u/Little_Grapefruit636

The greatest lutenist of his time, and the friend of Bach. What do we actually have of that friendship?

The documents give us one visit. In the summer of 1739 Weiss came to Leipzig with his pupil Kropffgans and stayed four weeks at Bach's house. Bach's relative Johann Elias Bach wrote that there had been "something extra fine in music."

The famous story of the two of them improvising fantasias and fugues against each other comes later. Johann Friedrich Reichardt published it in 1805, more than sixty years after the visit, on the word of people who said they had been there.

The trace you can actually hear is BWV 1025. Bach took Weiss's Lute Sonata in A major, kept the lute part almost as it was for the harpsichord, and wrote a violin part over it.

Last year someone here told me Weiss once said he had spent half his life tuning his lute. I couldn't find that. What I did find is an older joke about all lutenists, credited to Mattheson: a lutenist who lives to eighty has spent sixty years tuning.

Bach: Suite in A major for violin and lute, BWV 1025 (after Weiss)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIWKKY1iMEs

Weiss: Lute Sonata in D minor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PW4ppQKmehI

Cantus Arcticus was meant to be a choral piece. In 1971 the University of Oulu asked him for a cantata for its first doctoral ceremony. He couldn't find any poems he liked, and the choir was overworked and not in good voice, so he wrote for birds instead, using recordings from the Finnish radio's archive and from the marshes near Oulu.

I'm listening to it as I write this. It's a fascinating piece, one that could reach people who don't usually listen to classical music, and it has something healing about it.

A Japanese reader told me this week that it is one of the most popular contemporary pieces in Europe, and on the radio all the time.

Cantus Arcticus, Op. 61 (Max Pommer, Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO3YRZWLvQo

So much contemporary music keeps the listener at a distance, dry and forbidding. In Takemitsu's world, a gentle breeze moves, water drips, and silence rises up with real depth. He died 30 years ago this year.

How Slow the Wind
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kcgixXP58U

Rain Tree
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOsr8inpRZ4

Litany
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5LIsjlxDWE

Most people know him for The Sorcerer's Apprentice. This is the other side of him: a short piano piece he wrote in 1920 for La Revue musicale's tribute issue after Debussy's death, alongside contributions from Ravel, Stravinsky, Falla, Satie and others. The title, La plainte, au loin, du faune ("the faun's lament, far away"), points back to Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune.

La plainte, au loin, du faune
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRYAkh1kY0E

He's the violinist I revere most, and the recording of his I keep returning to is the 1960 Brahms Concerto with Klemperer and the French National Radio Orchestra, made at the Salle Wagram in Paris in June 1960, with Walter Legge producing.

It's also the record that taught me that mastering decides where you sit. I've bought it more than once. On the Japanese pressing Oistrakh is startlingly close, as if I were in the front row. On the European pressing the hall opens up around him, and I'm listening from the balcony. Same performance, two different seats. In Japan alone it has been remastered again and again, a 24-bit remaster in 2008, a Warner one in 2016, an SACD in 2019, and ever since that first comparison I've looked for whatever sits closest to the original master.

Brahms: Violin Concerto (Oistrakh, Klemperer, 1960)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-s6c2NzXgQ

And for the other side of him, live with Richter in New York, March 1970:

Beethoven and Brahms Sonatas (with Richter, 1970)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaC5OJ9UHZw

In 1952, at 75, Cortot made his only trip to Japan. From his hotel window at Kawatana Onsen in Yamaguchi he could see a small island, Atsushima, and told the local mayor he wished he could quietly die there. The villagers offered him the island and proposed naming it Koruto-jima (孤留島), after the Japanese sound of his name. He never came back. But in 2010, Cortot Hall, designed by Kengo Kuma, was built on the site of that hotel, and his concerts from the tour survive on record.

Cortot in Japan, 1952 (recordings from the tour)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRGitc7fxpo

Last year I called his 1972 recording of Brahms' 2nd with the Dresden Staatskapelle the absolute pinnacle of that piece — incredibly profound, yet with this perfect rhythmic drive and clarity. Following up on what that thread taught me.

The thing I didn't know until a reader mentioned it: Sanderling's father lost his position under the Nazis for being Jewish, and Sanderling fled east rather than west, ending up in the Soviet Union. He spent years sharing the Leningrad Philharmonic podium with Mravinsky, through the war and after. His Shostakovich, several people told me, stands alongside Mravinsky's and Kondrashin's as some of the most authoritative recordings of that music that exist — which makes sense once you know he lived through what Shostakovich was writing about, from close enough to feel it.

