A Year of Bach

About A Year of Bach

Bach is the greatest, and we still don’t talk about him enough. A Year of Bach extends my year-long listening project into conversation. I sit down with writers, philosophers, economists, and entrepreneurs to ask how this 300-year-old music continually rewrites us. Subscribe here: https://yearofbach.substack.com/ yearofbach.substack.com (https://yearofbach.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Evan Goldfine

Category

music · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

2 Jun 2025

Latest episode

20 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

13 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   20 Oct 2026

   Philosopher Rebecca Lowe on Bach: "It Feels Like Going Home"

   A conversation with political philosopher Rebecca Lowe (The Ends Don’t Justify the Means (https://endsdontjustifythemeans.com/)) about objectivity and musical beauty, the differences between American and British choral singing, and her skepticism about historically-informed performance. Lowe shares favorite Bach works (the E minor flute sonata, the “Great” G minor organ fugue) and her broader musical tastes including Britten, Strauss, Mozart, opera, Stevie Wonder, Chet Baker, and Angela Hewitt. Albums discussed: Angela Hewitt, Bach: The Art of Fugue (Hyperion, 2014)Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/search/Angela%20Hewitt%20Art%20of%20Fugue) · Apple Music (https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/bach-the-art-of-fugue/id897164959) · YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Angela+Hewitt+Art+of+Fugue) Emmanuel Pahud and Trevor Pinnock, Bach: Complete Flute Sonatas (2008), which opens with the E minor sonata, BWV 1034Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/search/Pahud%20Pinnock%20Bach%20Complete%20Flute%20Sonatas) · Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/bach-complete-flute-sonatas/698830978) · YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Pahud+Pinnock+Bach+Flute+Sonata+E+minor+BWV+1034) Emmanuel Pahud and Stephen Kovacevich, Pahud plays Debussy, Ravel & ProkofievSpotify (https://open.spotify.com/search/Pahud%20Kovacevich%20Debussy%20Ravel%20Prokofiev) · Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/search?term=Pahud%20Kovacevich%20Debussy%20Ravel%20Prokofiev) · YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Pahud+Kovacevich+Prokofiev+Flute+Sonata) Glenn Gould, A Consort of Musicke Bye William Byrde and Orlando GibbonsSpotify (https://open.spotify.com/search/Glenn%20Gould%20Byrd%20Gibbons) · Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/search?term=Glenn%20Gould%20Byrd%20Gibbons) · YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Glenn+Gould+Consort+of+Musicke+Byrd+Gibbons) Gerald Finley and Julius Drake, Barber songsSpotify (https://open.spotify.com/search/Gerald%20Finley%20Julius%20Drake%20Barber) · Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/search?term=Gerald%20Finley%20Julius%20Drake%20Barber) · YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Gerald+Finley+Julius+Drake+Barber+songs) Karl Richter, Bach cantatasSpotify (https://open.spotify.com/search/Karl%20Richter%20Bach%20Cantatas) · Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/search?term=Karl%20Richter%20Bach%20Cantatas) · YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Karl+Richter+Bach+Cantatas) Transcript: [00:00:00] Evan Goldfine: Hello, and welcome to A Year of Bach. My name is Evan Goldfine, and today my guest is Rebecca Lowe, a political philosopher whose work centers on freedom, rights, and equality. She’s currently a philosophy senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and her excellent Substack is called The Ends Don’t Justify the Means, where she warns about the troubles of consequentialism in a genial way. Rebecca came to philosophy after earning a degree of music at Cambridge, so today we’ll talk about the different pleasures of philosophy and music, and also plenty about Bach. I’ve asked Rebecca to bring her strongest-held opinions, and perhaps if we’re lucky, we’ll see how we’re frustrated by each other’s tastes. Rebecca, welcome. Rebecca Lowe: Hey, thanks so much for having me, Evan. I’m excited about this. Evan Goldfine: So I wanted to start with a little praise for your writing and podcasting. I find your prose to be very lively and bouncy while engaging with deep and sometimes troubling subjects. It’s sort of an interesting strategy about keeping [00:01:00] discussions engaging. I sense you also take a lot of joy in the philosophical argument. Am I onto something here? Does it echo with your enjoyment of music? How did you get your voice? Rebecca Lowe: Oh gosh. I mean, that’s a big question, isn’t it? So I grew up in a family of philosophers. Both my parents are philosophers, so I think philosophical argument is something that I just imbibed. I was talking to a friend, in fact, our mutual friend, Henry Oliver, about this yesterday, and about the idea of how you learn how to do philosophical talking, philosophical arguing, and I think even though the content of a lot of the conversations I had at home growing up was philosophy, I think even if that hadn’t been the case, I think I would’ve had a childhood full of philosophy because the ways in which my parents talk and the ways in which I talk are very philosophy imbued. One of my close friends one time made this joke. She was introducing me to someone, and she said, “Hey, this is my friend Rebecca, [00:02:00] who likes to start her sentences, ‘It is the case that...’” And this just summarizes me very well. So I think I have a way of talking which is broadly the way in which philosophers write, and I think beyond that, though, I am very keen to make philosophy intelligible to people who don’t know about philosophy. I like very plain, straight, dry prose. I’m one of these people who loves, for instance, American novelists and American philosophers who other people find to be overly nitpicky and very, very plain in their writing. I’m probably the only person in the world who thinks John Rawls is a beautiful writer. But I do attempt, at least when I’m writing philosophy, to write it how I talk. So I’ve already ruined that by saying I talk in a philosophical way, but the best bit of advice I was given about writing was from my supervisor at Cambridge, who’s one of my favorite people, and we can talk about him a little maybe, ‘cause he was a great musician. But he one time told me, “Just read out everything that you write.” [00:03:00] And I think this is the best advice you can give to someone who wants their writing to be more understandable. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. So how did that philosophical house be filled with music? Were your parents also musicians? You ended up pursuing music before a proper philosophy degree. What’s your origin? Rebecca Lowe: This is a good question. My dad was very musical. He taught me how to read music and play the recorder. He also had a flute that a friend of his had given to him and he’d never really played, which I think was the main reason for me starting to play the flute. My grandparents had a piano. We used to go visit them every other weekend. I was obsessed by playing the piano. My mom’s probably will listen to this, my dad sadly isn’t alive anymore. But my mom will probably listen to this. She may disagree with this, but I actually think I was really the only person in the household who regularly listened to music. Both my parents loved classical music, but I was obsessed by listening to this stuff from a very young [00:04:00] age. We had some very good audio cassettes. My grandmother, like I say, she was a very good pianist. So music was around, but I do think, and I’ll probably say this as some kind of individualist, I think it was also my own driving of my interest. Evan Goldfine: What hit you early on, as apart from your siblings or your parents? Rebecca Lowe: I think yeah, my brother. He hit me early on. Evan Goldfine: In a different way. Rebecca Lowe: Yeah. I think some of the earliest things I can remember listening to, we had a very good, I totally forgot this until you mentioned it, actually. We had a very nice recording of the Carnival of the Animals. And I really liked the colorful ways in which animals were depicted. I’ve gone on to have a bit of a philosophical interest in this idea of what music can depict. And actually, yes, so I did, my undergrad is in music at Cambridge, which is the worst place to go if you wanna do performance. Although being a performing musician in Cambridge is amazing. You have endless resources and opportunities to make music with wonderful musicians. [00:05:00] But the music degree is not any performance at all. It’s entirely applied math, basically, as the Americans say. It’s very much analysis. You don’t listen to any music in any of your lectures. If you’re doing any composition, it’s in order to show analytical skill, not to actually express yourself through composition. The thing I was interested in was really aesthetics, so the philosophy of art, with a particular focus on music. I did get to do some of that in my second and third years, but I found it very... I mean, I like math, but I was not intending to do a math degree, and doing music at Cambridge was effectively doing that. I think it made me into a better musician. I think it made me a more rigorous thinker. I was already good at writing arguments, but I think this helped me in various ways. But it’s a bit of a funny thing to have done, I think. It has abstract value, and I think being excellent at anything has application value, but- Evan Goldfine: So you learned your voice leading, you learned your counterpoint, you could write [00:06:00] according to the rules that Bach created. But did you create anything that was meaningful? Rebecca Lowe: No. So I was thinking about this. I don’t know what your view is on this. Over the past few weeks I see people tweeting about these AI created Bach chorales and Bach fugues. I haven’t looked at the fugues, but I had a very, very quick look at one of the chorales that everyone was lauding as this perfect, beautiful bit of voice leading, and it’s absolutely dreadful. I mean, there were parallels in the first bar. And I’m like, the problem, because I had this, you kno… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yearofbach.substack.com (https://yearofbach.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

2. 

   14 Aug 2026

   Guitarist Miles Okazaki on the Rhythms of Bach and Monk

   Guitarist and composer Miles Okazaki has been an important guitarist in the New York jazz scene for over twenty years. His latest album is Boomtown, featuring a large chamber jazz ensemble playing his jagged Americana. Miles is best known for his solo-guitar recording of the complete works of Thelonious Monk, and we discuss the art of rhythmic placement in Bach and Monk. Featured are excerpts of Miles’ performances of Bach’s BWV 1005 and one of the Fugues in A Minor. Links Miles Okazaki * Website: milesokazaki.com (https://www.milesokazaki.com/) * Instagram: @okazakistudio (https://www.instagram.com/okazakistudio/) * YouTube: milesokazaki playlists (https://www.youtube.com/user/milesokazaki/playlists) Boomtown (Pi Recordings, June 26, 2026) * Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/boomtown/6779782069) * Bandcamp (https://milesokazaki.bandcamp.com/album/boomtown) WORK (2018), the complete Monk compositions on solo guitar * Bandcamp (http://okazakiwork.bandcamp.com/) * Full liner notes, track-by-track commentary, and press (https://www.milesokazaki.com/albums/work) Artists mentioned: Andrés Segovia · Julian Bream · John Williams · The Beatles · Jascha Heifetz · Glenn Gould · Thelonious Monk · Charlie Parker · Charlie Christian · Art Tatum · Brad Mehldau · Matt Mitchell · Igor Stravinsky · Nat King Cole · Ella Fitzgerald · Jimmy Scott · Julie London · Frank Sinatra · Coleman Hawkins · Iannis Xenakis · Dan Weiss · Kim Cass · Patricia Brennan · Steve Cardenas · Don Sickler This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yearofbach.substack.com (https://yearofbach.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

3. 

