There is an element of this kind of athleticism and jaw-dropping physical virtuosity to opera, as well.  All musicians at the highest levels train just as vigorously as these Olympic athletes do, we must in order to achieve the same level of mastery that these athletes must achieve in order to make it to the Olympic level of competition.  I know that the stereotype about singers is that we are all fat ladies wearing breastplates and carrying spears.  And, yes, in some cases, that stereotype holds true.  But singers, just like all humans, come in all shapes and sizes, and just like these athletes, our bodies are our instruments. The physical demands required of any singer to project their voice over a 150 piece orchestra into a 2000 – 4000 seat theater without any amplification all while running around on stage are quite strenuous. So, like athletes, singers must train like athletes in order to perform the amazing feats that are performed on stages like the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, and the Royal Opera House.  I just can’t help but see the similarities when watching the Olympics, and I think that this is a large part of what makes going to the opera so exciting.  I think of it as vocal figure skating or gymnastics – we watch people dressed up in costumes, moving around to music, waiting to see if they will land their vocal equivalent of a triple axle or double back flip.

One of the most “Olympic” singers alive today is Cecilia Bartoli.  She is capable of doing the most amazing things with her voice.  Her vocal range is extraordinary, allowing her to sing many soprano roles as well as lower mezzo-soprano roles.  She jumps back and forth from the bottom to the top of her range with ease, has phenomenal breath control that allows her to sustain phrases seemingly endlessly, and perhaps can sing faster than anyone else on the planet.  Here are a couple of videos that show case all of that – the first is her performing Fiordiligi’s first aria from Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte, and the second is her performing Cinderella’s final aria from Rossini’s telling of the familiar fairy tale.  You’ll hear a lot of the virtuosic athleticism I’m talking about here – when I listen to her, I never cease to marvel “Wow…humans can do that…”
Come Scoglio:

Nacqui all’affanno:

Watching the final of the Men’s Gymnastics High Bar competition the other day, I found that I was holding my breath as I watched the Dutch gymnast, Epke Zonderland, literally fly around the high bar as if he had been born to spin and float around the apparatus as he won the gold medal in that event.

As I watched, I strangely found myself thinking of this video of Cecilia Bartoli singing the Vivaldi aria, “Agitata da due venti.”  Somehow, both make my jaw drop in the same way, and I continue to marvel “Wow…a human can do that…”

Nicholas is one of the featured soloists on “L’Olimpiade,” a new Baroque pastiche based on a libretto by Metastasio set during the ancient Greek Olympic Games, that was released in May of this year and is available for purchase on Amazon and iTunes.

I went to go see Wes Anderson’s latest film a few days ago at the suggestion of a friend, who was just sure that I was going to love it.  That friend knows my taste well — I was completely enraptured from the first scene.  In the opening montage of the film, the cameras wander from room to room of a house on a rainy day — in one of the rooms, a group of children are playing around a record player, listening to Benjamin Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, which becomes the opening soundtrack to the film.  The montage is at once nostalgic and sweet, and yet, at the same time, an incredibly sophisticated shot, seamlessly moving through each room of the house, introducing us quietly to each of the film’s main characters and transforming the mundane idleness of a rainy afternoon into a visually stunning work of art. Britten’s music is woven in throughout the rest of the film’s soundtrack, providing a musical backdrop that is the perfect reflection of the wacky misadventures of the the movie’s two child protagonists.

In the film, the film’s two lead characters are a young boy and young girl who are in love, and who concoct an elaborate and sophisticated plan to run away together sometime in 1965.  The two embark on a complex and wild journey into the wilds of the island they are living on, managing to outsmart, outwit, and elude the adults who are supposed to be their caretakers at almost every step along the way.  Much of the music that was chosen for the film was music Britten had composed for young people as a way to introduce them to the art form.  Something that has always impressed me about Britten’s music for young people is that it is always incredibly sophisticated.  Britten was fascinated with youth and the precious value of innocence his entire life, and it is clear that he knew that children have much more sophisticated minds that most adults give them credit for.

Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra is an elaborate set of a theme and variations that takes the listener through the various sections of the orchestra, showcasing what each instrument and section does and the variety of sounds that they make.  The piece begins with the entire orchestra playing an arrangement of a theme by Purcell, and then Britten tours the orchestra through each following variation on that theme.  The piece ends with the entire orchestra playing an incredibly complex fugue, climaxing to an exciting finish.  Britten never simplifies or assumes that his intended audience won’t be able to understand, just because they are young.  The piece is just as intricate and complex as any of his other compositions — he assumes intelligence and a sophisticated capability of understanding.

A key piece of his music that features prominently in the film is his church parable, Noye’s Fludde.  Britten composed the piece with the intention that it be performed by a mostly-amateur cast in a church or a large hall — most of the roles in the opera are written for children, and it is at a local church production of the piece (in which Wes Anderson’s leading lady is dressed up adorably as a raven) that the film’s two lead characters meet and fall in love.

Another part of “pop” culture that I have been taking in lately is HBO’s new show The Newsroom.  At the beginning of the series’ pilot episode, the show’s lead character, news anchor Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) sounds off at a Q and A session at Northwestern University about how, once-upon-a-time-not-too-long-ago, American people used to value intelligence, not stupidity, and celebrated the power of knowledge.  The show has gone on pursuing this theme, by dramatizing the production of a news show, musing on the importance of an informed, educated electorate.  It’s a theme I completely subscribe to when I consider my life as a performing classical musician.

I learned my lesson about this a long time ago the very first time I programmed Britten on a recital in Kirksville, Missouri.  I worried that a small, American town might not appreciate his music, and programmed a lot of lighter, more “accessible” fare around it.  In the end, it turned out that the music that drew in that midwestern audience was Britten’s music — not the lighter, less complex, less intricate music that surrounded it. Seeing Wes Anderson’s nostalgic take on a bygone era, and hearing and seeing how he so tenderly and lovingly wove Britten’s music throughout the film, I was reminded why I am drawn to his music both as a listener and as a performer.  He assumes and celebrates the power of the human mind while never losing touch with the intricacies of the human heart.  He ignites the imagination through his music — reminding us that this music, like all music, truly is for everybody.

Nicholas’s first album focusing on the music of Britten, “Winter Words,” was released in 2011 and was included on the New York Times Classical Music Gift Guide, as well as Best Of Year lists for the New Yorker and the Boston Globe. He releases his second Britten album, “Still Falls the Rain,” on October 9.

First, the apology. People who know me musically know that I’m not a fan of bel canto operatic repertoire, pretty much at all. I liken listening to, or even watching, bel canto to eating whipped cream. Nothing wrong with whipped cream, but there just isn’t much there for me — I generally go for savory over sweet to begin with. Compound that with the fact that a composer like Bellini is generally considered more ‘serious’ and worthy of note than one like Offenbach, and we’re really in business. And lest it sound like I’m just prejudiced, I did listen to Bellini’s La sonnambula with as open a mind as I could muster, and finished it not feeling much of anything at all.

Then I listened to Anna Bolena.

I knew something was up when the “Sinfonia” started, and by the middle of the first act, I was completely hooked. The music is charming, yes, but there’s an understated beauty to it, and it just sounds like there’s a lot more variety and depth to anything I heard in La sonnambula. There are shades of Mozart, too, which I always appreciate. In short, I may have been a little too harsh on bel canto — I won’t make it to Rossini for a couple of months, though, so we’ll see what happens. Here are Anna Netrebko and Elina Garanca singing “Va’, infelice, e teso reca” in Vienna last year:

And finally, the old friend. Full disclosure: though I was a classical piano student for a good decade or so growing up, classical music and I had a bit of a messy falling out after I stopped taking lessons. It wasn’t until my college choir performed Handel’s Israel in Egypt several years ago that I truly learned that classical music was just as vibrant, humorous, and soul-achingly beautify — if not more so — than any other music out there. After that performance, I embarked on a huge catch-up session, listening to as much classical music as I could from my college’s library. One day, early on in the project, I came upon a CD of music by Erno von Dohnanyi. I lived in Cleveland as a child and knew Christoph von Dohnanyi’s name well, and, after finding out the two were related, checked the CD out immediately. On it was his Konzertstuck for Cello (which is wonderful), as well as his Variations on a Nursery Theme.

