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Those of us who pay attention to the various arts usually have certain works or artists that appeal to us more than others, that grok on the particular wavelength we resonate to.

For me, when it comes to music, it is the work of Franz Josef Haydn. I enjoy pretty much all of classical music, from Josquin to Golijov, depending on my mood. But I know I can always sit back and enjoy a Haydn quartet or symphony. His music is endlessly surprising and inventive, always seems to have a point, and is both witty and playful, but can also be deeply expressive and emotional.

When I worked in Phoenix, my commute to the office was about 20 minutes long, which was just about the perfect length to take on one of his symphonies. One on the way to work, and another on the way home. And when I got through all 104 of them, I started again back with the first. I reckon I tore through all of them at least five times on that drive. Haydn wrote tons of music, and I’ve listened to tons, starting with an anonymous 78 rpm recording of his Symphony No. 99 when I was in high school.

Haydn’s music isn’t just tunes. It is a narrative. The music of the Classical era has a clear musical“story” laid out in each composition, that I find compelling. And Haydn does this better than anyone.

Haydn and Mozart

We usually say that Haydn and Mozart wrote music in the Classical style. But that’s not really quite right. It wasn’t a style they adopted, but one they invented. Mozart and Haydn created the Classical style.

What we call, in the larger term classical music is habitually divided up into historical periods: Baroque; Classical; Romantic; Post-Romantic; Modern; etc. It’s all classical music, of course, but within the time frame from roughly 1750 to about 1825, is the subset we give the Capital “C” Classical name. And the most prominent names from that subset are Haydn and Mozart. (And later, Beethoven and Schubert, but they were both already heading toward the new age of Romanticism).

Baroque music reached its peak of Baroque-osity with Johann Sebastian Bach, whose music is contrapuntally so elaborate that it takes spreadsheet to parse it. By the time he died in 1750, his music was out of date and tastes had begun to look for something simpler, more homophonic, and with tunes you might hum or whistle. Bach’s sons, famous composers in their own time, all wrote in this newer, lighter popular style. Other famous composers of the mid- and late 18th century also adopted this simplified orchestral style, including the Mannheim School, and the whole Stamitz family. (I am simplifying, myself, here, but overall, this is the direction).

In Germany, this style was called Empfindsamkeit, or the “sentimental style,” and sought to express “true and natural feelings.” And early in their careers, both Mozart and Haydn composed in this style. But each left it behind soon enough. Their minds vibrated to more complex textures.

Each built increasingly complex and sophisticated edifices on the simple tune-and-accompaniment idea, with richer harmonies, fugal writing, longer works of interconnected ideas. When Emperor Joseph II complained to Mozart that his music had “zu viele Noten”— “too many notes” — this is what he was referring to. Haydn got there first, as he was the elder, found new ways to expand the structure of the music, indeed to make the very structure part of its expressivity. You don’t just listen to tunes, but follow how they change over the course of a movement, and those developments are what the music is “about.”

The joy of listening to Haydn’s music is following his telling of the “story.” I don’t mean story in the sense of fiction, but rather how a group of musical ideas transform through the course of a movement: They start in one place and go somewhere else. If you are used to letting music wash over you like a warm bath, you won’t gather the primary gifts Franz Josef is offering.

This kind of storytelling can be spotted easily in something like Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, which begins in an angry, agitated C-minor and ends, three movements later, in a triumphant C-major, all trumpets and glory. Classical music isn’t a static bath of pretty sounds, but is always going somewhere. Listening to it requires attentiveness. You need to follow the story.

This directionality is the heart of sonata form, that armature upon which so much of classical music, both small “c” and capital “C,” is built. For Haydn, and for Mozart, the basic metaphor is one of establishing order (the exposition of the basic tunes), the interruption by chaos (the development section, where the tunes go through key changes, breaking in to pieces, and loss of identity), and finally, the re-establishment of order (the recapitulation, which retells the original tunes in the original key). Order, whether artistic, philosophical, political, religious, cultural, is the key question dominating the 18th century. You find it everywhere.

The sonata form has many parents, but the main one I want to mention here is the two-part song form, simply speaking, a first part with the tunes, which is repeated, then the second part which complicates what we’ve heard in the first part. The second part is usually repeated, also. The 555 keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti all follow this pattern. He liked to wander off into strange dissonances and foreign keys, eventually to hit hard at some point on the original key. Musicologist Ralph Kirkpatrick named this point the “crux.” It could come anywhere in the piece, but when it hit, you knew you were back in comfortable territory. I could happen as late as the final chords, or halfway through the second half.

Haydn took this common two-part form and turned it into a three-part form, regularized it, and then, through the rest of his career, played with the form, always surprising his attentive listener by messing with expectations.

In later music, sonata form became a pat formula, but for Haydn, it was something to play with, to alter and surprise with. Sometimes he started a “false recap” only to dive back into the chaos; sometimes he used only one theme instead of the usual two or three; sometimes he played them back in the wrong order. Constantly pulling the rug out. If you know the outline, you enjoy being pleasantly fooled.

But it wasn’t only sonata form. Haydn’s century was obsessed with order. This need to return to the status quo ante underlies most Classical music forms. Second movements are often in theme and variations, in which a tune is varied several times, usually with a climax in a minor key, followed by something like a return to the original, usually amplified by bigger orchestration. Third movements are minuets and trios, where a dance tune is followed by a contrasting trio section and then a return to the minuet. Finales are often in sonata form, but often in rondo form, where a tune is played, a second tune follows and then the first tune returns, a third tune follows and the original tune is repeated. It’s a whole lot of returning tunes, a whole lot of re-establishing the order.

Mozart picked up the form from Haydn, and used it rather more as a mold for filling with memorable tunes. He was less concerned with surprising his listeners and more with pleasing them. The grammar is similar, the semantics quite different.

It used to be a joke: How can you tell Haydn from Mozart, since their music appeared to use the same style. One of my professors had an answer: “If you can remember the tunes when it is over, it was Mozart.” But really, that is calumny, because Haydn could write memorable themes, when it suited his purposes, and Mozart could disassemble his expositions with the best of them.

There are other differences. Mozart was the greatest ever at blending woodwinds into a beautiful harmonious whole, while Haydn tended to keep is winds distinct and separate. Mozart wrote longer-lined, almost vocal, singable melodies while Haydn often chose shorter, punchier rhythmic or pitch patterns that lent themselves to constant transformation.

Another difference between the two: Haydn is his most characteristic writing for groups of instruments or voices; Mozart his most characteristic writing for one voice against an accompaniment. Hence Mozart’s concertos were revolutionary and his operas the best, while Haydn’s best are his symphonies and string quartets. His concertos — outside of a famous trumpet concerto and a couple for cello — are mostly forgotten. Haydn’s operas are full of good arias, but he lacked the theatrical genius of the younger man. His libretti were never as good as his music.

