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I once made a list of my Top Ten Films and the list had 40 movies on it. What is more, if I had made the list a year before, or a year later, the 40 movies might have been quite different. One cannot really pick a permanent set.

So, when Classics Today executive editor David Hurwitz published his list of “12 Operas I Cannot Live Without,” and challenged his audience to come up with their own lists, the same problem popped up. “You mean the dozen I cannot live without today?”

While I love opera, like Hurwitz, I have to admit I am not an opera nut. That’s a different breed. Opera does seem to attract the crazies — the ones who swear by a 1948 barely audible recording, made over a telephone line, of Maria Callas singing La Sonnambula — in the unauthorized 1848 edition only performed once, in Belfast, Ireland in 1873. You know, the one with the interpolated aria in Act 2. Yes, crazy like that.

I have been listening to classical music for more than 60 years, and am a classical music generalist: I love it all, from pianists to chamber music to symphonic and vocal music — and, of course, opera. But opera has no special place for me. Opera people care who the tenor is; I am more interested in the composer, which means I’m not included in the opera inner circle.

So, my list is not made up of the usual names: Verdi, Bellini, Puccini, and doesn’t automatically include the ABCs of opera popularity — Aida, Boheme, Carmen. It’s not that I dislike them, but I have seen them enough times that I don’t need to experience them yet again. They will always sell enough tickets, even without my attendance.

These are the works that I choose when I want to hear opera, to enjoy the music in them and the emotions they arouse. I could list more than 12, but Hurwitz’s assignment limits the number — although I might cheat a bit.

1. Handel: Rodelinda

The first opera I ever attended was in 1966 when the Handel Society of New York staged Rodelinda at Carnegie Hall with Teresa Stich-Randall and Maureen Forrester with a pick-up pit orchestra conducted by Brian Priestman. I couldn’t stop humming the tunes.

Years later, I found a three-disk LP album of the opera in a smooshed-up box in a thrift store. I don’t remember who performed it, probably some Eastern Europe company on a back-water label no one’s ever heard of. I played it over and over. The familiar melodies were comforting.

The same year I saw Rodelinda, the same group also performed Xerxes and I saw that, too. Since, I have seen Giulio Cesare live and a truly brilliant staging of Semele by the Arizona Opera Company, but it is Rodelinda that sticks.

2. Mozart: Don Giovanni

The opera I have seen most, and that I love as music as well as theater, is Don Giovanni. I’ve seen it more often than any other live opera (except the infinite Bohemes and Carmens I saw through duty as my newspaper’s opera critic).

Most operas, even the really good ones, can not be defended on the basis of their plots, which are, at best, nonsensical and goofy. But Don Giovanni has a story with action, believable characterizations, and psychological subtlety. To say nothing of some really great tunes.

And it is a truly revolutionary work, written at a revolutionary moment in history. I love when the partygoers at the end of the first act just kind of stop everything and belt out the words, “Viva la Libertad!” And also that, at the end, the Don has the courage to refuse to repent. He may be the villain of the piece, but he is also the hero.

I’ve owned a half-dozen versions of the piece on LP and now CD, but my go-to performance is the oddly cinematic, opened-up film staging with Cesare Siepi as the Don, and conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler, available on DVD.

3. Mozart: Nozze di Figaro

On his list, Hurwitz permits only one opera per composer, but I can’t do that, because the three operas I love most, and can listen to over and over, are all by Mozart. Years ago, I wrote about what I was calling the “perfect” operas — that is, those with no longueurs, boring parts, added and unnecessary show-off arias to highlight the tenor or soprano. These are operas with plots that are defensible, if not great, pacing that doesn’t drag, and some level of human reality in them.

By any of those standards La Nozze di Figaro tops the list. These are all real people doing real people things, hurting like real people, loving like real people, and most importantly, forgiving like real people. And, all the the perfectly psychologically apt music of Mozart. If I were to choose the best opera ever written, this would be it.