Never before has a piece of music so accurately captured what I love about art before. It begins with a stormy, Wagnerian introduction, so sturm und drang it almost feels like a parody… which, of course, it is. After the thunder rumbles off to the distance, a razor-sharp blast from the orchestra signals the start of the theme: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. What follows is a set of a dozen variations, each lampooning a composer active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Both Strausses get a variation, as well as Wagner, Saint-Saëns, and Brahms. It also contains an incredibly virtuosic piano part that swirls and dances around the orchestra as it plays Dohnanyi’s twisted version of a Music History lecture. I could go on for ages about this piece, but suffice it to say that it is one of my oldest favorites, and will continue to be for quite some time. Here is Zoltán Kocsis playing the variations:

As a bit of a thank you note to the artists and composers that have made a special impression on me over the years, I put together a list of 50 favorite recordings.  You can read that list here at my blog for Huffington Post.

Soon after the list was published, a few people dropped me a note to ask which, of those fifty recordings, were my very favorites. I deliberately alphabetized the list by composer, rather than tried to rank the recordings in some kind of “Top 50” countdown, to avoid making impossible decisions about which recording ranked higher or lower.  Still, if push came to shove and I absolutely HAD to choose my top three favorites, I’d likely pick the three described below. Each selected work is from a composer who possesses a very distinct and recognizable sound, but all three works have an obvious connecting thread:  they all celebrate nature.

So drumroll please: my top three favorite recordings….

Number 3 – Philip Glass: Powaqqatsi

So, I’m giving my number three slot to Philip Glass’s music for Godfrey Regio’s visionary 1982 film Powaqqatsi: Life in Transformation.  The title comes from a Hopi word meaning “parasitic way of life.” The phrase has many meanings in the context of the film, but the principal meaning, as revealed in Regio’s stunning imagery, is the degradation brought about by wanton industrialization.  Long before there was talk of global warming, this film – and it’s predecessor in the “Qatsi trilogy,” Koyaanisqatsi – made it clear that a way of life that ravaged the natural environment was dooming our species to physical and spiritual misery.

The subject matter may be deep, and often dark, but Glass’s score is luminous.  It is, to my taste, the richest, warmest and most human music he has composed.  There’s a strong element of world music in it, with thrilling drumming and exuberant singing. Listening to it – or, even better, watching the filming, is an utterly transforming experience.

The trailer:

The recording: Philip Glass Ensemble

CD/downloads:

The DVD:

Number 2: Olivier Messiaen: Des Canyons aux Étoiles (“From The Canyons to the Stars”) 

Since I think I did a pretty good job of summing up my love for this work in my Huffington Post blog, forgive me for doing a little self-borrowing here!

It was conductor Myung-Whun Chung who first introduced me to Messiaen’s music with a recording of the explosively original Turangalila-Symphonie that really shook me. As Deutsche Grammophon’s press agent, and later U.S. label chief, in New York, I dedicated a lot of time and resources to promoting the label’s Messiaen’s releases, probably the most gratifying work I did while working in the recording industry.