Haydn became a musical revolutionary by unusual means. His boss provided an orchestra and moved him out of the city into the boondocks and then asked him to provide almost nightly entertainment. Left to his own devices in the provincial estate of Esterhazy, Haydn wrote symphonies, divertimenti, trios, ballets and operas. He also devised puppet shows, and served as impresario to various traveling theater groups putting on plays.

Esterhazy Palace, Fertöd, Hungary

The estate was the summer home of Count Nikolaus Esterhazy, 65 miles from Vienna and in what is now Hungary. Vienna was where art and society were; Esterhazy is where Haydn was. During those years, he had an audience in the Count’s court well practiced in following his music, and the particular ways he used structural surprises to keep that audience amused. All his symphonies had jokes in them, or at least wit — those left turns to expectation that kept his listeners attentive.

He later wrote, “I was set apart from the world … and so I had to become original.” He was lucky his boss was not only a music lover, but knowledgable and receptive. Over the nearly 40 seasons he spent with the Esterhazy family, he had an appreciative audience, who the composer trained to follow his music and be able to recognize the surprises Haydn was building in to his musical structures.

Haydnsaal, Esterhazy

When Nikolaus died, his successor kept Haydn on salary, but was less interested in the arts and music, which freed the composer up to travel, publish his works, and become, essentially, the most famous musician in Europe. He wrote at least 106 symphonies (104 of them numbered); close to 80 string quartets (exact count is squishy since publishers would sometimes sell scores under Haydn’s name written by lesser composers); some 40 piano trios; about 60 piano sonatas (the numbering varies); two of the most popular oratorios in the repertoire (The Creation and The Seasons); a dozen masses; 13 operas; close to a thousand songs and lieder; and even 32 pieces for mechanical clock. The boy was kept busy.

When he died, in 1809 at the age of 77, he was the most famous composer in Europe (Beethoven was just getting started and considered perhaps a touch too wild and hairy; his Fifth Symphony premiered just month’s before Haydn’s death). Haydn’s reputation since then has had its ups and downs. The 19th century generally put him in powdered wigs and knee britches and saw him as old fashioned and tame. They called him “Papa” Haydn and admitted he was father of the symphony, but never seemed to notice how revolutionary his music had been.

That dusty and toothless version continued into the 20th century, but by halfway through those years, some conductors took especially to Haydn’s symphonies. There are mid-century recordings that are vigorous and beautifully performed, but Haydn remained a concert opener, leaving the bulk of the concert to more serious concertos by Rachmaninov and roof-raising symphonies by Brahms.

Haydn with and without his wig

More recently, the historical performance mafia have reshaped the attitude toward Papa Haydn, with smaller orchestras, faster tempos, scratchier fiddle tones, and dogmatic ideas. Haydn, himself, is largely left out of the equation. He always asked for larger orchestras and better string playing. His Creation was first performed with an orchestra of over 100 musicians. In England, his symphonies usually had between 80 and 100 players. The tiny orchestra was a constraint he suffered with at Esterhazy, not his ideal performance style. So, when you hear some trendy conductor claim he is hewing closer to Haydn’s intentions with eight fiddles and a single cello, know that he is blowing smoke.

Because I love Haydn’s music so much, I have listened to recordings of it made as far back as the 1930 and continuing to the newest releases, and have a wider background in it than most classical music fans. And so, I feel qualified to make certain recommendations.

The first complete set of Haydn symphonies was made in the 1970s by conductor Antal Dorati and the Philharmonia Hungarica, an emigre band of musicians fleeing Communist oppression. I have recently relistened to them, and while they were good for their time — and the only option for years — they are a little run-of-the-mill nowadays, and sound to me like they were rehearsed and recorded quickly to fill out a project. They are not bad, but they certainly don’t capture the wit and effervescence of the scores. And the sound engineering isn’t up to today’s best standard. Still, if you have only this set, you would be fine.

The best current choice is Adam Fischer and the Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra, recorded individually in the 1990s, and released as a complete set in 2002. It sounds better than the Dorati version, and Fischer has a surer grasp of the wit. There is a craft to telling jokes. Too flat and they aren’t jokes, but turn them into slapstick, and they are just embarrassing. Fischer lets you know he knows, and trusts his listeners that they know, too. There are better performances of some of these works individually, but as a set, it hasn’t been beat.

A more recent set by Dennis Russell Davies with the Stuttgarter Kammerorchester is a non-starter. Flat, dull, and seemingly unaware that there are any jokes to be had, it came and went in 2010. Just the notes, ma’am. Worse, he uses harpsichord accompaniment with all of them, which is ugly and intrusive. I gave away my set. I already had a doorstop.

Earlier this year, a compilation of all the releases by Thomas Fey and the Heidelberger Sinphoniker was released. This was a stunner. Unfortunately, Fey died before he could finish the set, and the remainder of the symphonies were conducted by Johannes Klumpp in the same spirit as Fey. Most of the major symphonies are with Fey, so the loss is minimal. These have all the vigor and energy one expects from the historical practice people, but with modern instruments, and a sense of musicality often missing from that benighted group. Yes, Fey understands the jokes.

What too many recent recordings of Haydn and Mozart lack is a sense of phrasing, the long line. In their quest for just the notes ma’am, they are like actors who play Shakespeare with no expression, no emphases, no pausing for breath, or speeding up for excitement, as if the words on the page need no interpretation. All pump-pump-pump, hit the barlines heavy and meaning be damned. Which is why so many older recordings seem so much more humane, warm, real.

Certainly the most humane, warmest, most musical and spirit-enlivening Haydn came with Thomas Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic in the 1950s. He only recorded the final 12 symphonies, but they are utter and complete delight. This is what Haydn should be. He doesn’t take first-movement repeats, but that is the only complaint that could be lodged. If you only have one set of Haydn symphonies, it should be Beecham’s London Symphonies.

The Londons have been recorded more than any others. There’s the Surprise Symphony, the Clock Symphony, the Drumroll Symphony, but even those without familiar nicknames are brilliant. The first, Symphony No. 93, has the greatest fart joke. No. 98 has a surprise piano solo just before the final chords. If you want something in more modern sound and in stereo, you can always get the set with Eugen Jochum and the London Philharmonic. They are the “reference set” for most critics. George Szell also recorded the first six London Symphonies. I don’t know why he never got to finish the rest, but the precision and flair he brought to them is exceptional; and the absolute best fart in No. 93. And prize for the most bonkers recording of the “Military” symphony goes to Hermann Scherchen and the Vienna State Opera Orchestra. Scherchen was just nuts, but fun.