One recommendation from that thread I've since gone back to more than once: his Shostakovich 8th.

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 8 (Sanderling, Berlin Philharmonic, 1997)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRQ4n8eUO8w

Brahms: Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73 (Dresden Staatskapelle, 1972)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Tc6Cv2Xp8w

Cherubini was born in Italy but spent most of his career in France, where he became one of the dominant figures in French musical life for decades. His work sits right at the hinge between the Classical and Romantic eras.

Overture to Démophon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygYcsHKaw7s

Medea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xatmIJHD4z8

Turning 91 today. Estonian composer. I was introduced to his music in the 1980s through his first collection of works with Gidon Kremer, and I was instantly captivated.

Tabula Rasa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YqF69HLkj8

A profound elegy on the death of Benjamin Britten — Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten (1977): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVZZgfXNFW8

The sublime, minimalist tranquility of Spiegel im Spiegel (1978): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4RmJaP683A

*Arvo Pärt ja Nora Pärt Eesti riikliku iseseisvuse taastamise aastapäeva vastuvõtul augustis 2012.

German-Danish composer, born today. His Piano Concerto, Op. 7 sounds remarkably like the work of his contemporary, Beethoven.

Piano Concerto, Op. 7 (1810): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVHTLjqVCvo

For comparison, Beethoven's First Concerto, composed more than a decade earlier in 1798. You see what I mean...(^^;

Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abL--9pihnI

A towering figure of Czech music and one of my most beloved composers. While his Serenade for Strings, Op. 22 is more widely known, his Serenade for Wind Instruments, Op. 44 is a piece I hold equally dear. Its melodies speak directly to the heart.

Serenade for Wind Instruments, Op. 44: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odDYsXiMYPw

And for a deeper journey, the complete symphonies conducted by Kubelík with the Berlin Philharmonic. Though Symphonies No. 8 and 9 are the most famous, the entire cycle is filled with treasures.

Complete Symphonies (Kubelík): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsB9oWbS\_YQ

This year marks 300 years since the French composer and chess player's birth.

Concert donné à Louis XIII
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUC7TbK59fY

French composer, remarkably prolific. A distinctly Southern European warmth and intimacy run through his work.

Suite for Piano, Op. 8: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F63xd\_htIs

String Quartets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61QfFDJPL44

Symphony No. 10, conducted by the composer himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra6XbBLY7bQ

Austrian composer and organist, born today. Sharing a historic performance of his Symphony No. 7.

Bruckner Symphony No. 7, Celibidache & the Berlin Philharmonic (1992): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSGOaTuAesY

Italian violinist and composer of the late Baroque era. For those with time to spare, also sharing a complete collection of his Concerti Grossi—over six hours, good for a relaxing day's background listening.

"Labyrinth": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puXdsiAkYCQ

Complete Concerti Grossi (full album): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCZOHlF\_PIg

Born in Fengtian, Manchuria, Ozawa became one of Japan's most celebrated conductors. Three recordings I keep coming back to:

First, footage of him as a young conductor, introduced by Leonard Bernstein himself.

Second, a 1985 documentary by the Maysles brothers. The footage of Ozawa and Rudolf Serkin rehearsing a Beethoven piece together, and their warm exchanges, is something I genuinely adore.

Third, a 1990 live performance of Brahms's First Symphony with the Saito Kinen Orchestra — I used to own this on LaserDisc. From the first bar to the last, the orchestra and Ozawa are completely inside the music, building to a climax that feels like everyone on stage is burning through everything they have. I've heard a later performance from the same tour, recorded in Matsumoto, has even better sound, so that one is worth tracking down too.

Mozart, Overture to The Marriage of Figaro (excerpt): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CGYWYp7T9w

Ozawa & Serkin rehearsing Beethoven (1985 Maysles brothers documentary): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2ImbjaXFlc

Brahms, Symphony No. 1, with the Saito Kinen Orchestra (1990): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQHz6F0sWvo

Born Alma Schindler in Vienna, she's remembered above all as Gustav Mahler's wife, and later as the wife of Walter Gropius and then Franz Werfel. But she composed too, on her own account, before her marriage to Mahler brought that largely to a stop. Sixteen of her songs survive.

Four Songs for Soprano and Orchestra (1915): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t\_SOI90-35g