Chung’s recording of Messiaen’s “Canyons” came out long after I left the label, but it’s probably the version of this visionary work that I return to most. Messiaen wrote it on a commission from the great arts patron Alice Tully, who sought a work to mark America’s bicentennial. The result is a mystical, kaleidoscopic depiction of “God’s Country” — the beautiful canyons of Southwest Utah, including Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park — complete with Messiaen’s trademark birdsong transcriptions and a battery of percussion including an instrument invented by the composer (the geophone!). The eighth movement, “The resurrected and the song of the star Aldebaran,” is more soothing to the soul than any music I have ever encountered — it is the quiet breathing of God’s universe at peace.

What a wondrous work!

Recording: Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France/Myung-Whun Chung (DG):

CD and downloads:

Number One: Mahler Symphony No. 3

I’ve written about my annual “First Day of Sumner” ritual, which has, as its centerpiece, listening to Mahler’s Third Symphony (here’s a link to that post). And after thinking about it for a while, I think I’d have to say that this work really is my favorite piece of music.

As Mahler explained in a program that he ultimately held back from publication with the symphony, each of the six movements depicts a stage of evolution from “inanimate nature” to “universal love.”  Movement one, lasting a full half hour, originally bore the heading “Pan Awakes – Summer Marches In” [the mythical figure Pan was the God of summer – and many other things].  The rugged beginning – with its howling, sliding trombones – seems to convey the heaving of the earth itself as it thrusts up the rocks and meadows and mountains.  Slowly but surely living matter begins to appear (as you listen you can easily guess when this happens), and march music (that comes back stronger and stronger) captures life taking hold and growing in abundance and power.  The last five minutes of this movement can knock you off your seat if you play it loudly enough!

The graceful second movement is “What the Flowers of the Meadow Tell Me,” followed by “What the Animals of the Forest Tell me”.  The mysterious fourth movement, “What Mankind Tells Me,” features a solo female voice singing texts by Nietzsche (the same source that would inspire Richard Strauss’ most famous work) asking the question “What does the deep midnight say?”  Sunlight returns in the fifth movement with a choir of boys’ voices imitating the angels in a song featuring texts from Mahler’s favorite folk poems, The Youth’s Magic Horn:  “Heavenly joy is a happy city.  Heavenly joy knows no end.”  I won’t hesitate to say what I think about the final movement, “What Love Tells Me”:  it is, in my mind, the most beautiful and expressive 20-plus minutes of music ever written (crying during the last three minutes is practically inescapable!).  As famed Mahler biographer Henry-Louis de la Grange puts it, “With this hymn of praise to the Creator of the World, conceived as the supreme force of Love, Mahler took the final step on the road to Eternal Light.”

Recording: Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam/Haitink (Philips Originals):

CD/Downloads:

Bernstein’s first recording of Mahler’s Third with the New York Philharmonic is a great one, and comes in a terrific set of all nine of the composer’s symphonies.  Well worth having, and a set of Mahler Symphonies belongs in ever music lover’s household.

I am often surprised when I see that many of my friends start the day by turning on the TV and watching one of the big morning shows. I guess I like the morning shows as much as I like a Dunkin Donut — which is to say I’m generally happy to consume it, but it doesn’t make me feel good. I prefer to start with something I consider healthy before indulging in the greasy sweets; and for me, it‘s always first a musical choice.

With the choice of music it’s the same: what’s going to be that first thing you listen to and  how will it impact your day? Some folks will go straight to pop music and/or hip hop at a highly caffeinated volume level, just as some folks will start their day with a Red Bull. You see what I’m getting at.

You may want to try starting your day with something that is just simple and beautiful… and perhaps with a little caffeine. For me lately, the green tea of morning music is the piano sonatas of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. I actually came rather late to Mozart; when I first really started to listen heavily to classical music, Mozart for me was just too completely co-opted by the ‘adults’ and a symbol of middle-of-the-road programming. I must confess my appreciation of Mozart’s music has matured, perhaps as a consequence of my own maturity…

But back to my breakfast metaphor:  I typically begin my day with a number of  light healthy snacks and drinks, which is why I have been gravitating to Mozart’s piano sonatas. They are typically bright, sometimes green, sometimes ripe and always add up to something that is completely nourishing.

