My things are written with an appalling lack of practicability (Brahms in letter to Joachim)

Too much beer and beard (Paul Dukas)

Benjamin Britten claims that he plays through 'the whole of Brahms' at intervals to see whether Brahms is really as bad as he thought, and ends by discovering he is actually much worse' (Colin Wilson)

He has no charm for me, I find him cold and obscure, full of pretensions, and without any real depth
(Tchaikowsky)

I have played over some music of that scoundrel Brahms. What a giftless b*****d(Tchaikowsky)

In a single cymbal crash from a work of Lizst there is expressed more spirit and feeling than in all Brahms Symphonies and his serenades besides (Hugo Wolf)

I once sent him a song and asked him to mark a cross where he though it was faulty. Brahms returned it untouched saying 'I dont want to make a cemetery of your composition' (Hugo Wolf)

I believe Johannes to be the true Apostle, who will also write Revelations (Schumann)

Brahms Requiem has not the true funeral relish. It is so execrably and ponderously dull that the very flattest of funerals would seem like a ballet , or at least a Danse Macabre
(George Bernard Shaw)

PS How do you edit a title ?? Nteresting indeed !

Who said that?


You ask a mod

The cemetery one was also Hugo Wolf ! Sorry I missed it off, will do an edit now.

Not so much a quotation as an observation, prompted by the fact that I trained as a gastric surgeon and play piano in my spare time:

I believe one of Brahms Piano Concertos (no. 2??) is dedicated to his friend Theodore Bilroth. Bilroth was Professor of Surgery in Vienna at the time and at least two forms of gastrectomy (unimaginatively titled the Bilroth I and the Bilroth II) are named after him (or more precisely, by him).

sorry!