The other set of Haydn symphonies are those he wrote for Paris, Nos. 82-87, including The Bear and The Hen. They were the first group written for performance outside his Esterhazy audience, and were a big hit when first performed in 1786. When the historical practice people talk about playing Haydn with 20 musicians, it should be recalled that the Paris symphonies had 40 violins alone, and 10 double basses.

There is general consensus that the Paris Symphonies to hear are those recorded by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. They buzz with wit and excitement. A surprising second place goes to Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Concentus Musicus Wien. Harnoncourt was known for doing weird things, but not so here. Just brilliant playing, almost as much fun as Bernstein, and that’s saying something.

But Haydn isn’t only symphonies. He, for all practical purposes, invented the string quartet. When he started, the quartet was a violin soloist accompanied by three “helpers.” Not really what the quartet became. Haydn turned them into four equals (or mostly equals — first violin is prima inter pares) having a music conversation. Everyone gets his moments. But finding recordings of the whole corpus is difficult. There are a number of recent sets, but mostly by historical practice ensembles, who love scratchy fiddle tones, hyperbolic tempos, and the same attitude toward vibrato that some people have for gluten. There are those who prefer such desiccated things. Older complete recordings are spotty. A number of quartet groups started to record complete sets, but never finished. Usually money ran out.

Among the complete sets, I used to own the Kodaly Quartet cycle on Naxos. They were good, but sometimes less than fully inspired. I packed them away. My current cycle is the ancient set by the Dekany Quartet, originally recorded in Vox Boxes in the 1960s.

But my two incomplete sets that are truly my go-to are the even older box on Warner of the Pro Arte Quartet, recorded in surprising good sound, in the 1930s. This is how a Haydn quartet is supposed to sound. More modern, by a whisker, is the set recorded by the Alexander Schneider Quartet. I love these, and wish they could have finished all of them. Schneider was the musician I cut my teeth on in the 1960s at his concerts at the New School and Carnegie Hall in New York. Intensity and musicianship out the wazoo.

Then, there are the piano sonatas, largely ignored until quite recently. My set is by Rudolf Buchbinder. There are sets on fortepiano, but I have never come to terms with the clangy sound of the old instruments. Just a few years ago, super-virtuoso Marc-Andre Hamelin put out a set. I enjoy them, too, but Haydn doesn’t really require a show-off technique. I guess Hamelin was slumming. But he is good, if sometimes faster than the music supports. And who knew? That after Glenn Gould did his best to prove that Mozart was an incompetent composer, that he would do such a wonderful job with Haydn’s late sonatas? But he does.

But there is so much more with Haydn’s name on it. Piano Trios, for instance (listen to the Beaux Arts Trio), every one a delight. He even wrote some 200 works for the obsolete instrument called the baryton, which his boss had learned to play. And there are various divertimenti, and songs.

And his major works for chorus and voice, which are among his best. The Creation has been in the repertoire since it was first performed in 1798. There are many recordings, including two by Leonard Bernstein. The earlier, with the New York Phil, can be had in a box with all the Paris and London symphonies, and four of the final six great Masses. The second was from 1986 on Deutsche Grammophon with the Bavarian Radio Orchestra and five great soloists. The Masses are among Haydn’s greatest works, so don’t overlook them. Haydn’s other great oratorio, The Seasons, is sung in English with Thomas Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic, which, like his London Symphonies, just cannot be beat.

Finally, I want to mention The Last Seven Words Spoken by Our Savior on the Cross, which comprises eight consecutive slow movements followed by an earthquake. He wrote it in 1786 for a Good Friday service in Cadiz, Spain, with a sermon between each movement. It was performed several times during Haydn’s life, was adapted for string quartet in 1787, and for solo piano the same year, and finally in 1796 in a version for orchestra and chorus. The quartet version has been recorded most often. It’s astonishing how the composer can link eight adagios together and each still feels distinct and riveting.

Haydn has been called the Mahler of the 18th century for the inventive ways he has with his orchestra, making new sounds with combinations, and with the always fresh ways of dealing with form. He gets dismissed too often as just another periwig in a dull century, but he was never that. Pay attention to what he does and you will discover an entire cosmos of music.

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Desert Island Discs

July 17, 2025

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David Attenborough on Desert Island Discs with host Kirsty Young in 2012

One of the longest running radio shows is Desert Island Discs, which has been on the BBC since 1942. It is often said to be the second longest-running radio show after the Grand Ole Opry, which cranked up in 1925, although a few critics have discovered some obscure programs in foreign climes that may have been on longer, and there’s also the British Shipping Forecast which began in 1861, before radio was even invented, and first disseminated via telegraph before switching to radio in 1924.

On Desert Island Discs, prominent people, whether politicians, entertainers, sports stars or academics, are asked to choose eight recordings they would take with them to the proverbial desert island, and place them in the context of their lives. Since the 1950s, they have also been asked to name a book, other than the Bible or Shakespeare, they would also take, and later still, adding on a “luxury item” they couldn’t live without.

Nearly 4,000 episodes have been broadcast, with some predictable results. The music most often mentioned is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and the luxury item most chosen is pen and paper, or “writing materials,” although Tom Hanks specifically mentioned “a Hermes 3000 manual typewriter and paper.”

Many of the archived broadcasts can be heard from various online sources, and you can learn, for instance, that Alfred Hitchcock’s book choice was Mrs. Beeton’s Household Management, and his luxury item was “a continental railway timetable.” Some of the choices were equally eccentric. Oliver Reed wanted Winnie-the-Pooh to read and “an inflatable rubber woman.” Actress Janet Suzman wanted a “mink-lined hammock,” and Hugh Laurie asked for an encyclopedia and “a double set of throwing knives.” His long-time double-act partner Stephen Fry wanted a PG Wodehouse anthology and a “suicide pill.”

My favorite, so far, is John Cleese, who asked for Vincent Price’s cookery book and “a life-size statue of Margaret Thatcher and a baseball bat.”

One of the inevitable by-products of such a format is the urge to create your own list. And so, I have my own.

I grew up in New Jersey in a family largely indifferent to music. What music there was came on TV in such variety shows as Perry Como or Dinah Shore. When I was little, there was a small portable record-player on which I played children’s songs, but I don’t count any of that. “Fire, fire, fire, raging all about. Here come the firemen to put the fire out.”

My musical education began in high school when my first serious girlfriend played music on the phonograph while we spooned on the sofa in her parents’ house. She went on to become a professional bassoonist and was studying at the time with Loren Glickman, who played the difficult opening bassoon solo on Igor Stravinsky’s recording of his Rite of Spring. I hadn’t known such music existed. It was mesmerizing. Who knew it was great make-out music? And so, that is my first choice for my desert island disc.

There have been hundreds of other recordings of that music, and a few, perhaps, more exciting or primitive than the composer’s own, but that recording has never been out of print and comes in many versions, from LP to 8-Track to CD and now, streaming. As an introduction to classical music, I could hardly have done better — dive into the deep end.