Here is one example, the opening of Mozart’s Piano Sonata in C Major K 330 (first movement), played by the incomparable Krystian Zimerman and on which I will begin to rest my case. Try starting your day here and see how it affects you.

Do you have any favorite works you like to listen to first thing in the day? Let us know.

This happens all the time in classical music; there’s always a chance that the most sublime piece started as a snippet of a folk tune or unassuming vocal line. Bach, for instance, did this in nothing less than his Goldberg Variations, widely considered to be the pinnacle of contrapuntal composition. Here are the 29th and 30th variations, as well as the final aria:

The 30th variation is called the Quodlibet, which makes for a pretty solemn, portentous-sounding conclusion to this mammoth solo work. However, the Quodlibet was based on a game the Bach family would play at reunions in which they would try to sing several folk songs together at the same time and see if anything would come of it. This particular Quodlibet contains, among others, a round with the English name of “Cabbage and turnips have driven me away.” It was intended as a joke, but the final variation is now seen as a fitting finale to a dramatic and virtuosic work.

Perhaps my favorite of all examples of the ordinary becoming extraordinary is one done by Beethoven. In 1794, he wrote a little song called “Gegenliebe,” which can be heard here (starting at 2:55):

It’s a great example of Beethoven at his most pleasant; it’s a nice melody, but it definitely belongs to a love song, and not anything with a larger-scale. Certainly not his Choral Fantasy, composed 14 years later (do listen to the whole thing, but the pertinent part begins at 4:40):

And he didn’t stop there. I hope, listening to those two melodies, they’ve sounded at least somewhat familiar. Apparently, Beethoven liked it so much that he didn’t just put it in the Choral Fantasy, but did a little tweak and… well… turned it into the “Ode to Joy” theme from his 9th Symphony.

If that’s not extraordinary, I don’t know what is.

My partner and I recently purchased a new upright piano for our apartment, and it has been a fun opportunity to pretend like we’re back in the 19th century, playing our 19th century iPod in our home and making music together, mostly sight reading through songs as we laugh at our silly reading mistakes along the way.  Perhaps because Jeremy and I were so focused on Schumann for the past couple of weeks in preparation for our concert in Chicago, my partner and I have also been exploring Schumann’s many songs, some of which I think are perhaps some of the most beautiful songs ever written.

In one of the more romantic stories in classical music history, after a long and dramatic courtship, Robert Schumann finally married his great love Clara Wieck in 1840.  The two were madly in love, but were prevented from marrying for a long time by Clara’s father, who disapproved of Robert, thinking him unsuitable since he was a poor composer.  As the tension of their protracted and fraught engagement finally released, and they were able to be married, Robert suddenly had a flood of songs pour out of him – he composed 168 songs in 1840 alone, and in the process elevated the whole art form of song to an entirely new level.  Among the songs he composed that year are his famed song cycles Liederkreis Op. 24 and Liederkreis Op. 39, Frauenliebe und Leben (Woman’s Life and Love), and his incredibly beautiful song cycle about a poet’s infatuation and break up with his love, Dichterliebe (which Jeremy and I performed last week in Chicago).

In a ridiculously romantic gesture, Robert grouped together the first 26 songs he composed that year into a collection entitled Myrthen and gave them to Clara as a wedding present.  The first song, Widmung (Dedication), is perhaps one of his most beautiful compositions.  While I don’t understand why there are jellyfish floating around in the backgroud of this video, here is one of my favorite lieder singers performing the song:

Du meine Seele, du mein Herz,
Du meine Wonn’, O du mein Schmerz,
Du meine Welt, in der ich lebe,
Mein Himmel du, darein ich schwebe,
O du mein Grab, in das hinab
Ich ewig meinen Kummer gab.