4. Mozart: Zauberflöte

Talk of silly plots: Just about the worst story in opera is found in one of the most popular works. Everything about the story in The Magic Flute is preposterous. But the music is so infectious, you give up and don’t care.

Especially if you get to see the staging by Julie Taymor with its giant bunraku puppets. It is stage magic along with great music. It is a slightly abridged version and sung in English, but it is so good, and so much fun, you really have to watch it.

Or there’s Ingmar Bergman’s film version, sung in Swedish, which captures all the fairy-tale flavor of the thing. But really, there are dozens of recorded versions, both on CD for listening and DVD or Blu-Ray for watching.

5. Berlioz: Le Damnation de Faust

I hadn’t ever thought of it as an opera, but I saw the Metropolitan Opera staging of it in 2009 and was persuaded: It works really well in that Postmodern presentation. Actually thrilling.

As with so much of Berlioz, its reach much exceeds its grasp. Since the composer couldn’t include everything from even Part 1 of Goethe’s Faust, he chose to pick episodes to put to music, making a rather choppy story. Still, the music can be overwhelming when performed with the right belief and energy.

6. Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen

I’ve attended two live Ring cycles, which were quite magnificent (although I am humbled by the fact my dear friend, the late Dimitri Drobatschewsky went to Bayreuth 16 times). But I have to admit this four-opera trilogy (yes, that’s an oxymoron) is best heard on recordings. Not so much because with the great voices of the past, the singing is better (although that is true), but because the action in these “music dramas” is so mythic, and so German Romantic, that no scenery or stage machinery can adequately portray the Rhine maidens singing underwater, the valkyries riding their horses in the air, the gods crossing a rainbow bridge, or the Rhine river overflowing its banks to quench the fire that has set alight the entire world and ended the reign of the gods. Watching it onstage can seem a little tawdry.

But listening to the recording with your eyes closed and imagining the rocky crags, the dark forests, the ring of fire on the mountain top, is so much more convincing as theater of the mind. I say with eyes closed, but you really also need to read the libretto as you listen. Or not libretto — that sounds too much like opera — Wagner doesn’t have a libretto; he has a text.

I have five Ring cycles on CD (Barenboim, Böhm, Furtwängler, Janowski and Solti) and another two on DVD (Boulez and Levine). Is that a little nuts? I suppose. The one I listen too over and over is Solti, which was specifically designed to be played on speakers, with various sound effects added to it by producer John Culshaw.

And yes, I’m counting all 15 hours of the Ring as a single entry.

7. Offenbach: Les Contes d’Hoffmann

If the Ring is too serious, The Tales of Hoffmann counters with frivolity. I love this mini-trilogy (in four parts), especially when all three heroines are sung by the same soprano.

It has some of the chunky episodic feeling of the Berlioz, (compare the Chanson de Kleinzach tavern song here with Mephistopheles’ Song of the Flea in Damnation. Both completely extrinsic to the story, but a chance for the composers to interpolate a great bit of ditty.

The opera is a bit of a mess, as Offenbach never settled on a final version. But any version is a delight.

8. Strauss: Salome

I’ve seen several versions of Richard Strauss’ first opera, and it always seems to work on stage. It’s a short one, in a single act and tells of King Herod, his wife and daughter — Salome — and the prisoner John the Baptist, who Salome has a “thing” for. The prophet rejects her advances and she dances a striptease and has her daddy behead the prophet, whereupon she kisses the severed head. Grand Guignol, for sure, but great music and a surefire staging.

If the Ring fares best on recording, this opera needs to be seen live (or at least on DVD). It is as much theater as music.

9. Bartok: Bluebeard’s Castle

Another short, one-act work of psycho-sexual complexity, Bela Bartok’s early work, which seems to take place entirely in the nation of Allegory, tells the story of Duke Bluebeard and his new wife, who can’t seem to let alone the secrets of her husband’s previous marriages. She forces the secrets out and winds up prisoned with all of them. All very Freudian.

Those secrets are hidden behind doors, and as she opens each door, she finds a world of shimmering music and deadly horrors. There are only two singers/actors in this story, one who wants to uncover the past, and the other who begs her to let them lie. But it is the impressionistic score that makes this work so irresistible.