When I got to college in North Carolina, I made the acquaintance of Alexander Barker, who has remained my best friend for 60 years. He was as enthusiastic about classical music as I was and we spent hours in our dorm rooms spinning LPs and introducing each other to music that was our favorites. We were, of course, very serious about great music, as only college students can be, but we knew Beethoven’s string quartets were as serious as you could get. I bought a budget-line set of the quartets, by the Fine Arts Quartet on the off-brand Murray Hill label, and one evening, we started with Opus 18, No. 1 and played through all 16 of them, plus the Grosse Fuge, in one marathon session. (We later attempted the same thing with the piano sonatas, but gave up in exhaustion and the need for sleep by the time we hit the Hammerklavier.)

I have not been able to find a CD version of the Fine Arts Quartet set, but I found much better-played versions later on. I have owned a half-dozen or so complete sets of the Beethoven quartets, and as many of just the late quartets, but on the desert island, I would take the original mono versions by the Budapest String Quartet. They redid them later in stereo, but I like the earlier set better. I could have chosen the Guarneri, or the Tokyo or the Emerson, but I still think the Budapest have the measure of them best.

If you have the earnest seriousness of youth, you will eventually get into Wagner. After college and after a failed first marriage, I was living in North Carolina with my favorite redhead, scratching by on subsistence jobs, and I managed to save enough money to finally buy the Solti Ring. Something like 16 hours of music subsuming four operas, it opened up a world of myth and raw musical power. Now in retirement, I own five Ring cycles on CD and another two on DVD. And I’ve attended two complete live Ring cycles (not a patch on my late friend Dimitri Drobatschewsky, who went to Bayreuth 16 times beginning just after World War II.) But the Solti Ring of the Nibelungs is still my go-to set. And with it, I must also take the Deryck Cooke explication of the cycle, An Introduction to “Der Ring des Nibelungen.” Can’t have one without the other; they’re a set.

When the redhead and I split up, after seven years, I moved to Seattle and began working at the zoo, where I met a zookeeper whose hair was as blond as the sun. I fell. She had been a professional swing dancer at one time, and she played me old swing records on her Wurlitzer jukebox, which she had at her home. I had a whole new universe of music to learn about. But the one who stuck was the jazz musician closest to writing classical music, Duke Ellington.

I still have about 50 CDs of Ellington’s recordings. There are counted several epochs of Ellington’s career, beginning with the “jungle music” of the 1920s and going through his rebirth at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1956. But most count the high point of his band and music to be those years in the early 1940s when Ben Webster was his tenor sax man and Jimmie Blanton was his string bass player. A collection of their recordings has been issued several times as “The Blanton-Webster Band.” It was the era of Take the A Train, Ko-Ko, Harlem Airshaft, and Perdido.

But then, neither can I do without The Queen’s Suite, which he wrote with Billy Strayhorn in 1971, and is his most completely classically composed work. I love it. And so, I’m adding it to my Ellington entry.

The zookeeper dumped me and I moved back to North Carolina. A few years later, I met Carole, who I married and lived with for 35 years, until her death in 2017. Marriage humanized me, and the most human composer is Mozart and the most humanistic of conductors was Bruno Walter. It was the the last years of the LP era, in 1980, and before digital took over, I found the last six symphonies of Mozart played by Walter and the Columbia Symphony Orchestra (a pickup ensemble, mostly of musicians from the New York Philharmonic).

Walter’s Mozart remains the most humane and beautiful version of these works, which are now buried under historical-performance rhetoric and bounce along at a jog-trot, mechanistic pace. But one can still find the echt-Mozart, songful, emotional, and velvety rich, under Walter’s baton. Like all of my choices for the desert island, it has never been out of print.

Carole and I moved to Arizona in 1987, where she took up teaching art to elementary pupils, and I began writing for The Arizona Republic as its art critic (later also its classical music critic).

When we moved to a house at the foot of Camelback Mountain, it was a 20 to 30 minute drive (depending on traffic) to the Republic office downtown, and I found the perfect drive-time music, playing a Haydn symphony each way. I eventually went through all 104 symphonies, driving back and forth, three times, and absorbed their spirit from the Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra and Adam Fischer. They have become my go-to performers for this music. I also have the earlier Antal Dorati version, which sometimes sounds like a quick read-through, and later was sent a review copy of the Dennis Russel Davies versions on Sony, which proved to be the most utterly humorless Haydn possible and I had to give them away. How can anyone misunderstand this music so thoroughly?

When Carole died, and I sunk into grief, from which I have never fully recovered, I found myself listening with my whole being to Brahms German Requiem. I have spent the anniversary of her death every year driving up the Blue Ridge Parkway to find an old fire road into the woods, and sit quietly to Bruno Walter’s recording of the German Requiem. It is the most sympathetic, consoling music ever written.

On Desert Island Discs, they also ask the guests to choose the one recording, above all, which they would take if everything else were not possible. And for me that is Johann Sebastian Bach’s Passion According to Saint Matthew, a three-hour musical retelling of the last days of Jesus and his death. I am not religious. (I am so not religious, I not even an atheist.) But every note of Bach’s music speaks to me on the deepest level of humanity. The opening chorus and the ending chorus are, for me, the greatest musical utterances ever penned. I’m keeping it with me.

There are many performances, and no one really does it badly, but most recordings now have been run through the historical performance wringer and the juice has been squeezed out. This is majestic and noble music, not something from a squeeze box. And the recording left behind by Otto Klemperer is the one I listen to over and over. He’s got the measure of this music.

That leaves us a book and a luxury. People value books for, usually, one of three reasons. Either for the information they gather, or for the stories that are told, or for the prose they are written in. I fall into the last camp. I thought about Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which is an utter joy to read, whether you care about the factual history of Rome or not. I revel in its river of words. But I read it in short segments, ultimately filling up like a rich meal and need to wait some hours before hitting the table again. And, for all the wonderful writing, there is a sameness that can creep in.

Or I might have chosen a classic that somehow I’ve missed in 77 years of life. Many on Desert Island Discs have taken Marcel Proust’s Á la Recherche du Temps Perdu. But when it comes to monster works, I already put in my time, having gotten through The Gulag Archipelago. I no longer need to prove myself.

So, I have chosen Joyce’s Ulysses, the book I can read and re-read over and over, with such a variety of prose and method and such delicious words, that I don’t think I could ever tire of it.

As for a luxury item, I had some difficulty coming up with something, because I am not much for luxury. But I have always owned a pear-wood handled Opinel folding knife. The current one sits in the glove compartment of the car, ready for anything called for. A man needs his tools.