Du bist die Ruh, du bist der Frieden,
Du bist vom Himmel mir beschieden.
Daß du mich liebst, macht mich mir wert,
Dein Blick hat mich vor mir verklärt,
Du hebst mich liebend über mich,
Mein guter Geist, mein beßres Ich!

- Friedrich Rückert

You my soul, you my heart,
you my bliss, o you my pain,
you the world in which I live;
you my heaven, in which I float,
o you my grave, into which
I eternally cast my grief.
You are rest, you are peace,
you are bestowed upon me from heaven.
That you love me makes me worthy of you;
your gaze transfigures me;
you raise me lovingly above myself,
my good spirit, my better self!

Imagine getting that as a wedding present from your brand new husband -  we should all be so lucky…

I’ve linked to some of my favorite recordings of each of these cycles above.  If you’re in the mood to immerse yourself in the results of Robert Schumann’s romantic high in 1840 and experience the products of his honeymoon bliss, check out one of those recordings above.  In case of you are curious, here’s a recording one of the songs that my partner and I have fallen in love with during our explorations at our new piano.  It’s called “Schöne Fremde (Beautiful Foreign Land),” from Liederkreis Op. 39.

Es rauschen die Wipfel und schauern,
Als machten zu dieser Stund
Um die halbversunkenen Mauern
Die alten Götter die Rund.

Hier hinter den Myrtenbäumen
In heimlich dämmernder Pracht,
Was sprichst du wirr wie in Träumen
Zu mir, phantastische Nacht?

Es funkeln auf mich alle Sterne
Mit glühendem Liebesblick,
Es redet trunken die Ferne
Wie vom künftigem, großem Glück.
- Joseph von Eichendorff
The treetops rustle and shiver
as if at this hour
about the half-sunken walls
the old gods are making their rounds.

Here, behind the myrtle trees,
in secretly darkening splendor,
what do you say so murmuringly, as if in a dream,
to me, fantastic night?

The stars glitter down on me
with glowing, loving gazes,
and the distance speaks tipsily,
it seems, of great future happiness.

I first came in contact with Hector Berlioz’s music during a music history class in college. Before anyone comes in and says “Well, of course that’s the problem,” I fell in love with Monteverdi and Handel because of music history classes, so that’s never been an issue for me. But for whatever reason, I just didn’t buy into Berlioz. Sure, his story is fascinating (the multiple failed Prix de Rome competitions, the cross-dressing to stalk his unrequited lover, the murder plots), but to be honest, that never really appealed to me. It didn’t help that the piece I first heard of his was the Symphonie fantastique, which was just a little too stormy for my tastes. The two pieces I had in my library were his Requiem and La damnation de Faust, which — I thought — would only promise more strum und drang, so it was with not much excitement that I started listening to his music.

I couldn’t have been more unfair to that man.

La damnation de Faust starts off with a whisper, not a bang, and though there is plenty of storming and raging at the end, there is also a shockingly charming scene barely five minutes into the piece centering on a peasant celebration. The orchestra imitates a set of bagpipes, and the feeling of calm, pastoral joy is palpable. Here is the Montreal Symphony performing the Ronde des Paysans:

Similarly, Alexander Borodin was another composer who was maligned in my head (though not to the extent as Berlioz). I always given a certain air of gravitas to Russian composers, and though I always appreciated Borodin’s music, I never really paid full attention to it. As I started listening to the overture to his opera Prince Igor, I was met with exactly what I thought I would find — beautiful music, but very somber and slow.

And again, I was entirely fooled.

About two minutes in, the music started picking up; I had no idea what I was going to hear at the end of the crescendo. What I found when it finally resolved (at about 2:10 in this video) was music that sounded like equal parts Borodin — or what I thought he was — Beethoven, and the Wild West. Strings were dancing all over the place, brass blasts were used solely to create excitement, the music went from smooth and soft to big and boisterous, while never losing the feeling of forward motion that I never thought I would find in Borodin’s music. When the French horn solo came in (at 3:38), I knew I was entirely hooked.