   3 Aug 2026

   "Making Music Visible": Ballerina and Critic Faye Arthurs on Dancing Bach

   Faye Arthurs spent two decades at New York City Ballet dancing Balanchine, Robbins, and Wheeldon. She originated a role in Wheeldon’s Scenes de Ballet while still a student at SAB, and she danced Robbins’ Goldberg Variations. She now writes dance criticism for Fjord Review and Air Mail, and does archival work for the George Balanchine Foundation. We talk about how ballet dancers count from the stage, the special pleasures and challenges of dancing counterpoint, and how and why Bach succeeds (and sometimes doesn’t) for choreographers. Faye’s writing: https://fjordreview.com/blogs/all/new-yorks-finest Faye’s website: http://www.thoughtsfromthepaint.com Works Mentioned: Robbins, The Goldberg Variations (1971), Fanfare (1953). Balanchine, Concerto Barocco, Agon, The Four Temperaments, Episodes, Symphony in Three Movements. Wheeldon, Scenes de Ballet. Eliot Feld, Organon (2001). Boris Eifman, Musagète (2004). Paul Taylor, Esplanade, Promethean Fire. Mark Morris, Falling Down Stairs. People Mentioned: George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Christopher Wheeldon, Wendy Whelan, Jock Soto, Suzanne Farrell, Kyra Nichols, Tiler Peck, Glenn Gould, Mavis Staples, Yo-Yo Ma. Transcript: [00:00:00] Evan Goldfine: Welcome to the podcast, A Year of Bach. My name is Evan Goldfine, and today I welcome the ballet dancer and dance critic, Faye Arthurs. Faye spent two decades with the New York City Ballet, dancing the works of George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, and Christopher Wheeldon at Lincoln Center and around the world. She originated a role in Christopher Wheeldon’s Scenes de Ballet when she was still a student at the School of American Ballet, and danced Robbins’ famous adaptations of the Goldberg Variations, and we’ll be talking a lot about that today. Faye has since retired from professional dancing and now writes dance criticism for The Fjord Review, and she is based in New York City, and today from New Hampshire. So Faye, welcome. I’d like to start by talking about counting as a ballet performer. So the works that you danced were choreographed to through composed pieces. In the moment of dancing, what’s your relation to the music as it’s being performed in the pit? Faye Arthurs: That’s a great question, and it [00:01:00] is really dependent upon which piece you’re talking about because some pieces of music are much more difficult to count than others, to play than others. There’s a, a lot of ballet, s- ballet originally started with using so much very even simple 4/4 time structures. The Petipa ballets, the great ballets, Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, you really don’t have to count those so much. It’s very even. It’s, three reprea- repeats of one phrase, and then there’s like a, a tag into the next thing, it’s very, like you do this one step left and then you do a transition into the next sequence. Th- there’s not much counting that you have to do in- Evan Goldfine: So you’re thinking more in phrases for certain pieces and in counting for others. So it’s depending on the choreography and the music itself. Faye Arthurs: It really is. Okay. A ballet like The Goldberg Variations, we’re counting a lo- it’s a lot of sixes. We’re sticking with the musical meter from Bach, but then within that, there’s a lot of slow [00:02:00] walking sections where you really don’t have to be counting. Like even though you’re stepping on every note, you’re not in your head always counting, because Evan Goldfine: it’s just- So you have the tempo in your head. Y- ... the tempo’s in your body, and you’re going step. And is there a musical cue that you’re waiting for to do your next move? Faye Arthurs: It’s just at a certain point you just know these things. Like you, you yes, there is. There is a cue and a count for everything. But you don’t have to actively be counting in your head all the time. You know what I mean? You can be thinking about all sorts of things. You can be thinking about what you’re having for dinner after the show, at a certain point in certain dances, like it’s just so through your bo- almost like a, a breath or a pulse- ... Faye Arthurs: If you know the sequences and they’re not that complicated. That being said, you’re dancing Balanchine to, choreography to Hindemith or- ... von Webern and you are counting 21s, 17s, what, you are in your head the whole time you are counting. Actually I was gonna talk maybe with you later about Concerto Barocco, which is Balanchine’s- Sure famous ballet to Bach, [00:03:00] and that is one where you can tune out for some sequences, and then you really have to be counting hard when you’re going in counterpoint, against people counting differently from you doing a similar step. So there, there... I feel when you’re new in New York City Ballet, ‘cause we have so much rep you’re counting all the time, and then it, when you’re like y- 20 years in, you don’t need to count most of Barocco. You’re not actively counting. You’re thinking about things, or you could be counting. You’re humming the melody, something like that. But I’m not in my head going, “One, two, three.” Does Evan Goldfine: that make- Is that hard? Yeah, of course. Is it harder for a, a counterpoint piece because maybe the melody is a little bit more obscure? Are you focusing more on... In Tchaikovsky you can kind of, “Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da.” Exactly. Okay, you know exactly where you’re gonna go from one- Faye Arthurs: Exactly ... Evan Goldfine: to the other. But when you’re moving in counterpoint, the melody can sometimes be obscured. So does that make it trickier for you on stage? Faye Arthurs: Well, you’re going against it purposefully. And that was really Balanchine’s great game. It’s like you’re carving [00:04:00] your own channel into the score, and I think that’s part of what makes Balanchine endlessly dazzling. It’s- ... the audience doesn’t necessarily know that we’re counting fives against eights, or fives against sixes, or that half of the stage is in a three-count phrase and half of the stage is in a four-count phrase, but the music is in six. So we’re both- Right ... not in, we’re both not in the composer’s intended speed limit or, time signature. Mm-hmm. So it’s really people are like, “What is it about that keeps me coming back to Barroco or something?” And I think it’s that. I think when you finally can start uncovering some of those games that he’s playing it’s just, for me, dancing it was endlessly fun. ‘Cause you felt like you were stamping your own time signature into a piece, it was like if we are switching roles in a ballet you, you might be feeling a new... different things are accentuated when you’re cutting against a score. You feel it through your body differently, it’s [00:05:00] because your body links up so much with breath and for me, and I think for most- New York City Ballet dancers at least, ‘cause music really is the focus at City Ballet and more than a lot of companies. And, and modern pieces for example, where there is no music or the piece is not choreographed to music or it’s improvisational and you can do whatever. But at, at City Ballet the music is the top of the pyramid, and so we’re all there because that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to like, make music visible in a sense. And I think these little, these little cross currents in the tempos and counting against the actual time signature of the piece is part of just, you know, cutting your way through something, it’s- Yeah ... it’s fun. It just feels, it, it feels like you have a different relationship to a piece of music once you’ve done different tracks through it, different step tracks through it. Yeah. I don’t know. I fo- I found it really fun. Evan Goldfine: When you’re on stage and you’re dancing a [00:06:00] three-part and your compatriots also on the stage are dancing in four- Mm-hmm ... and the music’s in six, is there something where you have to tune out your other dancers - Yeah ... on stage so you don’t fall into their rhythm? Faye Arthurs: For sure. There’s a l- there’s a lot of tuning out, but I thought what was more interesting to me was the more I did Baroque, oh, and you’ve got the, the threes versus the fours versus the sixes. The more that you can hear it all at the same time is the most - Yes ... fun, and you’re like, and you know when you’re going, but you’re predicting and, because of the nature of the step, you’re meeting up on certain things doing the same step because things overlap. And it’s just very fun when you feel like you can see it all. Like a chess game. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. One of the beauties of digging- You would think. Yeah, one of the beauties about digging deeper into Bach’s music is that, when he’s going with three and four part fugues , you can hear the individual lines and also how they’re working together. Yeah. So in a way, it sounds like Balanchine and Robbins are able to reify that same thing that we’re listening to for the different parts in the fugues into the music itself as [00:07:00] he’s, as they’re choreographing it on stage. Faye Arthurs: Completely. Robbins was very, very strong on the fugal form. There’s a Benjamin Britten ballet. It’s, what is it called? It’s b- it’s The Guide to the Orchestra. Oh my God, I’m- Evan Goldfine: Oh, the, the Faye Arthurs: children’s- Fanfare. It’s called Fanfare. Evan Goldfine: Okay. Faye Arthurs: Yeah, Fanfare. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Faye Arthurs: And the, the finale is a fugue, and every dancer is an instrument in the orchestra, and in the fugue, they’re doing the track of their instrument, and it’s really, it’s a really great primer for children, but it’s fun to do as well because you’re, like, seeing... You’re a visual representation of the orchestra, and- Right ... and you’re doing those lines. Yeah. It’s pretty cool. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. When certain pieces are conducted in certain styles, the, the orchestra’s playing. They have to play Tchaikovsky different from Bach, different from Hindemith and Arvo Part and whoever. Faye Arthurs: Yeah. Evan Goldfine: But d- do you find that the orchestras are playing very much on the beat to assist the dancers? Is there an, a [00:08:00] conductorial technique that they’re using to help you? Faye Arthurs: Yeah. This is... this is the problem with conducting for dance, right? It’s always considered like a lesser. To conduct for dance is... I know conductors it’s not the most prestigious thing, right? Mm-hmm. To conduct for dance, because there are accommodations that the dancers need. And I was playing different Goldberg iterations this week, interpretations. Thinking about Gold- trying to... I don’t have the video of the ballet here. I’m not in New York. Sure. So I was like, “Oh, it’s been, like, 12 years since I’ve danced Goldberg. Let me see what I remember.” And the Goldberg is such a personal piece. Mm. And the tempi can just... Glenn Gould’s first and last recor- are- Evan Goldfine: Very different pieces ... Faye Arthurs: very different pieces, and both versions, the ‘55 and the ‘81, would be undanceable for the Robbins choreography. Evan Goldfine: Yes. Faye Arthurs: The first is way too fast. The second is way too slow. Yes. We would be, like just limping around. And the first [00:09:00] one, the, the aria is almost like an allegro, yes. There, there are... The Goldberg Variations for Jerome Robbins is unconducted. It’s just a pianist off- Mm-hmm ... on the corner of the stage, and they have artistic license, but within the framework of they’ve been in the rehearsal rooms with us and they know the general tempi that we need. They know how high we can jump. They know how long we wanna be in the air in a lift, that kind of thing. How long we can turn for. Oh. We can’t endlessly turn, like they, they have they have experience with us. So it’s not like the ballet pianist can just sit and do whatever they’re feeling in the moment like a concert pianist could. Evan Goldfine: One feeling that I’ve had, I’ve l- I’ve seen The Goldbergs live a few times at NYCB, and there’s always a very, for me I’m picky, there’s a stiffness to those performances from the piano because I know that they’re trying to [00:10:00] accommodate the dancers. And to that end, there, there’s very little license, y- as you were saying, for the expressiveness that can come from a great performance of The Goldbergs, w- which I’ve listened to dozens over time. So but the music’s great. But and I never really thought about it as okay, the trill can go only go on for only so long because you can only twist for, for that many turns, or you can only jump, I guess there’s a cue for coming up on the jump and then, down again on the jump. How does that work? Faye Arthurs: It’s just if you’re too slow in a, an allegro jumping passage, if the music is too slow we’re just gonna be lumbering. We won’t be up in the air for, yeah for the, so many in Goldberg, for sure, a lot of the, the choreography is oh, you’re up on this jump in this shape on this note, and if it’s too slow, you’re gonna miss that shape on that note. Right. Yeah. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Faye Arthurs: Yeah. Evan Goldfine: Regarding The Goldbergs, just for people’s context this was con- ... choreographed by Jerome Robbins for the New York City Ballet in 1971. The, The Goldbergs are long. It’s 80- Yeah ... or 90 [00:11:00] minutes. Very long by classical ballet standards. What made that different? W- was this one of the kind of, some of their more war horse pieces like, Nutcracker or Sleeping Beauty or Swan Lake, those can go on longer also. The Goldbergs feel different because it’s not story based or maybe it’s obliquely story based. W- what do you, what are your memories about this particular, what about this is different from some of the other bigger pieces that they, that you danced there? Faye Arthurs: The, The Goldberg is definitely, it’s a special piece. It’s not like a Nutcracker that’s gonna come back every year. It’s not it’s not a big crowd pleaser. It’s, it requires- Evan Goldfine: i’m part of the crowd. I come. I’ll get my ticket every time. Faye Arthurs: Okay, good. No it brings out a certain very educated audience, but it’s long. And- ... I think classical music crowds are more accustomed to, just sitting through a long piece of music. But at the ballet, the format it’s just piano for- Mm-hmm ... for a long time, for- Mm-hmm ... an hour and a half, and it’s [00:12:00] a funny, it’s usually when they have people sitting for over an hour, there’s an intermission, usually one other dance, and they always try to program Goldberg to begin and then something super popular, blockbuster closes. So people, if they accidentally bought a ticket for the Goldberg- ... you know, um, they, they will have some sort of bombastic- Evan Goldfine: Candy at the end, yeah ... Faye Arthurs: yeah, candy, exactly. A little dessert after your extra long salad course or whatever. But the Goldberg was always a really special dance for us. To be in Goldberg was a great honor because it is this very beloved ballet f- for the dancers and for the company, and it’s a special dance, and we lo- we loved it. It is funny in terms of personnel though. It is it’s, even concert pianists sometimes do that big break in the middle, before variation 16. Evan Goldfine: Mm-hmm. Faye Arthurs: Jerome Robbins actually, he has one full cast for the first 15 variations, and then a second cast for two- And Evan Goldfine: then they all come back at the very end, yeah, [00:13:00] right? Faye Arthurs: Only a few dancers come back. Evan Goldfine: So- The, there, there’s like a pair in the beginning, right? The, Yeah ... yeah. Faye Arthurs: Yeah. That is a funny role because you have this important first solo and then you have to wait around for an hour. You can go do a crossword puzzle or whatever you want. You’re, you get out of your shoes, your costume, everything and then you check your watch and you come back down and you put on pointe shoes and you go back out as the very last people to move at the end too, which it’s a very funny part. But the, the rest of the first half cast can just go home. You can just go shower and leave, other than the principals. So the theme couple and then there are like six principal roles. There are two, two pas de deuxs that anchor the first movement, and those people come back as part of the big huge group finale- Yeah At the end of part two. But the rest of the, the rest of the people are just done. If they have another ballet they’re hanging around, or they’re just home. They’re already out to dinner. So it’s a funny, [00:14:00] it’s such a long slog that that Robbins changed out his, his personnel halfway through. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Faye Arthurs: But I think, I do think he was making a larger point. I think he really breaks, even in the way that this ballet is cast, but the first half is the younger kind of group, and then the younger principals, and then actually more senior corps, because it’s a lot more featured. You’re- Yeah ... you’re dancing the whole time. And then the second half is the mature principals. Three principal couples who are, like, senior ballerinas and dancers. And then the very youngest corps, ‘cause it’s more... It’s a bigger group, and it’s more filler kind of stuff. So you’re more like scenery for it. The first half is very intimate, everyone feels like a character in the piece- Mm-hmm ... in the second half you have these three very polished, very mature grand couples, and then you have more, it’s a less humanized corps, I would [00:15:00] say, in the second half. It’s interesting. I think Robbins breaks the ballet up into stages of life really. Like kind of- Yes ... childhood and then adulthood. Or it’s one generation looking at the next generation. But throughout the ballet, and especially the first half, has a lot of very childish moves. There are high fives, there’s somersaults, there’s some handstands, there’s hands-behind-your-back kind of struts. There are cookie cutter shapes. There, there’s a lot of playfulness, cartwheel kinds of things. And then the second half the principals are doing more virtuosic a la seconde pirouettes, fouetté turns romantic pas de deux, which doesn’t- the first half is it’s, it... The pas de tr- the pas de deuxs are the anchors, so it’s not necessarily you’ve got one romance going on, it’s a lot of- Evan Goldfine: Playground ... yeah. Faye Arthurs: Yes. Yes. And yeah. So I think Robbins was making more of a statement about generations a- and, the stages of life with [00:16:00] his breakup of- Evan Goldfine: I feel the same way about the piece itself. There’s something very youthful- Yeah ... in the early parts, and then you have your teenage angst. Yeah. And then you, later you have a midlife crisis, and then you come back to your youth again. Yeah. So I’ve I’ve got the, the back half of the- Yeah. ... the ballet to still live through my life, yeah. So were you familiar with The Goldbergs before? What was your relationship to Bach’s music as you were coming up in, in your youth and ballet? And I guess I, I’m imagining that probably you were more drawn to, just as many people are in their youth, the more romantic side, the Tchaikovsky and the even into Stravinsky. But I’d love to hear about how that played before. Faye Arthurs: My, my dad was always in a rock band, was always a drummer. Grew up on a lot of Beatles and Stones and, Mm-hmm ... rock, classic rock- Sure ... or Pogues, a lot of Irish music. So I came to classical through, through my ballet training as a young child, but I just loved it and would then, be like, “Oh my God, I’m obsessed with this [00:17:00] Sleeping Beauty that we’re doing.” So then I got really into the music of it. And from there for sure I started listening to everything. And it’s interesting because we don’t dance to a lot of Bach at City Ballet. Sure. There’s Goldberg, there’s Barocco of course, and then Robbins has three other ballets to Bach. And Balanchine has st- you can’t even count it. He- there’s a section called Bach in Episodes, which is- ... the, it’s the Ricercata from Antoine von Webern. And so even though that’s Bach, like melodies and, structure, it’s not exactly Bach. And I was going through the rep trying to think of “We have to have something else.” We did a ballet called Musagete by Boris Eifman, which was about the, it was like a biography of Balanchine and his muses. Mm. And that was in like 2004. And in 2001 we had an Eliot Feld ballet called Organon, which was actually a fabulous, huge ballet to the [00:18:00] Fantasia and Fugue, Toccata and Fugue, a couple different big selections. Mm. And it was very intense, very modern dance. But there’s not a lot of Bach in City Ballet’s rep, and I think there’s something about Bach and the purity of it that like Balanchine didn’t necessarily wanna touch. Mm. He often said “If a, a piece of music is too perfect, you shouldn’t choreograph to it.” Mm. He was trying to use kind of what he considered slighter pieces is what he said often. And so I think it’s a shame because for one thing, Concerto Barrocco was one of his best ballets. Evan Goldfine: Yes. Faye Arthurs: What he could have done with that could have been tremendous. But for whatever reason, he didn’t touch Bach a lot and Robbins just the f- the four ballets, and, Goldberg was in ‘71, but then Robbins’ other three ballets to Bach, he made in the very last year of his life. They were his last three ballets he ever made. Evan Goldfine: Oh, interesting. Faye Arthurs: So it is really interesting thinking about [00:19:00] maturity and aging. Really, at the end of his life, Robbins was very drawn to Bach, even though he loved Bach forever, but he was more associated with Chopin, I think- Yeah his whole career. So I don’t know. So for me, recreationally, Bach, yes, go see it- ... whenever you can in performance. Put it on all the time. But I definitely cherished, the, the few experiences I had in dancing to it because it’s just wonderful to feel it, through your bones. Evan Goldfine: How well did you learn these pieces in your bones? I know you, you touched a little bit earlier about, you could learn the phrases of, if it’s a Tchaikovsky, you can, you know when a phrase is gonna start and end. But did you have a in your bones, each note of full score? Or really just the melody, or was it harmony? How did that work? I’m a very in my head kinda guy, so I can’t imagine this working in my body also. How does that work on stage when you’re listening and trying to coordinate everything? Do you know the score [00:20:00] down? Faye Arthurs: Yes. You know the score, y- your sections of the score. In, in thinking about appearing on this show I was like, “Oh, God, do I remember Goldberg?” And I thought to myself, “Okay, let’s see. If you could just hum it in your head, what comes to you?” And I could piece together just from cold, like at least a decade off, most of the theme, the aria, pas de deux, just from that. And then when I played a version that was close to the right tempo the rest came back, so there’s so, there’s such a muscle, a musical muscle memory- ... that I’m always amazed at, Yeah ... with dance. ‘Cause I think, oh, I, I haven’t seen, I haven’t been a part of this forever, and, I’ll be sitting in the audience, it’ll be a revival of some ballet, and I start counting sevens. I’m like, “Why am I counting sevens?” You just know, you know your history with the piece very- Very deeply, very embodied which is I think why I danced and why I loved to [00:21:00] dance. But, Evan Goldfine: C- could you dig a little more on that? So you felt like you were able to You, you use the phrase make music visible. Faye Arthurs: Yeah. Evan Goldfine: Was it the music first and then your expression of it through your body? That, was, is that the s- the essence of it? Faye Arthurs: Yeah, I think so. There, the pianist for Goldberg on Stage, maybe I can put it this way. The pianist is constrained by our movements, Evan Goldfine: mm-hmm. Faye Arthurs: So they can’t do their full whatever they’re feeling in that moment kind of interpretation. They’re a little, they’re a little handcuffed. But for us on stage, we, whatever the tempo i- look, we don’t get to generate the tempo, but how you hear and adjust and, watching different bodies do the same solo there’s a very beautiful, I think it’s Variation 7. It’s a, a female solo that is just lovely, and it’s really introspective, and actually Robbins has a framework of cast members on the stage in a [00:22:00] semicircle behind her watching her, a few in the front. It’s a really lovely passage, and it’s a little devotional, it’s a little playful. It’s all over the place, but it’s really expressive of a particular dancer, and watching every different dancer do that solo I always think is it’s like it’s just like reading somebody, yes. And it so I feel like it comes from the music. It’s like an external prompt to put your personality or your your read. That’s where the artistry comes in. How you’re hearing that and- Yes ... how you’re, you have to be on the music. But everyone, watching different people do things is their interpretation of music and how they’re hearing something, I think- Evan Goldfine: Yes ... Faye Arthurs: I don’t know if that makes sense, but Evan Goldfine: It does. I talk about this a lot in, in these interviews about what makes a good performance of Bach, because there’s very little instruction given to the performers. There’s often no tempo markings, there’s no accents, and it’s a wide-open canvas, [00:23:00] and which is why you have, you can have very highly varied performances. And fast doesn’t necessarily always work, slow doesn’t necessarily always work, but the certain personal expression that, that people are able to put through these notes works often. And when it does, it’s incredible. And I have not gotten to the bottom of what that is. How does that work? And I’m coming closer with music. I still don’t really quite get it. I, Why do certain people sound the way they do? I mean, You could break it down technically, but there’s interpretation of it. And I’m, I guess I can put this to you again. How do you think that you’re able to make that interpretation with highly choreographed steps and a director who’s telling you, “This is what I wanna see.” How does Faye still come through- Faye Arthurs: Yeah ... Evan Goldfine: in those moments? Faye Arthurs: Yeah. I think if you think about singing it’s a similar, it’s a similar thing if you’re in part two of Goldberg and you’re in the giant corps, you’ve gotta be, everyone has [00:24:00] to a little bit more, be more militant about how they’re interpreting the notes, that’s just what’s required of that moment. If you’re at, in the Waltz of the Flowers and you’re a flower, it’s like you better all feel this turn in this exact way kind of a thing. But then if you’re the soloist, and really every role in part one of the Goldberg ballet is full license to, make your mark hear it how you wanna hear it put your own coloring on the step. It’s like a, a singer who has license to hold something a little too long and then catch up, elide the next phrase and do whatever. So the poor Goldberg pianist is not able to do that- ... but we are on stage. If you’re really hitting a balance, you can stay in it, and you can then catch up in the next phrase. Or if you wanna there’s some, some dancers are considered incredibly musical, and it means they’re not on the note. It means they always know where the note is, but they’re not on it, they’re like, they’re [00:25:00] phrasing over it. Kyra Nichols, Tiler Peck currently. There, there are some, Suzanne Farrell probably most famous. These people who can play with the music, show you a different, like stretch out or elide a phrase as they see fit in the moment, it’s like today’s a little this, t- tomorrow’s a little that, and I think those are the best performers. Evan Goldfine: Yes. Faye Arthurs: And I, I was always really the most excited to get to be a, in a solo or a, a part where I had the freedom to ch- you know, do my read on- Yeah something. So I, it, there’s definitely like rank and structure comes into it. Barocco though, for example, that’s one of the most mathematical ballets, and it’s- Yeah ... there is leeway for the leads a little bit, but they correspond tightly. There are two, two women, and they, each one corresponds to the first and second violin, and they have to be on it too. And the, and it’s just a very, for the most part, very fast piece too, [00:26:00] so you don’t wanna do something too uh, musically, you know showy and, and get on the next person’s note, ‘cause then the, the structure of that piece is ruined. Yeah. But Goldberg is, and a lot of Robbins really, is very human and very personality based. And I think that a lot of his stuff is to solo piano. He really, that was a forte for him. And solo piano is definitely a place, not in the ballet world for the pianist, but for the dancers to be like a pianist in a concert setting, and really just do your, versus the whole or- orchestra trying to- Mm-hmm be together. It works similarly to actual musical instruments, I think. It’s just- Yeah ... we’re riding these tempi that we don’t control. Yeah. But we still then, how we’re processing and hearing can be musical or non-musical within those [00:27:00] frameworks. Evan Goldfine: Yeah, definitely. I’d like to talk about one of your former colleagues who I thought was one of the more magical dancers I saw, and that’s Wendy Whelan. Faye Arthurs: Mm. Evan Goldfine: Um, Who I think pulled off something that I’d never really seen before. It looked like she was, like, not made of substance. It’s like she, she got this thing where she looked like she was a feather. Faye Arthurs: Yeah ... Evan Goldfine: i’ve never talked to anyone who could explain that. I mean, Do you have any insight about how she was able to pull any of that off? Faye Arthurs: She was, what a, what an incredible dancer. What a legend. She was so strong. So strong. And she I was just thinking about Wendy in that last con- talking about the more musical dancers. Wendy was a very musical dancer, but she was not doing the, the diva like, “I’m gonna bend time in this way.” Mm. Like I was just speaking about. She was boiling things down to the [00:28:00] essence, she she was going for a kind of like purity of score and of line and of intent that, you know, I haven’t seen before or since. I think of her renditions of The Four Temperaments, Agon, a lot of these famous Balanchine black and white ballets that are usually very spare, very atonal. Wendy, w- I feel like she laid down the perfect tracks of those. Mm. She just, she figured out exactly Symphony in Three Movements, another Stravinsky piece. She figured out the platonic ideal of that piece, and she went for that every show. So she was not gonna bend a note. She was not gonna over-hold a balance. She was just going to give you the essential Agon, if that makes sense. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Faye Arthurs: Those are different things, but- Evan Goldfine: Yeah, it was pre- preplanned, but that it took artistry in the preparation, and then she- Yeah ... executed at an extremely high level. Faye Arthurs: One of the most focused [00:29:00] artists I’ve ever known. A, like a lovely woman, but just everything was about the stage and turning in that textbook perform- I remember thinking like, “I don’t even think her pinky finger has been in a different place,” you know? i, in different subsequent performances of Agon. I would watch and just marvel at like she and Jock Soto have done this probably identically on down to where they’re standing on the stage, the breath that they’re taking. She just really she homed in on her ideal rendition of a dance, and she was able to just repeat it. Wow. And it was extraordinary. I mean, That, it’s a different thing. She was also great in the Goldberg Variations, but i- it’s a different thing than I was talking about before. Yes. No less impressive, just just the opposite. Yeah. And that’s, answers a little, too, about your how do you carve out your own artistry within these things. That is a way as well. Evan Goldfine: Yeah you do your prep ahead of time. I wouldn’t wanna hear Faye Arthurs: that from a- In a very exacting [00:30:00] way. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Evan Goldfine: I wouldn’t wanna hear that from a jazz musician. But it works in ballet, right? Faye Arthurs: Yes, it does. Yeah. Evan Goldfine: Faye, this has been great. I’d love to ask if there’s what you’ve been listening to lately. What are some albums that you’re either coming back to from a long time ago, or something new? It doesn’t have to be classical. Anything that we can share with the listeners looking for something different. Faye Arthurs: Oh my goodness. I have to say, I’m a little high on a concert I saw this week. I saw Mavis Staples. Evan Goldfine: Oh, yeah. Faye Arthurs: Who was just amazing at 87. Just her instrument is still just so robust, and she didn’t have the breath control that she had before. She couldn’t do everything, but it was, like, just such an amazing example of an artistic aging that was, like, just beautifully done. Mm-hmm. Very gracious and very powerful. Yeah. She didn’t always have the power behind her voice that she did have, but she could, and she went to it when she needed it, and it w- it was very smart and very meaningful in the context [00:31:00] of, activism right now, and just every- everything. Yeah ... the history that came with her, and she spoke of Martin Luther King and all the, it was just this amazing, Yeah ... an amazing show. Evan Goldfine: That’s cool. Yeah. Faye Arthurs: Yeah. So that’s what I’m excited about this week. I was thinking of, just thinking about Goldberg all week, thinking of- There are not a ton. A lot of choreographers seem to have avoided Bach, I think for that reason of it’s so perfect and so pure. But some, a lot of people have some of their most famous dances to Bach. Mm. So I feel like maybe we should mention that on this show. Evan Goldfine: Yes. Who, who else, Who else might we wanna catch if it’s ever performed anywhere? Um, Faye Arthurs: well, Paul Taylor’s Esplanade, that’s pretty much his signature work, and that’s to the same music as Concerto Barocco, as well as the Violin Concerto No. 2 in E Major. So that’s, his signature dance is also Bach. And he does, it’s more like Part One of Robbins’ Goldberg, where it’s [00:32:00] crawling, it’s baseball slides. It’s very pedestrian and very silly at times, and kind of fun. Just interesting that Balanchine, Taylor, a lot of people, Robbins, have some of their best known dances to Bach, I think is... Promethean Fire is another big Paul Taylor piece that was made. It’s his September 11th response- Evan Goldfine: Mm-hmm Faye Arthurs: ballet, and that’s it’s a very moving dance. Mark Morris did a collaboration with Yo-Yo Ma, Falling Down Stairs to I think it’s the Third Unaccompanied Cello Suite. So the, these are big pieces in the dance world, and they’re all to Bach, even though these choreographers really didn’t touch Bach a lot outside of that. And I think it’s interesting. Maybe more d- more dance makers should try more Bach. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Faye Arthurs: Um, But I think there’s something, too, ‘cause I’ve seen a lot of lesser dances to Bach. It can be a trap as well. Where does Evan Goldfine: it fail? Yeah. Faye Arthurs: I think it’s just so simple and [00:33:00] pure, really, that if you go too far in either direction, it’s just gonna feel hokey. You know what I mean? Yeah. If you try to make it overly complicated, it feels disingenuous, and if you try to make it way too simple, it also feels disingenuous. I don’t know. Yeah. It’s like Bach is such a- it’s simple, but it’s really um, not, you know? I mean, you know that, but um, you know that better than I do. But I think it’s... I don’t know. I just... It’s a, it seems to be a pitfall of over or under complicating Bach. You have to just nail it, and I think- You got a Evan Goldfine: Goldilocks here, Faye Arthurs: you’re in the room ... it’s very hard to do. It’s a Goldilocks zone. Yeah. He’s a Goldilocks composer. Yeah. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Faye Arthurs: That’s interesting Evan Goldfine: well you can catch Faye’s writing at The Fjord Review. Are you publishing anywhere else lately? Faye Arthurs: I write a little bit for Air Mail. I’ve been working doing archival stuff for the George Balanchine Foundation. Oh, Evan Goldfine: nice. Faye Arthurs: Yeah. Little bits here and there. Yeah. Evan Goldfine: But thank you for coming today and sharing your experience about dancing Bach.[00:34:00] This is a conversation I really wanted to have. Faye Arthurs: Thank you for having me. This was a pleasure. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yearofbach.substack.com (https://yearofbach.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

