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.

Stephen Hough

When people ask me for playlists, I always put in 'Moonlight Sonata' because it is my favorite song. I play it all the time.

Albert Hammond, Jr.

My 10th Sonata is a sonata of insects. Insects are born from the sun... they are the sun's kisses.

Alexander Scriabin

The divine spark leaps from the finger of God to the finger of Adam, whether it takes ultimate shape in a law of physics or a law of the land, a poem or a policy, a sonata or a mechanical computer.

Alfred Whitney Griswold

Music critics have made it quite clear that any composer who ever contributed a four-bar jingle to a film was to be referred to as a 'Hollywood composer' from then on, even if the rest of his output were to consist solely of liturgical organ sonatas.

Andre Previn

I have no idea what was the first record I ever bought, but I think I asked my mom to buy me... um... a collection of Beethoven when I was a little girl because I became very addicted to his music. It might have been piano sonatas.

Beth Hart

I played a lot of Bach's partitas and sonatas; I like the way that Bach was abstracting already from these dance forms.

Caroline Shaw

In my mother's belly, I remember not liking the tempi my father played the Beethoven Sonatas in.

Daniel Barenboim

It's funny, because in 1970 I met the Beatles quite by a chance at a party. It was the Beethoven bicentenary, and I was then also playing the Beethoven Sonatas. And that's all they wanted to hear about - I wanted to talk about them, and all they wanted to talk about was Beethoven.

Daniel Barenboim

I think, bad times, I sit down and I play - there's definitely certain songs that touch in certain ways. I go back to 'Moonlight Sonata' by Beethoven; that usually takes care of everything.

David Bryan

I grew up with classical music when I was a ballet dancer. Now when I have to prepare an emotional scene, to cry or whatever, I listen to sonatas. Vivaldi and stuff. It's just beautiful to me.

Diane Kruger

Right at the end of the war I wrote a piano sonata, which was written at a time when Sam Barber used to come down here and we used to have lunch together in a very nice old hotel that's now not there.

Elliott Carter

I love the early sonatas; I love the early Mozart, period. I'm really fond of that moment when he was either emulating Haydn or Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach or anybody but himself. The moment he found himself, as conventional wisdom would have it, at the age of 18 or 19 or 20, I stop being so interested in him.

Glenn Gould

I really love to play 'Moonlight Sonata' by Beethoven. I can still read music, but I need to practise more. The way your fingers move - it's something that comes from memory. I love music.

Irina Shayk

In college, when a girlfriend asks you to watch a film in black and white, you do it. That's when I discovered a lot of films. I was really obsessed with Bergman, the whole world he creates. One that I always quote a lot is 'Autumn Sonata.' When you see women go through issues with their mom, you realize how right and poignant Bergman was.

Jonás Cuarón

It's very hard to find a pianist that's willing to play the so-called accompanist role on part of the program and yet be capable of being a great solo pianist that you would want for the big sonatas.

Joshua Bell

There is no piece of guitar music that has the formal beauty of a piano sonata by Mozart, or the richly worked out ideas and passion of a late Beethoven string quartet, or for that matter the beautiful mellifluous poetry of a Chopin Ballade.

Julian Bream

Michael Berkeley's 'Sonata' is very - what can you say - melodious.

Julian Bream

Really important books to me are the classics. I try very hard to read them well - you know, especially once I got serious about writing. So, reading Tolstoy several times - 'War and Peace,' 'The Kreutzer Sonata' - all those were really important to me.

Karl Marlantes

The first dramatic experience I had of music was when I was five. The electricity had gone out in Georgia, and my mum played the 'Moonlight Sonata' on the piano.

Katie Melua

I was living in a suburban town north of London, dutifully practicing my Mozart sonatas. And the milkman who delivered the milk in the mornings was kind of milkman by day, composer-artist by night.

Max Richter