10. Berg: Wozzeck

There is a second “perfect” opera, after The Marriage of Figaro, one with no unnecessary bits, and everything leading to a single inescapable and shattering climax. It is written in a sort of atonal, 12-tone style (purely Berg’s own version) and is both musically inevitable, and emotionally devastating. Too many people avoid this work, fearing the music will be too dissonant, but every note serves a purpose, and even those fearing to enter the opera house will likely leave knowing they have experienced a work of utter genius.

I claim Wozzeck as my favorite opera of all. There are many versions on disc. This is another one, like Salome, where it is so well designed for performance that almost any version will do, and it’s amazing how many versions there are on Amazon. A serial opera that is actually popular!

11. Adams: Nixon in China

Initially, I thought this piece by John Adams was a gimmick, but I saw it performed in concert by the Phoenix Symphony under Michael Christie and it blew me away. As no other contemporary work for the opera stage, this has joined the repertoire. (Did anyone else notice how the showstopping aria, “I am the wife of Mao Tse Tung” is a gloss on the“Tuba Mirum” section of Mozart’s Requiem?)

No other figure in recent American history figures as so deeply mythic as Richard Nixon — a version of Nixon he seems to have bought into himself (check out the opening line of his autobiography: “I was born in the house my father built.” Can’t get much more Jungian.)

12. Golijov: Ainadamar

Christie also brought Dawn Upshaw to Phoenix to perform Osvaldo Golijov’s Postmodern take on the death of Spanish poet Garcia Lorca. With its mix of musical styles and bouncy, infectious score, it tells of the Spanish actress Margarita Xirgu, who recounts the life and execution of her friend Lorca.

Like all great tragedies, it is both depressing at emotionally exhilarating at the same time. To say nothing of it now being an uncomfortably historical warning about fascist governments.

There seems to be only a single recording of the opera, but with Upshaw in the lead role. The opera led me to seek out other music by Golijov, and I have loved all of it.

Postlude

You may wonder, where is Verdi? Rossini? Puccini? Are they not worthy? Of course they are, and I love them, too. And how can I have omitted Rosenkavalier, which I love to pieces? There is so much more that could have been included, from Monteverdi’s Orfeo to Weill’s Dreigroschenoper.

But this is a list of operas I can’t live without, the ones closest to my heart. The one’s that will make me actually buy tickets. Your list will be different, but if my selection prompts you to try something new, so much the better.

And, finally, seeing opera (with one exception, noted above) is always better than just hearing it. Live is best of all, but DVDs will do in a pinch, and many movie theaters present showings of operas live on their screens, most famously the Metropolitan Opera. Check with your local theaters to see where such performances might be scheduled.

Decluttering my Classical Music, Part 2

August 4, 2021

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As I continue to contemplate the possibility of perhaps, maybe, decluttering my trove of Classical music CDs, I come to the 20th century. I have to admit, that I listen to music from that period more than any other. It was my century. And so, I have a ton of discs from composers who wrote, beginning in the 19th, but extending their careers into the 20th, and now, music from the 21st century.

Sometimes, we forget that such lush music as that of Rachmaninoff or Richard Strauss continued to be written: Strauss’ Four Last Songs, perhaps the most high-calorie confection ever put to paper, was premiered in 1949, four years after the end of World War II, and 36 years after Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. “There’s still plenty of good music to be written in C-major,” said Arnold Schoenberg.

So now, as I did last time, I am going to sort through the violent century and salvage what I think needs to be saved, making a pile of recordings and regretfully saying goodbye to too much great music, but, you know — I’m 73 years old and I’m not going to be able to listen to all of the thousands of CDs that currently clog my shelves.

I’ve set the goal of picking a single work (or set of works) by significant composers to throw on the pile. I’m going by chronological order, according to birth dates. And we start by remembering that Edward Elgar was a 20th century composer. Yes. He was.

