Hilary Hahn Quotes

I grew up loving symphonies. Beethoven is beautiful.

I can take any series of numbers and turn it into music, from Bach to bebop, Herbie Hancock to hip-hop.

When I was 5 or 6, I was messing around with the piano, and I listened to everything from Chopin to boogie-woogie.

I don't believe in a composer who is only able to compose, who can't play or conduct, can only use a computer. If that trend continues there will be no more symphonies, no more oratorios.

I find little in the works of Beethoven, Berlioz, Wagner and others when they are led by a conductor who functions like a windmill.

The way I feel about music is that there is no right and wrong. Only true and false.

I play the way I do because it allows me to come up with the sickest sounds possible. That's the point now isn't it?

To have everything written for you... It's not really creating. That's why I think symphony drummers are so limited. They 're limited to exactly what was played a hundred years before them by a thousand other drummers.

I feel pretty comfortable in a lot of different musical styles. I like rhythm, and I like melody and so forth.

My thinking musically has always been more advanced - it is difficult to get it down onto paper sometimes, even now.

In South America, I heard the 8th Symphony of Beethoven. And the young conductor thought, Beethoven must be heroic. But this is piece which shouldn't be heroic. And this was such a misunderstanding, such a deep misunderstanding.

I'm kind of the town pump. I think I have a pretty good ear for what sounds good in this style.

I play a musical instrument a little, but only for my own amazement.

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 feel that I speak the musical language.

I also have a big love of classical music played on piano because this is the environment I grew up in my brother being one of the great masters in this world.

After conducting Wagner, Beethoven's triple concerto is like taking an Alka Seltzer.

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

Music is a reservoir... of sounds.

I'm not an intellectual composer.

Composing is what I love most from what I do. Each genre has a unique expression that you cannot supplant with another. All the records co-inspire each other though they are not tied conceptually in any way to another.

I abhor the words 'classical music.' Few things satisfy me more than a really good cover version.

People are always defining and re-defining music. My style of playing has been characterized as smooth jazz and acid jazz. I listen as I play; I'm not caught up in defining the type of music I play.

I'm not a culture snob. So while, of course, I think the Mozart 'Requiem' or, say, Beethoven's 'Ninth' are some of the greatest works of art in the history of humankind, that's not to say the Beatles or Queen or Simon and Garfunkel aren't brilliant, beautiful, important works of art that should be sung without a sense of irony.