4. 

   16 Jun 2026

   "You Can't Be Rote" - Harpsichordist Lillian Gordis on Keeping Bach Fresh

   Lillian Gordis is a Franco-American harpsichordist born in Berkeley, California, and based in Paris. Her latest album is J.S. Bach: Partita No. 6, English Suite & Preludes and Fugues, released in 2026 on the French label Artalinna, and it’s one of my favorite records of the year. Listen on Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/1844680622) | Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/artist/4PwnbJTHbJn7UX7KeA1JhF) In this episode, Lillian talks about her approach to phrasing on the harpsichord: articulating independent voices, singing through her repertoire in rehearsal, and always resisting automatic performance. We talk about the technical challenges of performing on instruments that vary widely from venue to venue, and her decision to record from the Well-Tempered Clavier Book II. Visit Lillian’s website: lillian-gordis.com (https://lillian-gordis.com) And subscribe to the show’s Substack: A Year of Bach (https://yearofbach.substack.com/) Artists discussed: Harpsichordists / Early Music * Pierre Hantaï * Gustav Leonhardt * Nikolaus Harnoncourt * Jordi Savall * Le Poème Harmonique * Gesualdo Six * Graindelavoix * Il Giardino Armonico * La Petite Bande * Kathy Perl Pianists * Sviatoslav Richter * Andras Schiff * Glenn Gould * Lucas Debargue * Piotr Anderszewski * Alexander Kanterow * Daniil Trifonov * Yunchan Lim * Robert Levin TRANSCRIPT Evan Goldfine: [00:00:00] Welcome to the podcast, a Year of Bach. My name is Evan Goldfine, and today I welcome Lillian Gordis, who recently released an excellent double album of Bach on the Harpsichord. It features the sixth English Suite, the sixth Partita, and other selections from Bach’s deep catalog for the keyboard. This is her third album, and the other two feature works of Bach and Scarlatti. Lillian’s been focused fully on the harpsichord since childhood, and as a teenager, she moved to France to study with the great harpsichordist Pierre Hantaï, where she continues to live. She joins us from Paris today. Lillian, welcome. Lillian Gordis: Hi. Thank you for having me. I’m delighted to be here. Evan Goldfine: At first I’ll jump into fan mode for a minute and say that I think you pull off something pretty special in this recording and that’s reflective of your whole approach. I think your phrasing stretches notes and compresses others, and the two hands are phrased very independently from one another. And there’s no shame in fermatas or hanging on rubato for an especially long time. For me, it creates a sort of floating feeling and as I’ve written in the newsletter, it becomes sort of [00:01:00] trance-like, and I get really locked in. I think it’s really rare to hear that in a recording. I’d love to hear a little bit about your approach to phrasing and whether I’m picking up on something that you’re putting out there. Lillian Gordis: Yeah. First of all, thank you. I mean, I appreciate all of that. That’s exactly what I’m trying to do. I think the harpsichord is an instrument. You know, if you have a beautiful harpsichord, it sounds great. If you have a less beautiful harpsichord, it sounds less good. But, and I love harpsichords, but it is an instrument that has dynamic limitations and projection limitations, which is particularly an issue in obviously our modern world, where you’re playing in relatively big halls. And you’re playing recitals, which didn’t exist — you know, historically at all. The format did not exist at the time this music was written. And so I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to make the harpsichord an instrument that can project as far as possible and as widely as possible. I think the approaches for doing that on recording and in concert are a little bit different just because of the proximity of [00:02:00] microphones as compared to, say, the last row for an audience member. But I’ve kind of — I try to imitate voice as much as possible, particularly vocal ensembles and the way that polyphony and counterpoint come in and out of focus in the way that a vocal ensemble can do, which is obviously not necessarily the most self-evident thing technically to do on the harpsichord. But that’s something that really deeply appeals to me. That’s kind of what I hear in my head, especially with Bach, but also with other composers. And so figuring out, not just between the hands, but also between voices — where can I have a little bit of micro stagger? Where can I have more or less attack? I think a lot about the end of the note too, which is not necessarily something that came up a lot when I was studying, but the end of the note on the harpsichord when the jack comes back down and you stop the resonance — you know, that creates an accent too. And so using a lot of substitutions and shifting to get as smooth a sound as possible. And then [00:03:00] when you want to create an accent, you can, but starting from this linear, horizontal perspective rather than a keyboardistic, vertical one. That’s been something I’ve spent a lot of time working on over the last five, ten years. Evan Goldfine: What is a substitution or an adjustment on the harpsichord? Lillian Gordis: It just means that when you play the note, let’s say, you use your thumb. And then we don’t have a pedal, so you can’t pedal and then shift to the next note. So you have to use your hand as a pedal. So you might shift one and then shift to three without replaying the note so that you can move your hand. Or you might go one to five. Sometimes I shift not just in order to be able to reach, but because it rebalances your hand. So then the next note, you have more control over both the release of the previous note and the attack of the next one. So I shift and substitute a lot, probably almost an excessive amount. I also have relatively small hands, so if I want to control all of that, I need to — for example, I don’t write any fingerings in because it would be too complicated. Like I have [00:04:00] to really just memorize the hand patterns and positions of what I want to do. And then it doesn’t really matter which finger you end up on, as long as you’re in the right hand position. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Lillian Gordis: So yeah. Evan Goldfine: And when you talk about an attack — because you really can’t create a dynamic shift on the harpsichord — what does that look like when you enter the note? Lillian Gordis: It just means you can create kind of a pop when the plectrum hits the string, or plucks the string, I should say. And if you pluck a little bit faster, so with more attack, you’re really close to the keyboard, but you’re still going to have a little bit more bite that’s going to pop and come out within the texture. So a lot of what we do is: how much do you want? Very little attack. A lot of attack. And then how quiet can you make the end of the notes so that the next thing is either very quiet or louder? And I think making that next step to thinking about it with every voice — and I work through every voice by itself and figure out, okay, if I were one person playing this line, what do I want it to sound like? Then I add the next [00:05:00] voice or the combinations of voices. I’ll do like bass and alto, tenor, soprano, all these different things. And I also sing all the time when I’m practicing. And I found that singing when I’m practicing gives me a really good sense of projection. So like if I arrive in a new venue, I will sing through the rehearsal, which I think organizers sometimes find kind of weird. Evan Goldfine: You’re not going to do this during the show, right? Lillian Gordis: No, I promise. I promise. But it, you know, it sounds a little weird, but the human voice is so much more natural in so many ways. And so it gives me a really great sense of like, how long can this note go? How long should this note go — in a way that if I’m just listening to the harpsichord, I’m going to get kind of sucked into where that resonance point drops off. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. When you’re singing, are you singing normally the soprano line or is it any voice that seems to be the most resonant one in that moment when you’re rehearsing? Lillian Gordis: I am usually jumping around between the lines to sing the thing that I want to hear the most. When I’m practicing at home, I will try to sing through each part as I’m playing it. [00:06:00] Obviously that gets kind of difficult because some of it is not super singable, but I do my best. And then when I’m kind of at that final stage of just repeating this, when I get to a new space, I’m usually jumping around so that I’m singing the thing that I want to make sure I’m hearing. Evan Goldfine: I feel like we’re getting really technical here, but I find that it’s interesting in explaining how your approach comes in. So when you’re thinking about these lines, it’s really thinking about four independences with your fingers almost. If there’s a soprano alto tenor bass, you have to create the four phrases and lines within your ten fingers as they’re moving simultaneously. So how is that working between your brain and your fingers? Is it rote in the moment? Is it so memorized? But I feel like if it’s too memorized, then it could kind of suck the life out of the performance. How do you deal with that dichotomy? Lillian Gordis: So, I mean, yes, this is the big challenge, particularly in three and four part music, where it’s fully written through. Of course, you have music where the counterpoint is less [00:07:00] consistent or it comes in and out of focus more. Honestly, throughout most of the harpsichord repertoire, there’s still this kind of golden thread of counterpoint that you’re still feeling in all of it, regardless of exactly how it’s notated. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Lillian Gordis: For me, I think the danger as a keyboardist is that you can fall back on something that’s kind of vertical that you do memorize. It’s like, okay, I have two hands and I need to just — remember, kind of as I said earlier, kind of keyboard basically what I’m doing. And I think that’s where something becomes dangerous because you don’t actually remember exactly where your line is going. And that’s when things start to come apart or lose meaning. And so for me, the consistency of that has really come through and I don’t memorize my music. Like I play with the music — I would call it brain memorizing rather than muscle memorizing — the actual lines of music. So that’s one thing that’s really important: when I’m ready to take something out for concert, [00:08:00] I feel like I really am tracking in real time where those voices are going, which requires a huge amount of brain energy and listening. Like, you can’t turn off, you can’t be rote, you can’t — there’s no automatic mode that can come on because you’ll just lose track of what’s happening. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Lillian Gordis: That’s something I’ve also spent a lot of time trying to improve because it’s an amount of focus that’s hard, of course, to maintain. And the other thing I think that helps me in terms of the rote thing is that I try not to decide what I’m going to do in terms of interpretation ahead of time. Evan Goldfine: Hmm. Lillian Gordis: So I try to make sure — like I know where all the voices are going, I know where the important moments are, but I don’t decide how exactly that’s going to happen, which means that I need to know the music well enough to let it happen in the moment. And that’s something that has really changed my relationship with especially live performance, but also recording in a really positive way. Evan Goldfine: It does feel really fresh. This latest recording in particular, it feels like it was [00:09:00] played through, and I’m sure that there was some studio work afterwards, but I think that’s one of the reasons why it succeeds so much. I guess the corollary to all this is that it’s a conscious avoidance of a sort of grid-like and metronomic approach. Was that how you learned on the keyboard — on the harpsichord — how do you deal with, especially in something like Bach, with the intensity of the counterpoint? You can range anywhere from completely free to extremely grid-like and metronomic. How do you balance those two poles? Lillian Gordis: I mean, I guess I was lucky to the degree that I did start on the piano and one of the things I didn’t like about the piano was playing Bach on the piano. Not because I don’t like the — I actually like the piano, like I love listening to piano recordings. But I did kind of have this experience pretty early on, because I think my first Bach piece was a little prelude and I must have been maybe five. So I was pretty small. And it was this idea that like, you know, when you have the theme in your left hand, you play louder than your right hand. And it was this [00:10:00] kind of very systematic, hierarchical trade-off between the hands. And I didn’t necessarily understand how that served what appeared to me to be the texture of the music, even though I was very little. Had a lot of opinions about it, so I would argue with my piano teachers. And I didn’t like using the metronome, not necessarily because like I had a counting problem, but I didn’t understand how having something that’s reminding you where the weak beats in the bar was helpful. And so when I moved over to the harpsichord full-time, which was — I must have been nine — there’s just less of a culture of that. So that helped a lot. Like pretty early on I was learning about how to do rubato. I was kind of allowed to explore that pretty freely. And now at this point, I think other things have been helpful. Like I’m very, very interested in music that’s older than Bach — and older than I can even play — like all of this 14th, 15th, 16th century vocal music. I listen to that a lot. [00:11:00] And of course you hear the influence of that type of writing in a lot of the music that I want to be playing. And so thinking about how mensural notation works, how medieval music works, how Renaissance music works has really helped me kind of back away from any sense of — like the doomsday bar line, you know? I don’t think about bar lines very much. I try to think about overall phrase structure. But I mean, I’m working on some contemporary music right now and I will check the metronome if there’s something that’s polyrhythmic that I want to be sure I’m doing right, but I really never use the metronome. I haven’t used the metronome in like 25 years. Evan Goldfine: That’s great. Lillian Gordis: So. Evan Goldfine: So that older music — is it like Purcell and Byrd? Even older than that? Lillian Gordis: Yeah. I mean, like Machaut, Pérotin, Ockeghem, Lassus, Josquin, you know, all the really, really old stuff. Right. Taverner, and of course Byrd, Tallis, you know. Evan Goldfine: [00:12:00] Yeah. Lillian Gordis: But yeah. The great masters. Evan Goldfine: I mean, those are, by comparison, much less played today than Bach and the Baroque period and everything afterwards, of course. What are you still pulling out of that? What’s missing from the recorded repertoire of the older folks? Lillian Gordis: I mean, there are a couple ensembles that I think are doing really fantastic work in that repertoire, and that’s been very inspiring to me. There are pieces that some of those groups have not recorded yet that I’d love to hear, but in general, there are groups like Gesualdo Six or Graindelavoix, who are based in Belgium, who are not afraid to add ornamentation, to use singers who have really different voice timbres. I have no idea if this is historically authentic, and I honestly don’t care. Doesn’t matter. Evan Goldfine: Right. Lillian Gordis: No, I mean, I don’t play the harpsichord because it’s historically authentic. I play the harpsichord mostly because I like the way it feels — like I have a very intuitive, physical contact with the instrument. I like that feeling of being in contact with the string rather than on the piano. Always felt kind of distant from it. And [00:13:00] then, you know, I think there’s music that makes more sense to me on the harpsichord because it was written for it, but I don’t have any pretension to understanding or knowing what — we have no idea what anything sounded like. We’re making it up. Evan Goldfine: Sure, sure. Lillian Gordis: Which doesn’t bother me, but I think it’s important to recognize. Evan Goldfine: One of the reasons I love playing the classical guitar is that you feel the resonance all around your body. I’ve never played a harpsichord. Do you feel the instrument resonating back in your fingers at all? Lillian Gordis: Not as much as the guitar. I mean, I don’t play guitar well, but I’ve, you know, dabbled a little bit. It’s not quite that level of contact, but you do really have this feeling of — when you pluck the string and the jack goes down, first of all, you have that feeling of plucking. And there’s only one part of the key that plucks effectively. So you have to find the plucking point. And that’s an important thing. And it’s not always exactly in the same place on every instrument. Evan Goldfine: Oh no. Lillian Gordis: They’re all different. There are no two harpsichords that are alike. Evan Goldfine: So you go to a new venue, [00:14:00] you have to really relearn the instrument in a way that’s not similar to pianists. I mean, pianists have to adjust for the timbre of an instrument and the color of an instrument — like sometimes it’s pretty bright or dull in certain areas. But with the harpsichord, you’re suggesting that if you hit the center of the key, you might miss the center of the plucking mechanism. Lillian Gordis: Yeah. But I mean also they don’t all have the same range, so some have fewer keys. Like the biggest harpsichord basically has 63 keys. So some of them have like 58, some have two keyboards — double manual — some don’t. The key sizes, like the width of the key, are not the same. Evan Goldfine: Oh, no. Lillian Gordis: Nor standardized. The length is not standardized. The shape of the keys and the sharps is not standardized. So you’re kind of starting over every time. Evan Goldfine: But you know, you travel to new venues and you could find yourself fairly vulnerable. Like, are you more prone to honking a note because the keys are a little more narrow? Lillian Gordis: Yeah. Or in my [00:15:00] case, usually if they’re bigger because of the small hands. Evan Goldfine: Right, right. Lillian Gordis: But yes, I mean, that’s just part of the game. And I think as you gain more experience performing, you find ways to minimize the impact of that or to work with it, and try to turn it into a positive. But I mean, sometimes you just end up with an instrument that doesn’t work and there’s not that much you can do about it. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. So I’d love to pivot and talk a little bit about Bach and your interpretations. So it sounds like you might have gotten the Bach bug when you turned back to the harpsichord when you were young and moving away from the piano Bach. Were there recordings that you were listening to on harpsichord at that age that were important to you? Or were you learning the repertoire and then coming to the recordings after that? Lillian Gordis: So we, in my family, we had some early music recordings, but I wasn’t all that conscious of them. I don’t think I really knew which recording was which. In retrospect I realized that we had some [00:16:00] recordings on historical instruments. For example, we went to concerts at the Berkeley festival that I’m playing at in whatever ten days. I remember hearing Il Giardino Armonico do all the Brandenburgs, and I think I was six, so this was something that was in my sound world. I didn’t come to the harpsichord through recordings. So I came to the harpsichord really because my first piano teacher had one and I got to try it and I liked it, but I was too little at that point. Like nobody wanted to teach a five-year-old the harpsichord. We couldn’t rent an instrument, so I, you know, I stayed a little bit in touch with the instrument, so to speak. I did the San Francisco Early Music Society Discovery Workshop a couple summers, and it was around, but I wasn’t getting to play one. I guess when — yeah, when I was about nine, I kind of said to my parents, like, I’ve bounced around to different piano teachers and I’m running into the same types of issues. I feel frustrated. I don’t want to do this anymore. And there were other things that I was interested in. I don’t know if I considered them professionally. But, you know, there was kind of this [00:17:00] tipping point where it could have gone either way. And they were like, well, let’s give the harpsichord one last shot. And if it doesn’t work out, you can take a break for a while. Because I had been playing — by that point I started the piano when I was three, so it had already been a while. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Lillian Gordis: We got lucky — we managed to find a great teacher in San Francisco named Kathy Perl, and she had an instrument to rent and everything just kind of aligned at the right moment. But it’s kind of interesting because I, for the first number of years, had no awareness that there was a harpsichord community outside of the Bay Area. So there’d be concerts that I would go to. My teacher had some recordings, some of the other harpsichordists had recordings, but I didn’t realize there was a whole big world out there. And it actually wasn’t till I was — I think I was 12 or 13 — and my parents got me the scores for the Well-Tempered Clavier for my birthday. And then I was looking for a recording, because I couldn’t realistically sight read all of that. I mean, I tried, but I wanted to hear it. And I went to The Musical Offering in Berkeley, Joseph Spencer’s shop, which had a big impact [00:18:00] on early music in the Bay Area in general, because he stocked tons of international recordings. He was very involved with the Berkeley Festival. So we went there to look for a recording, and I happened upon Pierre Hantaï’s Well-Tempered Clavier Book One. Evan Goldfine: Wow. Lillian Gordis: I had vaguely heard of him because my teacher at the time had been at the Bruges competition with him, but I didn’t really know what any of that meant. I just was like, hmm, maybe this will be interesting. So I grabbed it. And that was really life-changing, and it was expensive. My mom was like, are you really going to listen to this? I was like, well, give me a shot. So I popped it into the CD player and I had never heard anything like that in terms of instrument playing, recording quality, like everything. Evan Goldfine: It’s an extraordinary album. Lillian Gordis: Yeah, it really is. And that was life-changing for me. It’s just a fantastic recording. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. So you ended up studying with him? Lillian Gordis: Yeah. Evan Goldfine: Not too far from that moment. Lillian Gordis: No. Evan Goldfine: What was it like studying under him? [00:19:00] What did he impart to you that your other teachers couldn’t? Lillian Gordis: I think the thing that’s interesting about Pierre is that he’s very anti-authoritarian and he’s almost anti-pedagogical. And so even studying with him was a very informal thing. Like he doesn’t — there was a period of time where he had students, but by the time I came along, he didn’t really have any students anymore. He did not have a private studio, and he was kind enough to give me a couple initial lessons, but he didn’t promise anything. And then when I ended up moving to France, I ended up working with him — but it wasn’t all that formal, even though I ended up working with him for like three years. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Lillian Gordis: I would just go and have these really long lessons — like, you know, all day long — and I would basically call him when I knew I had enough music to play. But I knew the expectation was to arrive with basically a program’s worth of music. Evan Goldfine: Wow. Lillian Gordis: There wasn’t a lot of talking. He would play a lot. And I mean, that’s — I learned well by imitation, so that worked well for me, but I never had the impression that I needed to [00:20:00] be doing what he was doing. I mean, he’s a great musician. And so at that age, of course, I wanted to imitate and to copy. But it was in a way very unstructured. And I appreciated the sense of responsibility that that gave me. It was on me to do the work. It was on me to push harder. It was on me to figure out how to make the instrument do everything. And I value that. Evan Goldfine: That’s great. And so were you just playing through the Well-Tempered Clavier? What kind of work were you studying at that age? Lillian Gordis: I mean, the very first lesson, I must have been 14 because he came to the Bay Area with Jordi Savall and gave me a lesson. I mean, we covered a lot of stuff. I remember working on the sixth Partita, the second English Suite, Preludes and Fugues, Scarlatti Sonatas, Frescobaldi toccatas — I mean, honestly, kind of an overview of most of the repertoire. Between — I mean I had a couple lessons in 2007 and I didn’t live in Europe yet. And then from 2009 to about 2013, you know, I’d say we [00:21:00] didn’t cover everything, but we kind of covered the big building blocks. And I think the most important thing was honestly not the repertoire. It was: how do you build yourself a toolbox so that you can apply that to whatever you want to be working on. Evan Goldfine: And what you have been working on has been really interesting collections of Bach’s works. And you know, I’ve noticed that in both of the Bach albums that you recorded — the Well-Tempered Clavier selections — you’ve recorded only from the second book. And I’d say for most fans, they’re probably listening to the first book maybe 75, 80% of the time. And the second is sort of a relic. How do you think about that? I mean, was that a conscious choice, playing some of the lesser known pieces? Lillian Gordis: Yeah, I mean, I think there were a couple things. First of all, I feel like because this recording by Pierre Hantaï had such a big impact on me at such an important age — being in my early teens — I listened to the album a lot and then I also played through Book One a [00:22:00] lot, and probably more than Book Two. And there were more Preludes and Fugues that I worked on from Book One as a teenager. I spent a number of years as a teenager without a teacher, because I kind of got to the end of the road with my first teacher, and then there wasn’t somebody else living nearby that I immediately wanted to work with. And because I was a little bit stubborn, I was like, I’d rather work on my own than go to a lesson every week and feel like I’m not getting where I want to be going. And so there’s a whole bunch of music that I kind of worked on too much and head-banged with and felt frustrated by. The sixth Partita is actually one of those pieces, and I’ve kind of come around now. But I think with Book One, it was just something I’m not ready to come back to. Whereas Book Two, in a way, because it’s more complicated and the pieces are more standalone, I didn’t spend as much time with it as a teenager. And so I feel like, yeah, there are these pieces — some of them are very difficult and strange and they get ignored. Like people don’t necessarily want to deal with them, for a lot of [00:23:00] reasons. And yeah, I really wanted to get into those for what each one of them is worth, rather than doing — I don’t really want to do the whole book. I mean, who knows, maybe when I’m 55 I’ll be like, I’m going to do the whole Well-Tempered Clavier Book Two. I have no idea. But for now, I wanted to pick out these pieces that otherwise kind of get lost in the bigger picture. Evan Goldfine: They’re a little less tuneful than the first book. Lillian Gordis: Yes. Evan Goldfine: And I think that’s why — for people who love Bach, it’s not just the counterpoint. I think he’s an underrated melody writer, and there are such powerful, beautiful tunes throughout his catalog, especially in the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier, and it’s underpinned by this incredible counterpoint, which I just find — that’s the best. It’s the brain and the heart together. Lillian Gordis: Mm-hmm. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. So I think that’s what resonates. But I’ve been enjoying digging into some of your recordings of the second book — I’d love to hear more of that as well. Yeah. Scarlatti is another artist who you’ve [00:24:00] recorded. Scarlatti is someone who’s been rising in my esteem as I’ve been listening more to his music over the years. Tell me what’s important about Scarlatti to you. Lillian Gordis: So, I mean, the funny thing about the Scarlatti thing is I played a ton of Scarlatti, like ten-ish years ago. I had a program, I was doing a lot in concert, then I recorded the CD. And then I just completely lost interest and I have no idea why. I was chatting with my producer the other evening and we were talking about recording projects, and he was like, do you think you’ll circle back to Scarlatti at some point? I was like, I’m sure I will, but I can’t explain why. But I mean, what I really like about Scarlatti is that it’s not Baroque music at all. For me, it’s like Impressionist music. It’s very visual. Even the way it looks on the page, it’s incredibly visual and you have these very rapid timbre and mood changes that you don’t really get in more traditional Baroque forms. And it’s just really refreshing and I found that it was a great playground to figure out what you could do [00:25:00] with the instrument. And especially in my early-to-mid twenties, I just was like, okay — sometimes you can feel like there are so many rules that you’re supposed to be listening to about Baroque forms that it can almost get in the way of your development and your relationship with the instrument. What I loved about Scarlatti is we don’t know — I mean, he didn’t leave us any information about his music. And so for me it was like this clean slate to figure out: what can I do with overholding? What can I do with attack? What can I do with silence? And that’s what I really love about that music. Evan Goldfine: Yeah, it’s a fun album and there’s been a lot of great recordings on piano of late as well. Lucas Debargue — Lillian Gordis: Debargue. Yeah. Evan Goldfine: Yeah — recorded about 50 of them on a big album and it’s — yeah, they’re just great. So I’d love to talk about some recordings that are important to you, both Bach and otherwise. Do you listen to non-classical music at all, or is it mostly — a little bit. A little bit. So what are important records for you in the early days? We know we heard about Pierre Hantaï’s Well-Tempered [00:26:00] Clavier Book One. What are other important records for you, both from your origin time and into now, so I can link all of those for our listeners? Lillian Gordis: Yeah, for sure. I mean, so I would say I think that Pierre’s work on Scarlatti made a huge impact on me. Of course. Yes. Especially the 1, 2, 3 volumes — there are so many of them, but I remember the 1, 2, 3 volumes. And that was just about explosivity — like, oh, the harpsichord can be a very explosive instrument. Yeah. There were also — I mean now they feel very dated, but I got to know the cantatas through the Leonhardt-Harnoncourt complete set. I checked them out of the library and I’m still very kind of attached to the work that they were doing, even though there are all these problems. Evan Goldfine: They’re not great. Lillian Gordis: No. Evan Goldfine: Those are very problematic recordings. Like the boy sopranos, there’s a lot of off-pitch singing. Lillian Gordis: Yeah. Evan Goldfine: The orchestras often — a lot of it I can see as sort of charming in certain ways, and novel, but I never connected to those records. Also, you know, I had the benefit of there being seven other complete [00:27:00] recordings to listen to right after them. But you still have a connection. Lillian Gordis: Yeah, I still have a connection to that. And when I’m talking to my students, sometimes I’ll pull them up and they’ll be like, why are you listening to this? And I’m like, well, but listen to this thing, because this thing is part of our story and our history. I think generational connections in the early music world are so important. Kind of like where you’re coming from, who you’re going to. And so I think, you know, I connected very strongly with this whole kind of Dutch school thing, even though I would absolutely never do that music that way myself. I think particularly the Saint Matthew recording that Leonhardt did with La Petite Bande, which is a little bit later — and so I think the playing and the singing overall are more successful. That, for example, was recorded in the church in the Netherlands where I record. And where Pierre’s done a lot of recordings, Leonhardt did a lot of solo recordings. And you go and listen to the E major aria in the St. Matthew and you — I hear the colors of that church. There’s just a very strong kind of nostalgia connection to that whole sound world. Like on a completely different note, I also loved a lot of Jordi Savall’s recordings — that was [00:28:00] very important for me. I remember the Purcell Fantasia recording. His recordings of some of the dance suites, excerpted from Rameau and other French composers. The ensemble Le Poème Harmonique — a lot of their early recordings, like they have a set of Airs de Cour that was really important. Things that kind of brought me into this bigger sound world. I remember a lot of those. And then there were also pianists. I listened to Richter. I listened to some of the early pianists — Hofmann and company. I don’t have a specific recording in mind, but that had a big impact on me. Just the amount of rubato that they did and the desyncing between the hands. I found that really interesting. When I was a kid, another recording that made a big impact was the Harnoncourt Beethoven recordings, the symphonies. I had never heard Beethoven sound that way. Evan Goldfine: Right. Lillian Gordis: I think we had Levin doing the Beethoven piano concerto with Gardiner. Just those — [00:29:00] that made a big impact on me. Those records. Evan Goldfine: Yes. Lillian Gordis: Those. Evan Goldfine: It sounds like there was a lot of that music playing in your household when you were a kid. Were your parents musicians or did they just love the music? Lillian Gordis: No, they’re just music lovers. And it’s funny — now I ask them, why did you have those recordings? They’re like, oh, I don’t know. My parents are funny that way, but they had good recordings. We had Andras Schiff — I remember the Andras Schiff Book Two actually. Evan Goldfine: Okay. Lillian Gordis: I must have heard that when I was like four. Yeah, because I remember that. And then as time went by — I mean, more recently there have been other recordings that have made a big impact on me. For example, the Bernstein Mahler symphonies. Yes. I didn’t know Mahler because once I got into the early music thing, for a long time I was only listening to that. And now, you know, recently like the Barenboim recording of the Brahms Symphonies with the Staatskapelle. That’s amazing. Bruckner, you know, all these huge symphonic forms that are so far from what I do — like I really enjoy that. Ravel piano — amazing. Evan Goldfine: And who on the Ravel piano? Lillian Gordis: Well, I actually really liked [00:30:00] what Lucas Debargue did with Gaspard de la Nuit, for example. Evan Goldfine: It’s a really good album. Lillian Gordis: Yeah, it’s a great album. I like most of Piotr Anderszewski’s recordings. I really enjoy Alexander Kanterow. Yeah. I mean, that’s sort of what comes to mind immediately — Kanterow playing Brahms. That’s great. Yeah. I felt like I finally understood Brahms, you know? Evan Goldfine: I saw him do Brahms’s adaptation of the Chaconne for the left hand at Carnegie Hall a couple years ago. It was really good. Lillian Gordis: I’ve only had a chance to see him play once, but yeah. That was a very inspiring relationship to the hall and the sound. I could kind of relate to what was going on there. Evan Goldfine: We haven’t talked about Glenn Gould, who’s a little bit off to the side of all of this. Did your parents have a record of him, and did that change your impression of the keyboard at all? And Bach as well? Lillian Gordis: Funnily enough, we didn’t have any Gould recordings, and I remember when I was working on the inventions, I was again maybe six or seven, and I think we checked out a recording from the library because my parents are big library people, so we were always at the library. I turned it on and I was like, eh. [00:31:00] And that’s always been my reaction to Gould. I don’t hate it. I just don’t connect with it. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Lillian Gordis: And I don’t really know why. Evan Goldfine: It’s been puzzling to me that he is so eccentric. I thought that was the way to play Bach — that was how I learned the music initially. That was my entry and I liked the music and I thought that the playing was unusual, but it’s just bizarre to me that that’s like the standard recording that a lot of people will enter with. This has been great. Anything else come to mind that you wanted to talk about regarding your Bach journey? What’s coming next? What do you want to record? Is it the Goldbergs? Will there be more Bach and what particular pieces are you really interested in taking into more? Lillian Gordis: So there’ll definitely be more Bach. I’m taking a little break recording-wise from that because my next recording, I’m doing 16th century English music and a little bit of contemporary music that I commissioned. So I want to kind of go in another direction, which kind of relates back to what I was saying about the recordings I’ve listened to most recently — all of this vocal polyphony. And so I want to see what I can do with that with 16th century English rep. [00:32:00] And then with Bach, I was literally having this conversation like two nights ago with my producer and I definitely want to get to the rest of the Partitas. I don’t know in exactly what order or when, but those are all pieces that are just incredible on their own. I think at some point, Goldbergs. I mean, I worked on them a lot. I performed them a lot — something like not quite ten years ago — and then I kind of got the sense I didn’t have something to say and put them aside. Evan Goldfine: I put you in the post that I had of you on my blog — I had it after Yunchan Lim’s recordings. Yeah. Which I think fell really flat for me. I didn’t think he had enough to say. I think he’s got a lot of chops, but I didn’t think he had anything else artistic to say about that. And there are something like 500 Goldberg recordings available now, and you can keep getting more out of them, but you really — I think probably two thirds of them are not worth listening to. Lillian Gordis: Yeah. I think with the Goldbergs, it’s like people are attracted to it because it’s a long piece where you don’t have to construct a program narrative to some [00:33:00] degree. Not to — I’m not dissing the Goldbergs. I love the Goldbergs, but I do think there’s something attractive about that and that’s not enough. I learned them pretty early on. I mean, I was in my late teens and the first time I performed them I think I was 20 or 21. And that was fun. But I don’t want to record them and I don’t want to record anything until I have that feeling that I have something to say. So in response to your question there — I’m really interested in the Art of Fugue, but I have not figured that out at all. Like, I want Art of Fugue on the harpsichord to sound like Art of Fugue does with a consort, like on the Savall recording — that’s so trippy. Yeah, I love that. But I have to figure out how to make my fingers sound like viols and cornetti and all of that. And I haven’t gotten there. Evan Goldfine: My experience with that, live — I heard Daniil Trifonov play that at Lincoln Center. It was like a week before quarantine in 2020 and there were people coughing in the audience — there were always people coughing in the audience — and I was [00:34:00] already kind of like, this is not good. And it was a very intense moment and he’s such an intense performer and he just played the whole thing. He took an intermission to breathe a little bit. And then he went through the whole thing and then played an arrangement of Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring as an encore and then left. And I think he took a nap. It was very, very intense. But yeah — I’ve never heard it on harpsichord. I’ve never listened to a recording on harpsichord. Are there many? Lillian Gordis: Yeah, I mean, there’s a decent number. It’s not as popular as a lot of other pieces, but it’s something that I would like to figure out at some point down the road. And there are other pieces that I would like to spend more time with. I think there are pieces like the toccatas — I played the toccatas when I was a kid. I work very cyclically and I kind of let things speak to me. So when I feel that pull towards something, I’m like, okay, now is the time. But I try not to force it. Evan Goldfine: And so you’ll come up to — so a toccata is something like, okay, this could be the center of the next project and you’ll build around it. Lillian Gordis: Yeah. Exactly. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Yeah. Lillian Gordis: I think you’ll definitely get the rest of the Partitas in the next couple years and I’ll probably [00:35:00] continue to pair them. I like making these kind of architectural programs. I find that interesting. I like constructing a recording — figuring out how to give it some kind of overall sense, but also respect the fact that people may not listen to it all the way through. I know that especially with streaming, people don’t. And so constructing something where people can listen to 20 minutes and they may turn it off and they haven’t lost the whole point of the recording. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Evan Goldfine: Is it hard to record these things? Like to get the — how do I phrase this? Is it hard to convince people to record these another time? Lillian Gordis: I’ve been lucky. The first label I was with — the label was not very involved in the production aspect. They were kind of just housing the recording, but I was in charge of a lot of the production. So I made the first Scarlatti recording, and then I was actually going to record English music. And we had a problem with the space. There was too much humidity, so the harpsichord wouldn’t stay in tune, so we threw that out. Evan Goldfine: Oh no. Lillian Gordis: This happens. So after that I was kind of at a loss actually. And it was early 2020. Because I [00:36:00] was locked at home, I was spending a lot more time playing Bach. Like I’d always played Bach, but I hadn’t necessarily had time to just spend with these really big pieces. And then I was like, you know what? I want to record the fifth English Suite, I want to do the fourth Partita, I want to do this B-flat minor Prelude and Fugue. And then it sort of started to come together and the label was like, that’s fine if you want to do that — like, they didn’t really care. And I never had any anxiety about it personally. Like I figure a recording is a moment in time. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Lillian Gordis: And I may rerecord things, but I have to feel like I have something to say. But I don’t think of it in terms of what age or what stage in my progression I am. I just try to react to my instinct about that. And then now I’m with a different label and that producer came on board because of the last Bach album — he just loved that album. So we’ve had some conversations back and forth, but he basically is like, you can record whatever you want, which is awesome. Amazing freedom. I’m grateful for that. Yeah. Evan Goldfine: That’s [00:37:00] awesome. Well, congratulations on that. We’re looking forward to listening to whatever’s coming next, including this new English album. Lillian’s new album is JS Bach, with a collection of Partitas and excerpts from the Well-Tempered Clavier Book Two. The French art label. It’s available on all streaming. I’ll have it linked in the show notes. Lillian, thank you for joining us today. Go see Lillian in concert. It’s going to be great. Lillian Gordis: Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yearofbach.substack.com (https://yearofbach.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