Of course, the whole exercise is entirely pointless. There is no desert island, and with a house full of books, CDs, musical scores, and art, I don’t need to choose so parsimoniously. The whole idea is merely a pleasant game to play.

But going through the process, and forcing myself to narrow the list arbitrarily, I come to see myself in a dusty mirror. And I surprise myself, looking back at me.

Lenny

August 29, 2022

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Yesterday, I accidentally came across a YouTube video of Leonard Bernstein conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in the finale of Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 88, which is one of the composer’s bounciest, most ebullient movements, and therefore one of the bounciest, most ebullient in all music. And I was transfixed: After a tiny initial tempo beat with the baton, the conductor dropped his arms and stood there, letting the orchestra play the entire movement, indicating directions entirely with facial expressions. (Link here).

He was conducting with his face. It was brilliant. Every fleeting emotion played across his face, as if he were the music. And each expression came a half-second before the orchestra reacted, so Bernstein wasn’t following the music, but leading it. Extraordinary. It was one of the best performances of that finale I’ve ever heard, with a naturalness and clarity, but more important, a joy and spontaneity.

I go back a long way with Lenny. When I was a mere bairn, I watched him on the Young People’s Concerts and I remember his explanation of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony on the Omnibus TV show. I was just six years old in 1954, so I don’t remember much of what he said, but I remember the set, with the score of the symphony on the floor, so he could position his players on their staffs to show what they were doing. I was fascinated.

Since then, Lenny has been a part of my life. Sometimes a small part, in the background, sometimes I spent extra money to buy one of his recordings over a cheaper Turnabout or Vox recording, with the trust that I would be rewarded by something special. I usually was.

I heard Lenny conduct at New York’s Philharmonic Hall (later Avery Fisher Hall, now David Geffen Hall — it changes as much as the names on ballparks). I remember a rousing version of Debussy’s La Mer with the New York Phil. But mostly, I heard Lenny via recordings, first LP and then CD. There were also videos and TV presentations.

I don’t deny that Lenny talking could be hard to take, with that resonant basso voice that he seemed to be in love with, and sometimes a ham actor’s thesbianicity. But if you can get past that surface, what he says is almost always revelatory, precise, and true. I listen to his Harvard lectures over and over, and despite some tedious Chomskian linguistic folderol, really insightful. (He drops the Chomsky in the latter lectures, thank god).

But it is the music that really counts. For many, Bernstein was the great podium presence of the second half of the 20th century. The singer Christa Ludwig, who performed with Lenny often, once said she worked with three truly great conductors: Karl Böhm, Herbert von Karajan and Bernstein, but the difference was, she said, “Bernstein was a genius.”

Others have commented that when he conducted, he “became” the music. A member of the Vienna Philharmonic told my old friend, the late music critic Dimitri Drobatschewsky, “Name one other conductor who, just by standing in front of the orchestra, could make them play better than they thought they could.” Bernstein seemed to have a special relationship with the Vienna Phil, and many of his later recordings were with them.

Lenny had his detractors, who thought he was showing off in front of the audience and orchestra, or that he exaggerated details, or — especially later in his career — dragged tempos. But, as critic David Hurwitz has said many times, “Every time I think Bernstein has distorted something, I look in the score and see that it is exactly what the composer had notated. He was truer to the score than almost any other conductor I know.”

It is true that for Lenny, as for Old Lodge Skins in Little Big Man, “Sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn’t.” But the best recordings have something to give that few others can match: commitment, power, emotion, persuasiveness.

I have chosen 10 of Lenny’s recordings that for me summarize his best. There are many others. He was especially great with Haydn, with Beethoven, with Mahler, with Stravinsky, with Shostakovich. And Modern music — if it was tonal or polytonal, like Milhaud — he made it all just bounce.

We’ll start with Haydn’s Paris Symphonies, that is symphonies Nos. 82-87, including “The Hen” and “The Bear.” It is pretty well consensus that Bernstein’s Paris Symphonies are the reference recordings. Sprightly, bright, witty, energetic and beautifully played. Bernstein was always good in Haydn, and I would have listed his Creation here, or his Nelson Mass or Tempore Belli Mass. You can’t go wrong with Bernstein and Haydn. In comparison, almost everyone else just feels soggy.

In roughly chronological order, we come to one of his most controversial recordings ever: the live recording of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony from 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Bernstein substituted the word “Freiheit” (“freedom”) for Schiller’s “Freude” (“joy”) in the finale, caught up in the moment’s exhilaration over the fall of East Berlin and Communism. Actually, he only does it once, and later reverts back to the original. But it is jarring when you hear the baritone intone it at the start of the finale. Yet, I am listening to it now as I write this and it is an absolutely thrilling version of the Beethoven’s greatest symphony. Members of six different orchestras came together and meld perfectly under Lenny’s baton. It is my go-to version of the symphony. It is a symphony played so often (I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard it live) that it has lost some of its magic as occasion, but here, it magnifies that sense of occasion. Despite the mutilation of the “Freiheit,” but because of the intensity and emotional engagement of the 20-minute Adagio — more like a prayer than anything else. (Roger Norrington takes it in 10 minutes of throw-away carelessness.)

Then, there’s Berlioz’s Grande Messe de Morts, or Requiem. There are few decent recordings, and most fail for exactly the same reason: They attempt to make sense of the thing, toning it down into something “normal.” That is the issue with Colin Davis’ version. But Lenny lets it all hang out. What is fevered and hysterical, comes across as fevered and hysterical, just as Berlioz wrote it.

If there is any symphony from the 19th century more Haydnesque than Bizet’s Symphony in C, I have yet to discover it. It is fresh, bright, tuneful and unendingly happy. The composer wrote it in 1855, when he was 17, and it remained unplayed until 1935 and I feel pity for all those audiences who, for 80 years could have been enjoying it, but never had the chance. Lenny was the perfect conductor for its joie de vivre and rhythmic snap. It is as if Bizet wrote it with Bernstein in mind.

Lenny recorded Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony at least twice, once with the New York Philharmonic, in 1964 for Columbia, and then again in 1987 for Deutsche Grammophon, with the same orchestra. What a difference. The first — an excellent version — takes about the usual 45 minutes. The second comes in at just a chip under an hour. Most of that extra time comes in the finale, which in the second recording is wrenching and heartbreaking. One critic wrote that it “devastates the emotions. … At the end of the last movement, the despair is complete.” Of course, the performance has its detractors, with some finding it distended and, as one always hears the complaint against Lenny, “is more about the conductor than the composer.” Poppycock. This is Tchaikovsky titrated and distilled into pure essence.

Lenny recorded Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring many times, also, but there is no quibbling about the one to go to. It is his first, from 1958 with the New York Phil. When the composer first heard the recording, his only response was “Wow!” Lots of conductors have the measure of the Rite, but there is a rhythmic vitality, a violence and explosiveness to the 1958 recording that has never been matched, even by Lenny.

