“Bernstein observed that the composer was “born in the spring and died in the spring. In a sense, he lived his whole life in a springtime of creativity. All his music is springlike, newly budding, rooted in the familiar past, yet fresh and sharp, with that stinging, paradoxical combination of the inevitable and the unexpected.”

“Bernstein observed that the composer was “born in the spring and died in the spring. In a sense, he lived his whole life in a springtime of creativity. All his music is springlike, newly budding, rooted in the familiar past, yet fresh and sharp, with that stinging, paradoxical combination of the inevitable and the unexpected.”

— Jonathan Cott