5. 

   29 Apr 2026

   Bach’s Transformations, with Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya

   In this episode of A Year of Bach, Evan talks with keyboardist Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya about her new harpsichord album Transformations, which explores Bach’s adaptations of works by composers including Marcello and Vivaldi. The conversation ranges from Bach as arranger to the expressive possibilities of the harpsichord, the freedom and discipline of interpretation, tempo choices, practice, and the influence of pianists like Sviatoslav Richter, Glenn Gould, and Alfred Cortot. Links worth clicking on: * Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya’s website (https://www.alexandranepomnyashchaya.com/) * Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya, J. S. Bach: Transformations: Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/j-s-bach-transformations/1860160272) / Spotify artist page (https://open.spotify.com/artist/3PD4r34dwk5fmbCvnWPxod) * Lillian Gordis, J. S. Bach: Partita No. 6, English Suite & Preludes and Fugues: Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/j-s-bach-partita-no-6-english-suite-preludes-and-fugues/1844680622) / Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/album/5WBgzQZjWKO6rbOpaZIc1Y) * Alfred Cortot: Bach-Cortot, Arioso from Keyboard Concerto in F minor, BWV 1056, Second Movement (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Edv4SapuGlQ) * Sviatoslav Richter, Richter The Master - Bach: Apple Music (https://classical.music.apple.com/us/album/1452968858) / Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/album/6i7UwmP0QC3Z4oINhlM4Jw) Transcript: Evan Goldfine: Hello and welcome to the podcast, a Year of Bach. My name is Evan Goldfine, and today I am welcoming Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya. Alexandra’s a Russian born keyboardist, now based in Amsterdam. In early 2026, she released an excellent album of Bach on the harpsichord. It’s called Transformations, and it was released on the Linn Label and it features Bach’s adaptations of other composers’ works, including Marcelo and Vivaldi. Alexandra’s playing through on this album is exciting throughout. There’s a constant sense of being pulled forward along with the music, a nice sense of pace. So today we’ll talk to Alexandra about her thoughts on Bach as arranger and the different virtues of harpsichord and piano, when playing Bach, and how to choose the right tempi when, the scores don’t tell you what to play. So Alexandra, welcome to the podcast. Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: Thank you for having me here. It’s a great opportunity and chance to speak again about Johan Sebastian Bach yeah, we get to play a lot, but, we should speak about his, we gotta Evan Goldfine: talk about, Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: yes, absolutely. Evan Goldfine: So all keyboards are introduced to Bach in their early studies. Were you drawn to his music in the very beginning? Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: Well, I started to play piano when I was four and a half. And I actually carried on until I was 16, only with piano playing and then when I was 16, I started to play harpsichord and carried on playing Bach on piano and harpsichord too. And then it was joined by organ and Clavichord as well. I think the music of Bach always comes with me. And it’s great to have it along. Evan Goldfine: What’s drawing you to perform Bach on the piano versus the harpsichord? I mean, it’s a choice that you have. There’s so many beautiful recordings on both instruments. But you chose to record this on harpsichord, what drew you particularly? Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: Well, I personally think that music by Bach can and actually should be played on any musical instrument. it’s, you know, the one famous Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter, the greatest, he’s the greatest Yes. In one of his interviews. so he said that Music of Bach is like a fresh spring water that cleans and refreshes our ears. And I think this is very, very right sentence Yes. To say about we all need music of Bach. And as I grew up, listening to the recordings, of Bach mostly played on piano, so I was exposed only to piano, until I became 16. And among those recordings were for the greatest Sviatoslav Richter, as well as Maria Yudina, the quite important pianist she studied around the same time as Shostakovich. And of course, Glenn Gould was a big hero, for all of the pianists. and, still he’s a absolutely genius. And then of course you can agree or disagree with his interpretations. But, it’s, it’s absolutely incredible the ability, how he hears music, how he hears all the complex polyphony, which Bach writes. So then, coming back to the point, that’s until my 16th, I was only exposed to piano and then I started with harpsichord. And that of course opened completely different path, for me. talking about the harpsichord, it’s. Quite a challenging instrument to make it sound expressive. Evan Goldfine: Yes. Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: I think due to the mechanic of the instrument, which is, quite, unexpressive because, it you, so the, the harpsichord? Yeah. So it’s a keyboard instrument, which makes sound by plucking the strings. So you basically push the key down and the string is being plucked and it doesn’t matter how hard or how soft you push the key, that will not affect the sound, which means it’s theoretically, it always comes at the same, dynamic and at the same time, we know from Bach that his main demand on playing harpsichord was that it has to be a very singing instrument. So the way of playing has to be very singing and so this is quite challenging for when you face a harpsichord. as I mentioned, for example, the clavichord, which was around the time, and it was Bach’s favorite instrument, so he had it in his room and he practiced on it every day, and he made his sons practice on it as well, and they all loved it because of completely different nature of the instrument. That’s a very expressive instrument. Yeah. So the clavichord, so It’s a like a small, very, very quiet version of piano. So you press a hits the string and it stays there until you press the key, which means you can not only do dynamic on the instrument, but you also can affect the dynamic while you are on the key. So it’s the only keyboard instrument which you can make vibrato on. That is very, very specific. Yes. Of course, it’s not a concert, instrument, but, just with this knowledge of the expressivity in dynamic. So we, I think we have to really try and transform it into. in the harpsichord as well. And so with the harpsichord, of course, we havedifferent tools, how we can make the, using expressive not only by using different registrations on manuals. This is one of the tools, but not the main one. I think that, Evan Goldfine: So if you can’t freely. create any kind of dynamic range. Does it make you play more with rhythm and placement of the notes? Does that become a more important part of your expression? Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: so I think the length of the notes is extremely important. So for example, where we have to play a polyphony even if it’s only two voices. So we have to make a difference between the sound in one voice comparable to another one. And so we manipulate it with the lengths of the notes and also with the timing, which is crucial and very, very important but I personally believe so that when I play harpsichord, I have to imagine dynamic much stronger and much more precise than when if I would play it on the piano because there is nothing, nowhere to hide. So. While playing harpsichord or with a piano playing, we can hide behind the beautiful sound behind the pedal. So there are, Evan Goldfine: so you can change the dynamic range and that means that the note placement may be less emphasized or, whether you get a run exactly right because you, if you’re pedaling and all these notes are holding together. You have this beautiful cordal shape Exactly. That’s coming around. And with the harpsichord it’s just stark. and exactly. You only have one choice. Yeah. Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: Yes, And so we have to use lots of over legato, which is, very important to make the sound as long as we can, and to make this difference with the lengths of the notes as well as timing. Also to know exactly what is the phrasing, what we want to say, and so what is the dynamic? And I think that harpsichord, you know, as a still a live instrument. So it sort of listens to your imagination a lot. ‘cause when I play, so if I imagine dynamic, even if I don’t do anything like theoretically, but I feel that the instrument reacts on this and somehow follows that line, which is great. Evan Goldfine: I’ve noticed that sometimes , harpsichordists will, as opposed to piano maybe, roll the notes a little more on chord so it creates a little more length. So, they’re not hit exactly the same time. Is that a strategy that you use when you’re thinking about harpsichord versus piano? Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: Yeah, so I think you can totally use it on the piano too. Mm-hmm. It is, and we know that they use it a lot like also in the 19th century. Yeah. So this, it’s a music of Beethoven, so it’s totally allowed and appreciated. It’s just, you know, in the 20th century, everything became quite strict. And so people started to be afraid to play what’s not exactly written in the music. Actually the way the further back we go, the freer. It was. Yeah. Evan Goldfine: I guess with Gould, again, now we’re free again to do whatever we want. was he an inspiration? I know I don’t hear a lot of Gould in your playing, butfor better or worse. Right. You know, he was his own thing. And that’s great that your own Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: Yes. Evan Goldfine: So did that kind of freedom that he showed allow, do you think that we’re all kind of children of Glen for that freedom that he was creating? Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: In a way yes, but I think when the harpsichord came back, and with the Leonhardt generation, it was quite strict still. and so it’s now that I feel that, it’s releasing a game and that people play both piano and harpsichord, and that is a great thing, because it was some time when the musicians were quite strict, so we only play harpsichord in only certain way. So everything round would be like not allowed or, Not appreciated. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: I think now we, we, because the generation of young players, it’s, it’s good to see that people really, really Become more free. I, Evan Goldfine: I just heard Lillian Gordis in concert. I don’t know if you’ve heard her albums Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: No. No. No, Evan Goldfine: she’s a young harpsicordist, with a new album from last year. Excellent stuff. and Pierre Hantai, I think you studied with, is that right? Yes. Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: Had the master classes. Evan Goldfine: I loved his, book, one of the Well-Tempered Klavier. I think it’s one of the more important recordings of that piece. and just really it turned me onto the harpsichord is like, wow, this is something that can, because I guess I started with Gould like everybody else with some of those albums. Evan Goldfine: Yep. Evan Goldfine: And Richter and, and the other geniuses who have created like a, a template in my mind about how those things should sound. Evan Goldfine: yeah. Evan Goldfine: now it sounds great on the harpsichord too. When you were thinking about creating some of your, interpretations of these. Are you hearing the recordings that you know, well, do you study the recordings? Are you just looking at the score and how does it come from you into the music? I think it’s, there’s something really key about it and I can’t ever put my finger on it. So how do you approach your music making? Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: Yeah, well, of course I listen to the recordings. I love listening and to compare them as well, I do it before I get to the, too far with the pieces myself So when I’m at the moment, of exploring it myself, I try to really focus on what I want to say and, how do I see this? So what is the right choice? it’s quite a long process for me. it’s, I must say it’s never easy. I struggle a lot. Like there always musical ideas and you know, is it right tempo or is it too fast or too slow? And then I change lots of things. it’s a long process for me, which I love because I love practice, I must admit. So I feel really that I rest with my soul when I practice. It’s a kind of meditation for me Evan Goldfine: So when you’re, you come up with your, you play it, and then you’re growing along with it, and the tempi can change or the dynamics can change, or your thoughts about it can change. Is that from repetition and do you feel like you’re understanding the music better? Is it, integrating with other songs that you want to have on the album? how are those things developing over time as you’re iterating your interpretation? Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: Yeah, it’s, it’s the more I practice the, I think the deeper I understand and also deeper I listen this music, to this pieces. And then some ideas come and then I try things as well. so that’s, it’s always good to have this time, before the recording. So that you, you have enough time to actually grow and still, I must admit, you record something and then you come back to the program like I do now, have to play it in a month in Spain with the whole recital. And then I feel, oh, I should have played it differently. You know? And this is, I think it’s totally normal. Evan Goldfine: And will you play it the new way at the concert or are you gonna go back to your old way? Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: No, no. I think you can’t go to the old way. There’s not such thing. I think it’s always develops, which is great because it’s, it’s, there is no like, that’s a great part of being musician We never stop. We never stop learning. We always go forward. Yeah. I think that’s very special in our profession. Evan Goldfine: One of the pieces I really liked on the album is a very short piece. It’s BWV 9 9 9. It’s a short arpeggiated study in C minor. I played that on guitar originally in A minor, ‘cause c minor on the guitaris no fun. but in A minor it’s, you can play it. and I started to learn on the piano as well. And when I’ve played it. I really go slow and I milk it for the drama, like the big heavy notes on the bottom. And like we’re going, it’s this arpeggiated study. It’s so pretty. Like, it’s almost like the Arpeggiated C major prelude from the first, Well-tempered Klavier, like the very famous one. Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: Yep. Yep. Evan Goldfine: your interpretation here is very fast and wonderful. Evan Goldfine: and you know, I’ve listened to a lot of other recordings of that piece before. The keyboardist, Walter Gieseking, King, I think is his,how you pronounce it. Yes, yes. He also plays it extremely quickly. Okay. And the fastest that I’ve heard it. but yours is also very, very fast. So I mean, can you hear it as like this really languid lush piece with like you really enjoying all the, all the arpeggios also, or, and, but you chose to, to move it quickly, which also works, but it’s a very different kind of feel. I’d love to hear how you came to that interpretation. Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: Well, for the tempo. So it’s, I think the first comes as a character for me. So I have to look which character I want to deliver so the tonality is a very important thing for me because I hear, I actually remember all the music, but with the tonalities, I never remember numbers, but I know exactly which keys it did. So it’s just something because, probably because I have an absolute pitch and I very much connect music with that. So every key means something for me and for my ears. so the C minor, so it’s just, I see it as quite a, stormy and fiery little piece. Evan Goldfine: For Beethoven too. C minor, right? Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: Yes, exactly. And also the important thing, I think the harmonies, how quickly harmonies change. And if you notice that in this small prelude. The harmony change either, every bar or every second bar. So, which is quite a long time for the harmony. So that’s also helps me to understand, okay, I want to see line within the harmony. I don’t want it to be stuck on the C Minor for two bars without,dynamic. So, because you’re on harpsichord going back to that onco. Yes. So I need to see this dynamic development and with within, and the harmonies are very, very important. for everything. Evan Goldfine: There’s like one note towards the end that changes everything in that piece. Like, it, it moves you from, from, minor into this major key. And he kind of hints at it. I love this about Bach. He’ll sometimes hint at it that it might be coming and then he brings you there and he changes the harmony. And then suddenly You find yourself in the new key altogether. in this program that you created, there’s a lot of pieces of Bach, an arranger, and he’s arranging other composer’s works for keyboard and I think about that a lot as him studying. Right. And, and he’s presenting that to us, but he’s also, there’s, there’s a craft to what he’s doing too. When, when you were looking and, and learning these pieces, did you also refer to the originals? did you study those at all? Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: Yeah. Well, just to say about the. Arrangement world. So this Bach, he’s like Handel who was great recycler of the material. Evan Goldfine: Mm-hmm. Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: And Handel was very often accused of stealing the music from others. Yeah. So we know that, but actually it’s just very important to say that using the, or borrowing the material from other composers. We can see it as a tribute, so as appreciation of other composers. And, of course Bach is far more adventurous and creative than I think nearly every composer from his time. so those two concertos, which I play under the city, so the arrangement of the violin Vivaldi concerto and the famous oboe concerto by Marcello.I know the original pieces, I listen to them of course. that is very important for me as well to to hear what’s happening in the original version. And then once I know, I open the music of Bach and then the surprise comes because the music sounds louder and more amplified in Bach’s version, then comparable to the orchestra version. And that’s a paradox because you play just a harpsichord, but it sounds louder, more intense, There’s so much going on things I don’t think Vivaldi and Marcello would ever imagine. Those concertos sound that full. Evan Goldfine: do you think that that’s the arrangement of the notes that he has, like the way that the notes are stacked up and are there different harmonies? how do you think that he achieves that? Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: So he’s, he’s following the harmonies quite, quite strictly, I think. But he adds so many extra lines, so many, intensive chromatic lines, and the texture becomes so full. it’s, it’s never just the translations of the originals. So he, changes the material into something glorious new. even he does it with his own pieces. We know from his, passions. Yeah. With Matthew and John’s passions whenever, because he performed that not once. And by performing them second time, he changes things. He adds things or change them it’s always different. And with the concertos is the same thing. I think the texture becomes so rich, so many decorations he writes. And even improvisation is also. You can find the improvisational, language there as well. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: it’s unbelievable. It’s how joyful and the character becomes. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. the adagio from the marchello, oboe Concerto is a very famous piece and also one of box absolute masterpieces that everyone should know. I actually start the theme song from my podcast. I’m playing it on, on the keyboard’s, the first. You know, little. Oh Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: yeah. Yes. Evan Goldfine: it’s just, it’s a magic four minutes of music. what were your personal reflections of that? what do you remember of that what are some of your, favorite interpretations of that? Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: Oh, the interpretation. it’s hard to say, but I would, you know, when I have one of the favorite recordings of Bach played by the amazing pianist Alfred Cortot. And he has this recording of the second moment of, the harpsichord or keyboard concerto with the orchestra, which is in F Minor. And he plays a second movement arranged by himself only for Piano. Okay. And it’s, yeah, you can find the recording. it’s in the collection. I’ll link to that, everybody. Absolutely. It’s, from 1948. and this is a magic for me because this is so much, It feels like he’s in the room with you. the music really speaks to you. the rubato is so natural and it’s so sincere and touching. that’s a feeling. I wanted to create this movement of, second movement of Marcello concerto as well. So I think it’s so touching at the same time. it’s quite a simple melody, so it’s, yeah. So that’s the simpleness and, Humanity. So I think that’s a very important guide line for me, Evan Goldfine: I think in my favorite recordings of anything you are hearing, the interpretation of the individual self, of the player, But also that there is something more to it there. They have something to say about it and they’re communicating their personality somehow through this interpretation. and also it has to resonate with me that I like their interpret, that I like their personality almost. Yeah. That they’re coming up with something. You can have a very well played. Interpretation of something that just does not meet my taste. And there’s always a magic to figure out how are you gonna connect with that particular performer. I’d love to know about some other performers that evoke that sense for you. I mean, and how they may relate to one another because we’ve talked about Cortot and Gould so far, and Richter, and these are very different sorts of players Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: Yeah. Evan Goldfine: Who are all amazing in their own ways and which is weird, right. how do we like all of those three? it doesn’t necessarily mean, like, I don’t understand that. So I’d love to hear what do you think about that? how come. We connect in certain ways with these very different sorts of interpretations. Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: Well, as I like to listen to many very different performers, so I never get stuck on one person or like one recording. Because I think it’s dangerous because otherwise it is a danger that you try to copy someone and you can’t do that. Evan Goldfine: Oh, that’s a professional danger for you, right? You can’t, Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: No, you, you, yes. Because you have to be yourself still and yeah. I have a few names, which also in the harpsichord world, which, yeah. Which the, the performance who I admire and they are completely different from each other, so it’s, also Andres Steier. So it’s, it’s a big Evan Goldfine: Oh yeah. Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: Important figure for me because I took a few lessons with him, private lessons and he is, it’s such a deep, honest approach, which I appreciate so much. So it’s, it’s quite a strict approach as well. so that because he sees the things certain way and sometimes doesn’t allow it to be as flexible, but this honesty about music and going to the truth to find what is, you know, what Bach wanted to say. I really do appreciate it a lot. I think I, it’s a bit in my system because when I started to play piano, I used to have lessons with my father and we could sit for Three hours Just to get to this truth and musical meaning of the composer. So I think I quite appreciate and love this approach. And then I, of course, I have another, completely different example is, Richard Eggar. Igar. who is also like my life partner Yes. And dual partner in piano. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: And that is, is a very different, very human, very emotional and pure music approach. And there’s lots of freedom and lots of space for being creative Evan Goldfine: So rigidity works, openness works, but there’s something that’s unsayable unknowable that makes it really great. Like, because you can come at it from different approaches and still achieve. Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: Yes, exactly. And I think like this, his braveness, you know, that’s a very, very special thing in all the music he is approaching. Yeah. So I try to find the braveness as well, like the improvisation, you know, when we play duo and it’s like the or limitations go so wild. Evan Goldfine: When you were sitting as a child with your father taking these lessons and it was three hours for three bars, was that something that you pushed against or was that something that was okay. Was he gentle? Was he very strict about it? how were those early lessons? ‘cause I can imagine those being fraught Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: with, Evan Goldfine: with your dad. I Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: think I didn’t have a choice, honestly. Yeah. Because, I started to play piano when I was four and a half, but my sister already played for two years Evan Goldfine: mm-hmm. Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: Piano. So I was inside of this world already and I loved it. I loved her listening to her playing piano, and it was just. Sort of something which yeah, I was not asked about, but I love the music. It was tough. It was, he was very strict and very, sometimes very difficult to understand what he exactly meant because I think he, some things he wanted for me as a child, I think you can request it from the adult people. Evan Goldfine: Right. Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: And that was the most difficult thing for me to understand actually what he wants. means. Yeah. Yeah. Evan Goldfine: Right. ‘cause he didn’t have the, you think it was a life experience or ear training, or you just didn’t have the breadth of understanding, didn’t have enough hours at the keyboard to be able to, bridge that gap. what changed between ages, I don’t know, 10 and 20 That allowed you to be able to do more? Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: I started to really enjoy practicing from I think my like 12 when I became 12, 13. That’s the time when I discovered I can practice at the music school, you know, Not only practice at home. And knowing that my father is listening in the other room, right. Exactly. And try to come and, you know, every single bar, which is not correct or doesn’t sound as he would like it to be, he would come and comment to that. And so the school practice myself that really made a difference. Spent so many hours on practicing on my own and then was like when harpsichord joined, right? My life, that was even, even better. I only had harpsichord at school, so no chance to practice at home. Evan Goldfine: Right. More freedom. Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: So yes. Evan Goldfine: Were there particular composers at that age that hit you more like, oh, I can now go over there and I can play Tchaikovsky if I want to. If that wasn’t welcome at home, how did that go? Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: You mean in which age? Evan Goldfine: Yeah. you can start to choose more of your own repertoire as you get a little older. Right? Maybe you’re syncing with Chopin, maybe you’re syncing more with Bach. Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: Well, I must say that I played Bach from the beginning, so from the very early age, and so I remember. Absolutely enjoying playing his, the inventions and the symphonies in three voices, and later on French suites as well as English suites. And somehow I always had a very warm relationship with music of Bach. And it’s, you know, it’s probably a couple of reasons for that. First one is quite practical. we used to have very, very heavy pianos at the school, the music school, and you know, with the music of Bach, I did have to struggle with it, finding the power to, you know, to actually reach the whole, with the, while playing the heavy, Evan: there’s no FF, like in, it’s not rock. Alexandra: Exactly. Exactly. Or like, to, to carry it through the very, very long. Clementi etude, which, goes for like six minutes without any stop. And then you completely overwhelmed with this technical, difficulties. And with music of Bach I could. Focus on music and just dive into his world and didn’t have to think, is it, loud enough or my fingers strong enough to play it. So that’s was a very, very special Evan Goldfine: right Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: So I always enjoyed, but, and the other, yeah, so of course the other reason, It’s, it’s a fascinating to see the, you know how in Bach music, two sides combine,like for one side is that I find his music very emotional and human and touching. And from the other side, we know that it, it’s, it’s also very clever music and very well structured, very strictly structured. Yeah. And there’s lots of symbolic meaning. There’s lots of numbers, which he connects him to the gods and to himself. So he was obsessed with the numbers. Yeah. So that’s, it’s this combination of two sides. I think it’s fascinating. And yeah, so that’s, that’s, how I connect. Evan Goldfine: I know very few artists who match the formal rigor and the emotional power that Bach does. And I think that that’s just the best for me. Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: Yes, exactly. So this is absolute fascination. And, and well the, this paradox thing as well as my daughters, now, they play piano and they play Bach, and they play this like the invention in two voices, which I used to play in around their age. And now when I look at this pieces, I think, oh, this is so difficult. You know how musically tricky it is. Yeah. I think yes. The more you know, the more questions you ask and the more things, yes, it becomes difficult as well. Evan Goldfine: It looks simple and to get it to sound great. Takes a lifetime. Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Yes. Evan Goldfine: I’m thinking about the numbers with Bach. The one that comes to mind is the first movement of the third English suite when it’s like, Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: yeah. Evan Goldfine: three and two and six are just sort of all interposed on top of each other for the whole time. Yes. And you can look at it like a math problem the whole way, but it’s not, it’s a beautiful piece of driving music in the right hands. Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: Yeah. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Evan Goldfine: Well, Alexandra, thank you again for taking some time talking about , your album and, and, and how you think about Bach and your experience on the keyboard with him. Again, the album is called Transformations. It’s out on the Linn label, and you can,find it in the links to the show notes here. And, thank you again and, and looking forward to hopefully seeing you in concert one day. Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: Thank you very much, Evan, for having me. Evan Goldfine: Thank you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yearofbach.substack.com (https://yearofbach.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