Edward Elgar 1857-1934 — Initially I thought the work I could not do without was the doleful Cello Concerto, from 1919. The First World War speaks directly through that music. But, no, I have to go with the Violin Concerto of 1910, which is one of the few noble concertos that can stand with those of Beethoven, Brahms, Sibelius, Berg and Shostakovich — not merely tuneful, but an expression of the highest thoughts and emotions that humans are capable of.

But, I’m in luck. Because I can save the Violin Concerto, played by Pinchas Zukerman on a disc package that includes the Cello Concerto, played by Jacqueline Du Pre, with the Enigma Variations thrown in. A perfect summing up of the best of Elgar.

Gustav Mahler 1860-1911 — Choosing is too hard. I have double-decker shelves devoted to Mahler, the composer who moves me above all others. How can I clear it out? How can I consider any of it as “clutter?” I thought originally I would have to save Das Lied von der Erde, and I don’t know how I can say goodbye to it. But Mahler said famously, the symphony must contain the world, and the piece that does that more than any other is the Third Symphony, and so, I’m putting that on the pile.

I just counted, and I currently have 14 recordings of the Third (with another on the way from Amazon). The one I keep is Riccardo Chailly and the Concertgebouw Orchestra. Not only is it a great performance, but the 2-discs are magnificently engineered. The sound is stunning.

Claude Debussy 1862-1918 — While I love Debussy’s piano music (especially played by Paul Jacobs), the keeper is La Mer. I have not counted the versions on my shelf, but there are not a few.

Pierre Boulez recorded it twice. The second is OK, but nothing special, but his first go-round, on Sony, is cut by diamond and the most exciting one I know. It may not be a sea-spray evocative as some, but it makes a compelling case for it as belonging to the 20th century. It comes in a package with a pile of other Debussy.

Richard Strauss 1864-1949 — Strauss can sometimes seem a bit reptilian. How much is show-biz with his show-off orchestration. But there is no doubt to the sincerity of his Four Last Songs. They are the most profoundly moving orchestral songs I know, outside Mahler’s Der Abschied.

I wanted to save Jessye Norman’s version, with Kurt Masur, but I have to admit, my heart has always belonged to Leontyne Price in these songs, accompanied by Erich Leinsdorf. Both versions are gorgeous, but Price is now packaged with Fritz Reiner’s Also Sprach Zarathustra. On the pile.

Jean Sibelius 1865-1957 — As tightly argued as Mahler is spacious, Sibelius packs a great deal into a well-cinched frame. Of his seven symphonies, the one that speaks to me loudest is the final one, which makes me feel in my bones the vast icy spaces of Scandanavia.

Leonard Bernstein recorded it twice, once for Columbia (now Sony) and later for Deutsche Grammophon. The first is tighter, but the second comes with the Fifth Symphony, giving me the chance to save two symphonies for the price of one. Bernstein slowed his tempos as he got older, and some people don’t like the broadened Fifth, but I have no problem with it. And the Seventh takes me to other places.

Serge Rachmaninoff 1873-1943 — My dearest friend, Alexander, refuses to listen to Rachmaninoff, saying he is too gooey and Romantic. But I have been trying to get him to recognize that his music — especially his later music — is oozing with Modernist irony. What is more sly than the Paganini Rhapsody? Yes, there’s the “big tune,” but even that is undermined by what surrounds it. But if I have to save just one piece, that would be the Symphonic Dances. I love them to death.

But, like so many other things in this list, I can have cake and eat it at the same time, with the recording by Andre Previn and the London Symphony Orchestra, bundled with the gooey, Romantic Second Symphony under Mariss Jansons, and the tornado of the Third Piano Concerto, played by Leif Ove Andsness.

Arnold Schoenberg 1874-1951 — Now we’re entering territory fully recognizable as Modernist. I wish I could save Pierrot Lunaire, but I have only one slot available, and it has to go to Verklaerte Nacht. While I admire Pierrot, I love Transfigured Night.

Of the versions I have, both in its orchestral form and its original sextet form, I am surprised at how good the version is that was recorded by Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic. It goes onto the pile, and gives me the bonus of the Orchestral Variations.