I’m currently listening to the rest of the opera, and I’m absolutely in love with it. I can’t wait to hear the rest of his works in my library now (and beyond!). If there’s one thing that doggedly going through every piece of music I own and forcing myself to listen to them from beginning to end has given me, it is a far more open mind than I ever thought I’d have.

Next up: Brahms and Britten. Bring it on.

I was eying blue cheese one day and lamented to Anne that I was the only one in the family who likes blue. She replied, ‘That one you’re looking at might be a bit intense for the newcomer, but I think I have the perfect gateway blue cheese for you.” I had heard the word ‘gateway’ used that way — playing off the idea of a portal into a world of new wonders. The idea of a cheese portal caught me off guard, but I went with it. Sure enough, the cheese Anne chose opened the minds of my wife and boys to the wonders of blue. The blue cheese gateway had been opened.

Because virtually everything I experience in life eventually makes it through the prism of music, I soon began to think about the concept of gateway music. When people hear I work in the realm of classical music and opera, the most usual response is “I love classical music whenever I hear it.  I just don’t know where to begin to choose music for myself.”

There is no question in my mind now that every great composer has some gateway compositions, and I hope to explore those in coming posts. But if asked to start at the beginning, to recommend the gateway composer, I would recommend Bach. The choice of Bach won’t be a surprise to even the novice listener; but we’re starting at the beginning for the sake of starting at the beginning, and in many ways, Bach’s music is the DNA of Western music.

The point here is not to get in to technicalities. Did I need to describe to my boys what made the ‘blue veins’ in blue cheese? No. In fact, if I did, it would have most certainly yielded the opposite of the desired result. Perhaps it’s the same with classical music. For example, just open up a conversation about music with an explanation of ‘counterpoint,’ and watch the interest in your topic evaporate… No, the point of the gateway experience is to be easy. You shouldn’t even have to push open the gate, you should be able to naturally walk right through.

Let’s try this with Bach. He is a natural gateway composer because there are just so many potential gateways; these following suggestions are just a couple of thousands of his works, which you can find on your own and share with others.

Rosalyn Tureck was a pianist particularly associated with Bach; her approach to his music was very natural. Here she is playing the famous ‘Aria” to Bach’s Goldberg Variations. I think the fact that she could play it so simply, so beautifully at such an advanced age — literally at the end of her life — speaks to the power of the music:

http://youtu.be/A2MfdZCais0

A few other obvious gateways to Bach are his suites for solo cello. Cellist Matt Haimovitz has dedicated much of his musical life to Bach. Even though Matt is the consummate explorer of new music, he often begins his concerts with a Bach suite both as an opening prayer and homage to the western music tradition. This live recording is rather unique in that the cello is amplified in a hall with reverberant acoustics that at times gives the cello an organ-like quality.

While chatting with some musician friends the other day, one singer credited Bach with changing his life and leading him to pursue an artistic career.  Bach’s always been a towering figure in my musical universe, but was his music life-changing for me, too? No, I couldn’t really say that.  Obviously that isn’t because his music lacks transformative power, but only that the particular alchemy of time and place that makes for a life-changing experience simply never happened for me with Bach.

As the conversation continued, one of my friends asked me if any music had changed my life, and I quickly realized that there were actually a few composers I could mention as life-changers, starting with Beethoven. I remember the circumstances precisely:  just a week after arriving in Vienna during a year of study abroad, I was given tickets to hear the Vienna Philharmonic play the “Eroica” Symphony.  To that date I had only limited exposure to classical music – from the recordings of a few friends – and had never heard a live symphony orchestra.  The proverbial lightning bolt struck with those two famous and startling chords that open the work.  “This was the music I had been seeking, without even knowing it,” I thought to myself at the time, not just Beethoven’s music, but also, more generally, the sound of the orchestra itself.  The next day I bought a set of Beethoven’s nine symphonies on DG cassettes (it was the age of the Walkman, which came soon after that of the dinosaurs).  I was hooked, and when I returned to Stanford’s home campus in California, I quickly became known as “that guy who plays the really loud symphonies” – which I did at crazy listening parties once in a while and every night in my dorm room.

