“There was something volcanic about Hambourg's style. With complete disdain for anything so prosaic as technical accuracy, he would pile sonority upon sonority. His records, and he made many, are often incredible. Through them, to be sure, one does get something of the vitality of the man and the excitement that he must have brought to music. But one also gets a profusion of wrong notes, text changes, even halting passages that would make his playing inexplicable today.”