Charles Ives 1874-1954 — I have three or four versions of the Concord Sonata, and heard it live played by Jeremy Denk. It should be saved. But I am going, instead, with the Fourth Symphony, which is pure Ives, with all his usual tricks. Friends think I’m joshing when I claim that Ives’ music is beautiful. But it is. You just have to get used to the idiom.

The best version (I have four of these, too) is the first recording, led by Leopold Stokowski. One word for it: Transcendental.

Maurice Ravel 1875-1937 — Stravinsky dismissed him as a “Swiss watchmaker,” but I think that was only professional jealousy. Yes, we’re all tired of Bolero. But I want to save the Concerto for Left Hand, which is jazzy in parts, terrifying in parts, and always makes you wonder that anyone can play two-hand piano with only one hand.

But there is also that ethereal slow movement of the G-major Piano Concerto. The disc with Martha Argerich playing the G-major and Michel Beroff playing the Left-Hander, with Claudio Abbado and the LSO, also gives us the orchestral version of Le Tombeau de Couperin. What a luscious disc.

Bela Bartok 1881-1945 — There’s a lot to save with Bartok, also. But I can’t have the Contrasts, the piano concertos, the six quartets and the Concerto for Orchestra. No. One disc. And the piece I want to keep most is the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta.

Luckily, one of the greatest performances of that music, by Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony, also features one of the greatest performances of the Concerto for Orchestra. It is essential listening for any music lover.

Igor Stravinsky 1882-1971 — Much music, many styles. Part of me wants to save the Requiem Canticles and the Movements for Piano and Orchestra, just to tweak those who hate 12-tone music. But since the entire 20th century seems launched by The Rite of Spring, just as the 19th was launched by the Eroica, I have to save it.

There are lots of great performances, but none as feral and primal as the first of them recorded by Leonard Bernstein and the NY Phil. Even Stravinsky, who hated “interpretation” in performance agreed that it was like no other. The disc also includes Petrushka, so, what’s not to love?

Anton Webern 1883-1945 — Do we have to? I’m afraid so. Luckily, there isn’t much of it. No one can make blips and blurps like Webern. He was the godfather of all subsequent serial music, disconnected, alienated and difficult. Yet, he makes such interesting sounds. And few pieces last more than a few minutes, even seconds. Take at least one bit of the broccoli: Try a little Webern.

Karajan put out a tight, condensed disc with the Passacaglia, the 5 Movements for String Orchestra, Op. 5, the 6 Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6, and the Symphony, Op. 21. This is a fair sampling, really well played. And the entire symphony lasts only 10 minutes.

Alban Berg 1885-1935 — The third wheel of the Second Vienna School is the easiest to love and enjoy. He is the most emotional, and found a way to cheat on his 12-tones, to suggest key areas. His Violin Concerto is the most powerful fiddle concerto of the whole century, the most personal, the most emotional, and the most beautiful.

No one plays it who doesn’t give it his or her most serious efforts. It cannot be just tossed off. My favorite is by Anne-Sophie Mutter with the Chicago Symphony and James Levine. It also includes Wolfgang Rihm’s Time Chant, which, I’m afraid, I find utterly forgettable. I’m saving the disc, anyway, for Mutter and Berg and all the pain of loss in the world condensed to music.

Serge Prokofiev 1891-1953 — Shouldn’t I save the Seventh Piano Sonata? Or the Third Piano Concerto? Or the Fifth or First symphonies? Yes, I should, but I’m going to save the full ballet score of Romeo and Juliet, which, I believe, is the greatest ballet score of all time. The whole thing, not just the suite. I might be swayed by having seen it danced many times, in some of the best productions ever. But the music stands on its own.

There are three possibilities: Previn, Maazel and Gergiev. I’m going with Maazel and the Cleveland Orchestra. It just noses out the others.