Riccardo Muti conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra in the opening of Beethoven’s “Eroica”:

I returned to New York City, my hometown, after graduating, and got my first job – at a publishing company. Searching for my own identity, and a sense of what to do with my time and ambition, not to mention a more realistic view of the adult world I now found myself in, I was pulled deeply into the worlds of two composers I’d define as life-changing for me:  Mahler and Shostakovich.  Together these two composers spoke to me in a kind of existential tandem.  Mahler’s famously autobiographical music raised all the deep questions that a curious twenty-something guy living in New York City:  what is the nature of faith?  How do we make the treacherous journey from innocence to experience without losing our idealism?  How do we make sense of the cruelty and strangeness and randomness of much of the world around us?  From the quiet nature sounds that open his First Symphony to the fading-away heartbeats of the finale of his Ninth Symphony, Mahler seems to narrate nothing less than the journey of the modern soul.

Mahler’s impact had a profoundly practical one on my life the day – 25 years ago – that I heard his Symphony No. 2, “The Resurrection,” in a performance by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic.  It was that performance that left me so awestruck that I decided the day after to change careers, sending my resume to Deutsche Grammophon, the record company that had recorded the event (five months later I got a job in the sales department of PolyGram Classics, the company that owned the label).  Mahler’s music continues to be a key soundtrack in my life journey.  I can’t imagine my own sense of life without the sound of Mahler’s music in my ears.

Leonard Bernstein conducts the LSO in the final pages of Mahler’s Second Symphony:

If Mahler was the “yin” of my twenty-something years, Shostakovich was the “yang.”  Hearing his Fifth Symphony was another thunderbolt that pretty much knocked me off my feet (to be soon followed by his Tenth and Seventh Symphonies).  I loved the visceral power of his music, the ironic sensibility it displayed, not to mention the stark subject matter, which ranged from the ravages of war to the alienation of the individual in the face of a totalitarian political system (Stalin was a lifelong scourge to the composer, who lived with the very real threat that the dictator would destroy him for deviating from the party line).  My friends were going through their grunge and alternative music phases at this time, but who needed Kurt Cobain when you had Shostakovich to keep you company in your outrage (someone probably knows the answer, so I’ll ask here:  did Kurt know Shostakovich’s music?  In their pain and loneliness, these two were certainly kindred spirits).

Gustavo Dudamel conducts the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela in the second movement of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10:

Mahler and Shostakovich reigned in my life for a decade.  I read books about them, bought numerous recordings, even promoted their music in my work.  And then, I found the composer who seemed to offer a way out:  Olivier Messiaen.  The great French mystic, a life-long Catholic and extremely accomplished ornithologist (the birdsong he transposed for orchestral instruments became a foundational element much of his music), wrote works that celebrated the transcendent power of God’s love, demonstrated, in part, by the glories of nature that were everywhere around us.  The beauty of nature imparted, in Messiaen’s words, the “gift of awe” that gave us, God’s lost children, the ability to imagine perfect the world beyond.  All of the agitation, despair and anxiety that Mahler and Shostakovich stirred up seemed to dissolve instantly in “The Resurrected and the Song of the Star Aldebaran,” from Messiaen’s Des Canyons aux Étoiles  (From the Canyons to the Stars), or the “Garden of Love’s Sleep” from the Turangalîla-Symphonie (sorry, no recommendable video here, but trust me on this one and download both of these works, or at least both of these movements).

As I approach my fiftieth birthday in July, and find myself in particularly philosophical frame of mind, I wonder if another life-changing musical discovery will alter the course of my life.  I’m not going to sit around and wait for it to happen, but I’m sure glad to know that with great music, anything is possible.