. - Symphony for the City of…

— M T Anderson

A lot of people don't know that Beethoven, when he wrote the Fifth Symphony, that second movement, he took eight years to figure that…

— Wayne Shorter

Mozart, striving for perfection, wrote the same symphony forty-one times. In his case, it worked. He wrote a perfect symphony.

— Edward Abbey

“We should have known that the only reason that Shostakovich’s nightmare restored us to ourselves was so we’d be compelled to drink the cup…

— William T. Vollmann