Paul Hindemith 1895-1963 — Hindemith used to be the third part of the triad of Stravinsky, Bartok and Hindemith as the top Modernists in music. But he has fallen on hard times. Stravinsky and Bartok have better tunes. But when Hindemith borrows tunes from Carl Maria von Weber, he is as good as any. I love a lot of Hindemith, but I admit, he is not overtly lovable. But the Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes by Weber is jaunty, catchy and a ton of fun.

A really good performance by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Wolfgang Sawallisch also gives us two of Hindemith’s best other scores, the Mathis der Maler symphony and Nobilissima Visione. This is Hindemith you could actually learn to love.

Duke Ellington 1899-1974 — Yes, in my book, this is classical music. Ellington does for his group of instruments nothing less than what Ravel can do for the standard symphony orchestra, with all the colors and surprises. And harmonically, Ellington is ages ahead of many more traditional composers. I have about 50 discs of Ellington’s music, and I love him in each of his decades. But the height of his creativity and originality was with the band he had in the 1941-42, the so-called Blanton-Webster band, named for bassist Jimmy Blanton and tenor sax, Ben Webster. It’s a misnomer, because you can’t forget all the other luminaries in the band, from Harry Carney to Cootie Williams to Johnny Hodges.

There is a three-disc release that has most of the work the band did in those two years, including Ko-Ko, Cotton Tail, Harlem Air Shaft, Take the A Train, Blue Serge, Sophisticated Lady, Perdido and the C-Jam Blues. Each a miniature tone-poem. This is music to take seriously. Seriously.

Aaron Copland 1900-1990 — There are two Coplands, the earlier, knottier Modernist of the Piano Variations, and the later, popular composer of Rodeo, El Salon Mexico and Billy the Kid. But to my mind, his very best is Appalachian Spring, a ballet score he wrote for Martha Graham. It is usually heard as a truncated suite and enlarged for full orchestra.

But the version I love best, and the one going on my pile, is the original full-length chamber version. Copland recorded it himself, along with the suite from Billy the Kid. Unfortunately, you have to put up with the tedious and tendentious Lincoln Portrait, here narrated by Henry Fonda.

Harry Partch 1901-1974 — England has its eccentrics, but America has its crackpots, and Partch is Exhibit A. Having decided that the tempered musical scale is a “mutilation” of true music, he invented and built a whole orchestra of new instruments, such as the chromelodion, the quadrangularis reversum, the zymo-xyl, the gourd tree and cloud-chamber bowls, in order to play music in his 43-note octave. I saw an exhibit of them at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in the 1960s. They were stunningly beautiful to look at. Hearing them, is something different.

Partch wrote a lot of music for his instruments, some enchanting, like his songs on Hobo graffiti, Barstow. I am saving his full-length Delusions of the Fury, which is based on a Japanese Noh play and an African legend and a codification of Partch’s own delusions. Hooray for him.

Dimitri Shostakovich 1906-1975 — Surely the major composer of the middle of the 20th century, Shostakovich labored hard under the yoke of Stalinism, and his music expresses his deep humanity (except when he is buckling under the pressure of the commissars and pumping out party-hack material; but we can ignore all that). His symphonies 1, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 13, 14 and 15 are among the greatest works of the century. But I’m saving his first Violin Concerto. It is, I believe, his ultimate masterwork.

Its dedicatee, David Oistrakh, recorded it with Dimitri Mitropoulos and the the New York Philharmonic and anyone who cares about classical music should know this performance. It is coupled with Rostropovich playing the first Cello Concerto with Ormandy and the Philadelphia. Together this is a powerful pair.

Olivier Messiaen 1908-1992 — Harry Partch wasn’t alone. French composer Olivier Messiaen had his own ideas about harmony and rhythm, and created an idiosyncratic body of music that is built on bird song and Eastern mysticism, combined with fervent Christianity.

He wrote his Quartet for the End of Time in a Nazi prisoner camp and played it for the first time for its inmates and guards. His most popular work (if you can call anything so peculiar “popular”) must be the Turangalila Symphony, a rich, spicy, aromatic blend of orchestral colors, and you can get both works together in a set with conductor Myung-Whun Chung and the Orchestre de l’Opera Bastille.

