[Labels] are ways for us to categorize and simplify our lives in ways we shouldn't actually simplify our lives

--- Víkingur Ólafsson, in an interview for Deutsche Grammophon, on the launch of his  Debussy-Rameau albmu, 3 June, 2020

Excerpt from timecode 3:28:

I don't think about labels at all, I mean like musical labels. I'm not talking about Deutsche Grammophon. I'm talking about Neoclassical or Classical or even Baroque or Impressionism or Jazz or Rock or Pop or whatever – it doesn't mean anything to me - all those stamps. They are completely outside of the music. They are ways for us to categorize and simplify our lives in ways we shouldn't actually simplify our lives because music is much more complex than that.

"such a pleasure to read that it must have been hell to write"

--- The Economist, in its review of Alex Ross's Listen To This (2010)

From the opening paragraph of the review:

“Writing about music isn’t especially difficult,” avers Alex Ross, the New Yorker’s music critic, at the start of his new collection of essays. That sounds too modest. Mr Ross’s history of music in the 20th century, “The Rest is Noise”, published in 2007, is such a pleasure to read that it must have been hell to write. The same goes for these pieces, which are mostly reworked articles from his day job, ranging from Björk to Brahms, and Radiohead to Verdi.