Just seven years after Stravinsky’s blast, came Darius Milhaud’s Le Boeuf sur le toit (“The Bull on the Roof”), which he says he wrote as “fifteen minutes of music, rapid and gay, as a background to any Charlie Chaplin silent movie.” It is a piling up of Brazilian tunes, in several keys at once, and is as bright and toe-tappy as anything. Indeed, it becomes an ear-worm and you will be hearing its tunes over and over in your head for the rest of the day. The Bernstein recording also features La Création du Monde from 1923, which is a fully realized jazz composition for a ballet about an African creation story. This is Lenny in his element. You can just see him dancing on the podium with happiness and joy.

Then, there is another highly controversial recording — his DG performance of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Lenny, playing the piano part himself, plays it not as a jazz riff, but as if it were, from bottom-to-top, a classical piano concerto, rather like Ravel’s Concerto in G. Critics miss the easy jazzy element of famous performances by Earl Wilde or Oscar Levant, but Bernstein’s version seems to those who adore it (as I do) as a perfectly genuine alternate view. And it is gorgeous. Did I mention that? Absolutely gorgeous.

Dimitri Shostakovich wrote his massive Symphony No. 7 “Leningrad” during the German siege of that city in 1942. It is a piece that defeats many orchestras and conductors; it is very difficult to keep it from diffusing into long, undigested sections. Lenny keeps it going as a single directional line from beginning to glorious end, and the Chicago Symphony has the cojones to perform what is asked of them. Almost everyone agrees, this is the Leningrad Symphony to hear.

Finally, I’ve kept last (and out of order), Mahler, which sometimes seems like Bernstein’s personal property. It isn’t, of course, but he brings something special to his Mahler performances, and none more so than with the Ninth, which he recorded at least six times (1965 NY Phil; 1971 Vienna Phil; 1979 Berlin Phil; 1979 Boston Symphony; 1985 Concertgebouw; 1985 Israel Phil). It is perhaps the Mahler symphony Bernstein felt closest to. Only four of these are genuine releases, not bootlegs, and among them it is hard to choose, but I suppose I migrate to the late Concertgebouw recording. Berlin has the intensity, but there is a major cock-up in the finale when the trombone section failed to play in the climax (apparently an audience member had died of a heart attack directly behind the brass section and there was some commotion that distracted the players). But listening to any one of them seems as if the music becomes more than music; it is a direct communication from one soul or heart to another. There are other great performances of the Ninth — it seems to draw out the best in most conductors — but there is something extra in the Bernstein versions, something more immediate, more direct.

That is a list of 10 (or more), but I feel I’ve left out so much. There’s his Bartok Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste; there’s two complete surveys of Beethoven symphonies; there’s his Copland, his Ives, his Schumann, his Sibelius. And so much more. But I believe the 10 I’ve chosen are not just great, but peculiar to Lenny — and I choose the word carefully. He was an idiosyncratic conductor, but all the personality that went in to his performances meant they are often memorable in a way more straightforward ones are not.

Many moons ago, when I was a snotty college kid, I went through a period of disdaining Lenny. I bought the canard that he was shallow, heart-on-sleeve and bombastic. I wuz a idjit. One should never let the opinions of others block your ears. There is a world of difference between words and sounds, and the sounds are always more meaningful. I am older now, have experienced a great deal more of living, discovered depths in myself I hadn’t understood, and now Lenny’s insistence on finding the marrow is what I value. My ears are opened to what is gifted to me.

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Opening presence

November 29, 2021

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The first time I ever saw Théodore Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa, it was in my art history textbook — the infamous Janson. It was about 5 inches wide on the bottom of page 633.

Most of the world’s most famous art I first contacted in reproduction; it is the same for most people. It would be hard to travel the world’s great museums to see all the Vermeers, Rembrandts, Titians or Chardins. Instead, we see reproductions in books, or on the computer screen. I’ve seen hundreds, probably thousands of paintings in reproductions before I ever saw the real things.

So, imagine my amazement when I encountered the real thing at the Louvre in Paris. There it was, the size of a barn. It was a lesson — if I really needed one — teaching me that a picture of a picture is not the same thing as a picture. But so much of what we imbibe of culture comes not in its original form, but as reproduction, whether it is Canaletto in art history class, or Beethoven on a disc.

One of the things that divides the world I grew up in from the world I live in now is the unconsidered acceptance of a media experience for the live reality. We all have our noses in our screens. In many ways, what was once the secondary simulacrum of a genuine experience has become the end product itself. Since the days of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a great deal of music simply cannot be performed live; the recording is the original.

In our Postmodern world, suffused with media, many an artist and musician has taken the secondary product as the original. And so, images are designed to be seen on the computer screen. No one asks to see a TikTok video in a movie theater; that would be silly. Content viewed on an iPhone is not an imitation of something else.

I, myself, now take photographs specifically to be viewed on screen rather than printed out. I edit them differently, I frame them differently. It is a different esthetic. But aside from work made for the virtual world, there is still the palpable object to take into account.

But the fact is, that many more people listen to recordings than attend concerts; see paintings in book reproductions or on computer screens than visit galleries or museums; prefer audiobooks to sitting in a chair and quietly turning paper pages. It gives a false impression of the art.

We keep stepping back from an original and choose a Xerox copy.

I am not here arguing against digital devices — you are reading this blog on one, so where would I be without such devices? — but I am worried that the ubiquity of reproduced media makes us forget that there can be something more immediate, and that through most of history, that immediacy was the primary mode of experiencing art and music.

My brother and I were once talking about theater. He stated that he didn’t much care for live theater but preferred movies as being so much more realistic — despite the obvious fact that live actors are very real and that celluloid images are only simulacra, and that movies are cut and edited all over the place, while live action must take place in real time.

But I recognized his point, and when I was younger, I would have agreed with him. Most of us are only subject to live theater, if we are exposed to it at all, in uninspired productions with bad or mediocre acting — the community theater or dinner theater sort of thing. And undistinguished theater is admittedly tedious.

Most of the theater I had been exposed to was just that sort of thing. Sometimes quite entertaining, but always so darned “theatrical,” i.e. phony.

Then, in 1994, I got to see the original Broadway production of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, both parts over two days. It was the most riveting, even mind-blowing thing I had ever seen. And what was so moving was that it was there, live in front of me. They were real people doing and saying those lines and feeling — or evoking — those very primal emotions. It is still the single greatest experience I ever had in an audience.

I have now seen the two-play cycle four times and each time it has grabbed me by the lapels and yelled into my face in a way that has left me shaken. I’ve seen the Mike Nichols film version, with Al Pacino, and it is a wonderful production, but it cannot move me with quite the same seismic force that the live version had. If I had seen those same actors in the theater instead of on the TV screen, I’m certain it would have been earthshaking, but the remove of the screen gives the whole thing a distance that the live actors don’t suffer from.