Henryk Gorecki 1933-2010 — Gorecki had the misfortune to have become popular. His Third Symphony topped the pop charts in England in 1992 and sold a million copies world-wide. Officially titled the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, it speaks of war, love and loss. It is a slow piece, moving only by tiny steps from first to last. Its popularity has led some critics to pooh-pooh its depth and beauty, believing nothing that popular could be any good. They should listen more carefully.

The version that sold so well was the premiere recording with Dawn Upshaw and David Zinman conducting the London Sinfonietta. I have several versions on my shelves, but this first one is still the best. Onto the pile.

Morton Subotnick 1933- — The California-born composer of electronica had a brief moment of fame in the late 1960s when Nonesuch Records released his Silver Apples of the Moon, and followed it up with The Wild Bull. The first, with its synthesizer squeaks and blips was bright and energetic, the second with its groans and wheezes, was much darker.

Both deserve to be remembered. They may be a relic of their times, but they really are worth listening to. And they are now both on a single Wergo CD.

Arvo Pärt 1935- — The Estonian composer’s meditative music is what he calls “tintinnabuli,” and in 2018, Part was the most performed living composer in the world. His music appeals not only to the classical audience, but to the New Age one as well. It is spiritually-aimed music and is both beautiful, well-constructed, and easy to listen to. You can wash in it like a warm bath, or you can listen as intently as you might to Bach or Bartok.

He has arranged his most popular piece, Fratres, for any number of instruments and combinations (there is even an entire CD of nothing but variations of the piece), and I could save pretty much any one of his discs. But I am going to put Te Deum on the pile, primarily for the Berlin Mass that is on the disc.

Philip Glass 1937- — Glass is unavoidable, even in popular culture. He must be the most prolific composer since Vivaldi. He began as a strict Minimalist, but loosened up that style to become what can only be called a “Glassian.” At his best, he is hypnotic and powerful. At his worst, he can become tedious. His Einstein on the Beach was epochal and groundbreaking. I have an entire shelf devoted to his releases. His trilogy of movie scores for the Godfrey Reggio abstract-narrative films in the quatsi series are a perfect introduction to Glass. Koyaanisqatsi was the first and best known.

But I am going to save the third, Naqoyqatsi, mainly because it can be heard as an extended cello concerto played by Yo-Yo Ma.

John Adams 1945- — Almost neck-and-neck with Glass is John Adams, another lapsed Minimalist who has created his own distinct voice. His opera, Nixon in China, is pretty well the only contemporary opera to join the mainstream repertoire. I’ve seen it live, and I’ve seen Adams’ Doctor Atomic live. They are both thrilling as Verdi or Puccini.

But I’m going to save a particular favorite orchestral work, Harmonielehre, or “Harmony Lesson.” Its opening chords are even more startling than the two E-flat bangs at the start of Beethoven’s Eroica. And the disc I’m saving includes two of Adam’s most popular and gripping overture pieces, The Chairman Dances and A Short Ride in a Fast Machine.

Osvaldo Golijov 1960- — The youngest composer on my pile is now 60. I first heard his music in a live performance of Ainadamar with Dawn Upshaw singing the lead. It blew me away. And I was going to put my recording on my pile, but then I heard his Passion of Saint Mark or La Pasión Según San Marco, and fell in love with it.

It combines Latin and African rhythms and folk music with a huge percussion section and more than 50 singers. When it was premiered, it got a 15-minute standing ovation. It deserves its place on my pile.

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And so, my fantasy ends. I have now an imaginary pile of music to listen to, to the exclusion of a thousand other CDs. But it is just a fantasy; I could never actually declutter my shelves. I have, in the past, culled recordings to make space for new, but now those I culled are just stuffed into old dressers, cluttering up the drawers in both of them, hidden from view as if I had actually gotten rid of them. But I can’t. And with new recordings coming my way from Amazon, I may have to cull once more, just to make space. And I may need another old dresser in the storage room just to take care of my rejects. Marie Kondo can go jump in a lake.