I since have become an advocate for live theater, though it is hard to convince anyone who has not had the experience of great live performances. I have seen really good professional performances since Angels, and they have something nothing else has. Whether it is Fences by August Wilson, or Amadeus by Peter Shaffer or Hamlet performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company, I am completely drawn in, with the same complete concentration one has when reading a great book — the day-to-day world disappears and the esthetic world takes over.

(Amadeus, by the way, as a play is very different from Amadeus the movie. As wonderful as the film was, a good production of the play is so much more devastating.)

It isn’t only plays that have to be seen live. I have watched a good deal of dance on video or on PBS, and I am always disappointed at some deep level. Ballet and dance theater is the art form that speaks to my inner being the most directly and I love dance profoundly. But only live dance will do it. Balanchine knew this and attempted to re-choreograph a few of his masterpieces especially for video and however beautiful his video versions are, they pale beside seeing them live. You have to see the living, breathing (huffing and puffing), muscle-twisting movement in three dimensions for it to register fully.

(Mediocre dance, like mediocre theater is the worst ambassador for the artform — how many people have been turned off by watching the local civic ballet company galumph through the annual Nutcracker? That is no more the real thing than little league pitching is like Bob Gibson or Sandy Koufax.)

I have well over a thousand CDs on the shelves in my office and listen daily to recordings of Brahms, Bartok, Weill, Mahler and Glazunov. And I don’t know where I’d be without them. But I also know that the real thrills I have had with classical music have been in the concert or recital hall, listening to live music. It has a presence that the recording cannot duplicate. I’ve written before about hearing the eight horns in Strauss’s Don Juan peel off the great horn call and feeling the sound through my chest and my fundament as much as through my ears.

I want to make the same case for visual art. Everyone knows what the Mona Lisa looks like. Or do they? Almost to a person, those who have seen the original has remarked how small the painting is. It is a very different thing from the same image on a coffee mug or even in an art book.

But it’s not merely size I mean. The colors cannot be precisely conveyed by printer’s ink or by a computer’s palette. The paint has a texture that isn’t conveyed, and varying levels of gloss or matte. This was brought home to me — very like the revelation of Angels — when I saw a collection of Cezanne still lifes at Washington’s National Gallery of Art. I had not imagined such an exquisite range of greens; way too many variants than can be named. The Cezannes in my Janson were dull and lifeless in comparison. Yes, I could name the subject in them — an apple here, a vase there — but apple and vase were not what the painting was about. This rich range of visual information was the real subject. Gone in the reproduction. The real paintings made me want to chew the colors like a great meal.

We are led to accept imagery as the purpose of art, but it is only one portion of it. Alone, it is hardly more than the male or female silhouette on a restroom door. It also must include the scale, the finer shades of color and texture — and as with theater — the “presence.” The fact. Van Gogh’s Starry Night is everywhere from lampshades to mouse pads, but if you stand before it at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, you absorb how complex the painting is. Not just a swirl of blue night sky, but an object, a painting made of pigments and oils.

The same with the huge paintings of Maria Medici by Rubens, or the meticulous brushstrokes of Robert Campin’s Mérode Alterpiece at the Cloisters in New York.

But, I hear someone say, you should not let the best be the enemy of the good. As Chaucer said, “Muche wele stant in litel besynesse.” And many of us cannot visit the Louvre or the Prado, or get tickets to the New York City Ballet. Does everything have to be great?

I am not arguing that. I am saying that we should not be bamboozled into thinking that a reproduction can stand in for the genuine and that the real thing can be a life-changing experience, causing you to discover depths in yourself you hadn’t even suspected, whether it is the sympathetic feel of your muscles watching a dancer, or the empathy you extend to Salieri in Amadeus, or the hunger for color you get from Cezanne.

I am arguing that, in fact, you should look at real paintings and sculpture. Not all of it will be great, but it will be real. It will be present. There is plenty of local art in every town and city. If there is no museum, there may be some Depression-era murals in your post office, or a World War I soldier in your town square. There are local artists working in your neck of the woods, and what they do is real, not virtual.

Every locale has artists working, and art worth experiencing isn’t only found in museums, or only found in New York or Berlin.

I remember pulling into a supermarket in Boone, N.C. one fall afternoon and hearing three or four local musicians plucking guitar and banjo on the front steps, gathered informally to play some tunes. It was genuine and I sat and listened with the small crowd for 20 minutes or so before going in for my butter and eggs.

You never know what you’re going to get. Even the best performer can have an off night, and sometimes an amateur can hit the spot. It isn’t frogs you have to kiss, but you do need to weed through a good deal of acceptable but unexceptional work to find those few that will stick with you for life.

And then you will know the immediacy of the real.

Ya gotta hear this!

November 1, 2013

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Periodically the publishing world throws out a book put together by a critic or writer listing the “best of” or “greatest” and then lists books, recordings, movies, DVDs, TV shows or places to visit. The lists are always a great way to start off a conversation, even if they are always flawed, biased and at best partial.

So it is with Tom Moon’s book, 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die (Workman, $19.95).

I can’t comment on most of his selections, although it would be hard to quarrel with the idea that you should be familiar with Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew or Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced. To say nothing of Duke Ellington’s Blanton-Webster Band or Ray Charles’ Modern Sounds in Country and Western.

These are all recordings that anyone with a musical curiosity should know, and probably love. And Moon has a thousand of ’em.

But Moon chooses to include classical music in his selections, too, and there he really seems to miss the boat. It is clear that he is a part-timer when it comes to Bach, Bartok and Boccherini.

It isn’t that the music he chooses is wrong: You can’t really argue that anyone who loves music should have listened to Beethoven’s symphonies or Bach’s keyboard music. But while his popular and jazz albums recognize truly great performances, his choices for the classical selections are invariably bland and middle-of-the-road. Safe. Boring, even.

The title of the books is “recordings to hear before you die,” and should be recordings that you grab someone by the lapels over and say, with scary enthusiasm in your eyes, “You gotta hear this!”

That won’t always be the best performance, in classical music, but rather the most grabbing, the one that says something new or different, that makes you rethink the music, or just sit up and take notice.

And the classical catalog is full of such recordings: Not just for classical music snobs, but for anyone who cares deeply about music in general, whether their favorite is Led Zeppelin or Public Enemy. These are performances that have appeal outside their narrow intended audiences.

So here are 25 classical recordings you have to hear before you die.

1. Bach, Goldberg Variations, Glenn Gould, piano – The 1955 performance by the strange Canadian pianist turned classical music world on its head, with playing faster and slower than anyone else, and with an extraterrestrial energy and clarity that has never been matched, even by Gould’s second recording, from 1981.

2. Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 6 “Pathetique,” New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. – The hyper-emotional Pathetique normally takes 45 minutes to play. Bernstein’s later recording (on DG) takes an hour and wrings from the music the deepest tragedy, perfect accompaniment for a suicide.

3. Mozart, Piano Sonatas, Mikhail Pletnev, pianist – Wolfgang’s piano sonatas are normally thought of as his “B” material; not under the hands of crazy Russian genius Mikhail Pletnev. He plays them like his life depends on them – the greatest recording of these works ever.

4. Bruckner, Symphony No. 4, Munich Philharmonic, Sergiu Celibidache, cond. – Playing something slowly doesn’t always add weight, but here Bruckner’s most accessible symphony is played with the slow, careful intensity you might expect from someone defusing a bomb.

5. Mahler, Symphony No. 4, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Willem Mengelberg, cond. – Mahler was always over the top, even though many modern conductors rein him in. Mengelberg knew Mahler, heard him conduct, and gives us echt-Mahler, full of its requisite retardandos and portamentos. This is how Mahler is supposed to be played.

6. Wagner, Tristan und Isolde, Philharmonia Orchestra and soloists, Wilhelm Furtwangler, cond. – Don’t be afraid of Wagner. If you like Lord of the Rings, Wagner is just the same thing with tunes. With Kirsten Flagstad and Ludwig Suthaus, this is the Tristan for the ages.

7. Bach, Brandenburg Concertos, Marlboro Festival Orchestra, Pablo Casals, cond. – Politically incorrect performances of Bach’s essential concertos, meaty, expressive, lush, vibrant – and a slap in the face to those who believe there is only one right way to perform Bach.

8. Bach, Suites for Unaccompanied Cello, Pablo Casals, cello – Casals singlehandedly resurrected these profound works, where Bach made the single instrument as rich and varied as a full orchestra. He plays them as if he were alone in the universe. Only Casals could do that.

9. Beethoven, Diabelli Variations, Uri Caine, piano, with Concerto Koln – Postmodern Beethoven, with the 33 variations Beethoven wrote turned into marches, show tunes and fireworks. Not for the faint of heart, but explains to a new generation why Beethoven is worth knowing about.

10. Schulz-Evler, Arabesques on Johann Strauss II’s “Blue Danube Waltz,” Josef Lhevinne, piano – The great show-off piece played as no one else has ever managed: You swear on your grandmother’s babushka that there are at least two pianists working up a sweat, maybe three. This is what a virtuoso is.

11. Shostakovich, Symphony No. 7, Chicago Symphony, Leonard Bernstein, cond. – Lenny finds the core of this long, often-derided masterpiece, that can turn into shlock in lesser hands. This is one of the most glorious orchestral recordings ever made, blazing with brass and passion.

12. Vivaldi, The Four Seasons, Concentus Musicus Wien, Alice Harnoncourt, violin, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, cond. – Unconventional approach to familiar music turns these little concertos into tone pictures: Vivaldi meant them to create sound images, and here, you hear the dogs barking and the rain falling.

13. Barber, Adagio for Strings, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. – There are people who cannot listen to Samuel Barber’s mournful, tragic piece without breaking into uncontrollable sobs, and Bernstein seemed to feel a special connection to the music, which he plays for all he is worth.

14. Chopin, Piano Concertos, Evgeny Kissin, piano, Moscow Philharmonic, Dmitri Katayenko, cond. – Wunderkind Kissin was only 12 when he recorded these, but it would be hard to find anyone who has better captured the verve and spirit of these Chopin concertos. This is magic.

15. Chopin, Nocturnes, Maurizio Pollini, piano – Pollini finds more pith and mettle in these nocturnes, usually played to bring out their dreaminess. For Pollini, one of the superstars of the piano, they have more shadow and threat, things lurking behind corners, and military bands playing in the distance.

16. Gabrielli, The Antiphonal Music of Gabrieli, various performers – The assembled brass sections of the Chicago, Philadelphia and Cleveland orchestras play the glorious music of the Gabrielis the way it must sound in Heaven. This is virtuoso brass playing from a legendary album. You gotta hear this!

17. Brahms, piano music, selections, Glenn Gould, piano – Thought he could only play Bach? Gould was at heart a romantic, and his Brahms is subtler, more nuanced, more beautiful than anyone else’s. This playing comes as a complete surprise, and utter joy.

18. Rachmaninoff, A Window in Time, piano music, selections, Serge Rachmaninoff, piano – The dour Russian was one of the greatest pianists of the century, but his electric recordings are dulled by scratches and boom. These are digitally enhanced Duo-Art piano rolls, played on a Yamaha Synclavier, that brings back the luster to his piano.

19. Chopin, Sonata No.2 “Funeral March,” Serge Rachmaninoff, piano – Or you could try the thing itself, un-reconstructed. Rachmaninoff’s take on the familiar sonata is so fresh, powerful and driven, you’ll be shocked to hear it again as if it were for the first time.

20. Liszt, Virtuosa Valentina, piano selections, Valentina Lesitsa, piano – Franz Liszt was a showman, who brought to piano the same sense of spectacle that Spielberg brings to the seashore; Valentina Lesitsa plays them that way, all out, thunder and cannon-shot, fireworks and passion.

21. Beethoven, Symphony No. 3, “Eroica,” Russian National Orchestra, Mikhail Pletnev, cond. – Pletnev plays the Eroica like it means something, and replaces tunes and rhythms with the kind of persuasive rhetoric that starts nations marching.

22. Wagner, Liebestod, Vladimir Horowitz, piano – Real virtuosity isn’t just lots of notes real fast, but rather total control of the piano and expression. In Horowitz’s final CD, The Last Recording, made when the was 86, the ol’ magician wrings thunder and tears out of the death of Isolde. It becomes our death, too.

23. Bach, The Great Solo Works, Rosalyn Tureck, piano – Too often we think of Bach as mathematical, but he was really a crazy Baroque composer, layering hysterical detail on detail. Tureck plays him that way with the Capriccio on the Departure of a Beloved Brother, and the Italian Variations, with notes sweeping in like a tidal surge.

24. Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, piano and cond. – Bernstein plays Gershwin’s familiar symphonic jazz almost as if it were Brahms, big, romantic, serious. This is not everyone’s cup of Gershwin, but you simply have to hear it.

25. Grieg, Peer Gynt Suite, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Thomas Beecham, cond. – Peer Gynt? Seriously? Hall of the Mountain King? Anitra’s Dance? Beecham plays the music with such suave joy, and with not a single mote of condescension, and revivifies the old chestnut. You’ll tap your toes and sing in the shower.

—Richard Nilsen

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