6. 

   12 Mar 2026

   Guitarist Scott Tennant on the Lute Suites and Teaching Bach

   What a pleasure to speak to guitar hero Scott Tennant about playing and teaching Bach. We talked about his early days with the instrument, how he became a nylon pumper, and how strange it is that most of us guitarists love the Spanish classics alongside the adaptations of the German master. Here are the albums mentioned in the podcast: John Williams, El Diablo Suelto, Guitar Music of Venezuela: Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/el-diablo-suelto-guitar-music-of-venezuela/1052785074); Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/album/2S6fURCcyn8UfzJMqbcPjt). Andrew York, Apple Music: Yamour (https://music.apple.com/us/album/yamour/569761044) Spotify: Yamour (https://open.spotify.com/album/5GrQYR1I0SKvXRAvdYzYRY). David Russell, Apple Music: Music of Barrios (https://music.apple.com/us/album/music-of-barrios/1589010457) Spotify: Music of Barrios (https://open.spotify.com/album/6UCyB5M3f7CIjpOhxO8Nja). Scott Tennant, Apple Music: Scott Tennant Guitar Recital (https://music.apple.com/ao/album/scott-tennant-guitar-recital/139277953); Spotify: Scott Tennant on Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/artist/63GUUmvI0YImnV52wjNezl) Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, Apple Music: LAGQ (https://music.apple.com/us/album/lagq/262933011) Spotify: LAGQ (https://open.spotify.com/album/29aDbPm7OaXavrYXgO4CGK) Links: Scott Tennant: USC profile (https://music.usc.edu/scott-tennant/) A Year of Bach: yearofbach.substack.com (https://yearofbach.substack.com/) Evan Goldfine: evangoldfine.com (https://evangoldfine.com/) The brief clip of guitar when we talk about the first movement of the Lute Suite is from a live John Williams recording. Transcript: Evan Goldfine: Welcome to the podcast, A Year of Bach. My name is Evan Goldfine, and today I welcome Scott Tennant, one of the great classical guitar players and teachers of our era. Scott was a founding member of the Grammy Award-winning group, Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, and he’s currently the chair of the classical guitar program at USC’s Thornton School of Music. Scott, welcome. Scott Tennant: Thanks for inviting me, Evan. Glad to be here. Evan Goldfine: So let’s talk about Young Scott at the guitar. Were you drawn to Bach initially? Was it more like homework? Scott Tennant: Oh boy. I was, yeah, it was Bach. It was mostly the guitar itself and the sound of it. I started taking lessons when I was six at a music store and, what drew me to classical music in general was, you know, in these books that I was, my weekly lessons were in, there were little snippets of Bach, Anna Magdalena Bach, the famous, you know, little minuets and musettes. And then there was Tchaikovsky and I thought, this music sounds really unique as opposed to like the more poppy kind of songs I was working on. And I asked my teacher what. I love this composer. I love that composer. And she said, oh, well, that’s called classical music. And so I started doing a deep dive and, I of course, I then found Bach and it turns out my parents were very involved in having my brother and I listened to a lot of music. My mom had been a musician in her youth. so we were always listening to every kind of music. And we had, you know, remember the records. The LPs Evan Goldfine: Sure Scott Tennant: had a lot of those. That’s probably where I first heard Bach, and then I got this crazy record. By the then Walter Carlos, who became Wendy Carlos, Evan Goldfine: Switched on Bach, Scott Tennant: on a Moog synthesizer. And that blew me away. I heard the Bach Brandenburg Third Brandenburg, and that’s the first time I really, that’s the first time I heard any of the Brandenburgs on a Moog synthesizer. Evan Goldfine: Very strange. Scott Tennant: You know, and it just proves that Bach is very user friendly. You can play his music on pretty much anything. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Scott Tennant: And his music is so versatile and so anyway, yeah, I became a fan and slowly learned about Bach as I went on Evan Goldfine: Any special recordings besides switched on Bach from the seventies in those early years. Scott Tennant: Let’s see. We had orchestral recordings. They were mostly these LPs that had a combination of different composers and I can’t, I know the Chicago Symphony was one. Evan Goldfine: Mm-hmm. Scott Tennant: I don’t know, maybe it was Solti or who was conducting at the time. but they were orchestral, renditions and. yeah, my first, Bach listening experience was with orchestra, and frankly, they were kind of orchestral arrangements, I think, of, the famous, you know, the air and the G-string and Evan Goldfine: Sure. Scott Tennant: Those kinds of things. But, I didn’t really start diving into Bach until I started taking classical guitar lessons when I was 11. Then of course it was just like Bach. And I just started discovering, just going crazy, discovering all of this, the Bach that I could play. And then it was a, it was just a. Race track from there. Learn all the Bach. I could. Evan Goldfine: Was it Segovia? Was it Bream? Were these things you were listening to as references or were you just going by reading through it and hearing what it was, underneath your fingers and what your teacher was helping you with? Scott Tennant: Well, it was my first actual Bach album was John Williams playing all of the lute suites. Evan Goldfine: Yes. Scott Tennant: And that, of course, John Williams, I was such a huge fan and still a huge fan of his and I wore the record out. I think my dad had to buy me a second LP of the same recording. It just blew me away. And I realized now a, as a kid, I started things. I was kind of strong-willed and my teacher would tell me, no, don’t play us too hard. You know, and so, but I would start things anyway. And I remember starting the fourth lute suite, right? There are four lute suites. As you probably know, and I started the fourth one, da. And so I remember just struggling through it and I thought, well, you know, I can play it just like John Williams if I just copy him. So I listened to it all the time trying to copy. I kind of figured his fingerings out, which, you know, for a 12-year-old wasn’t too bad. And, of course I can never play it like him. But, that was a start and long story longer. That’s the only box suite I’ve ever actually recorded myself. I played it for years and years in concert, and because of that I started it when I was too young and my teacher was right. I wasn’t ready. I had a hangup on that prelude of the suite, the first movement of the suite. All my life and, to this day. So I stopped because of that prelude. I actually stopped programming Bach because I had such hangups with it. Evan Goldfine: Wait, what? What’s going on? Scott Tennant: I had, you know, because I learned it when it was too hard for me, and I eventually worked it out and was able to play it and learn the whole suite and started programming it. In fact, a lot of times I would begin my program with it, because I thought the prelude made such a great opener. And it does. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Scott Tennant: But, with all the nerves that go into performances anyway, and my, I should say maybe lack of confidence with that one movement I carried on for a while, for many years, and I just stopped programming that suite. And eventually, I just stopped programming Bach for a while just because I gave myself a hangup with Bach . It was so hard and I didn’t wanna mess up, I didn’t wanna make any mistakes with playing Bach because everybody loved Bach and everybody knew Bach the music. And so I just thought I’ll give it a rest. Evan Goldfine: Huh? I know that recording, it’s from your Guitar Recital record from many years ago. Mm-hmm. And it’s excellent. I love that record. There’s a kind of brashness and youthful confidence and this real, meaty sound. I think it’s great. Especially in that prelude. There’s those moments where the time the downbeat seems to be playing around when it goes down to those two notes back and forth da da da. Evan Goldfine: I came upon this organ piece. You know, there’s like 50 hours of organ music, and I suddenly heard the lute suite again. And I was like, that is strange and familiar. And I like it more on the guitar. I didn’t want all of the sustaining notes as much. I kind of liked the sound of the guitar. Once the note is plucked, it sort of goes away. And so you need to find the different ways to keep those strings and notes echoing or not, as your case of your interpretation might be. What about that moment that I’m talking about, that goes back and forth. Scott Tennant: Right. I know the spot that it happens in the, a section and then later in another key very symmetrically. The version most guitarists play has some element of the solo violin version. Which really opened my ears to what the piece was really about. The organ, of course, the sinphonia which is an F major. But it might be because of the bowing where the note you think is the downbeat, you know? Forgive my singing, isn’t the downbeat, right? I think that’s what you’re talking about. So, yes. Then I played a version where I kind of reversed, I inverted the two notes, the upper one and the lower one so that the downbeat of that is actually a lower note. Here’s the thing when in guitar, you know, when you use your thumb for a, let’s say, da, when you’re using your thumb, let’s say, in a pattern like that Evan Goldfine: mm-hmm. Scott Tennant: whether you intend for the note with the thumb to be played out or not, it’s going to be accented a little bit. Evan Goldfine: It’s gonna sound like a downbeat. Scott Tennant: Yeah. And so I just stopped. I refingered it and I stopped playing that note with the thumb and it worked out perfectly. The thing about Bach is that it’s, everything’s so interchangeable in a way. Everything that I was learning from an early age was kind of Segovia centric. You know, Segovia arranged a lot of different pieces. Instead of playing whole suites, he divided up suites and published them and played them separately because, he was trying to promote the guitar at that time, and he wanted he was afraid, well, if my audience sits through a whole suite, you know, they could get turned off by it. You know, let’s just give him a little bit of everything. So I had that in my head as I learned I was learning guitar from an early age. And so everything was Segovia centered, the Chaccone, his arrangement of the Chaconne very famous and many of his other Bach pieces. So I had this thing, well, you have to add a lot of bass notes, right? To, You know, because he would reconfigure things and he would take a single line, like a violin and put a lot of base notes in. And so then there was this trend. Because of that, there was this trend later of, well, let’s get away from that. And everybody was playing pieces more or less in the original form, like the single line, even going back to the original key that worked, let’s say on violin, but, or maybe on cello, but maybe it didn’t work as well on guitar. So then I went through that phase and as a student, I arranged all of the Bach cell suites, wrote them down, by hand and have a notebook full of them of all the cello suites that I arranged, only adding a little, base notes sparingly because of that philosophy that I built up in my head. And so now. I’m completely turned around. I think Bach’s thing was adaptability. So if he had heard me playing a guitar with all these strings, playing a single line without adding anything, he would think I was crazy. He would say, what? What are you doing wasting all of these other notes you can be playing. Evan Goldfine: There’s opportunity. Scott Tennant: Yeah. And when I do arrange something, I don’t add much, but I do fill things out. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. How is Segovia living with you today? It’s such an important musician for so many of us, and you’ve recorded an album of Segovia’s music, which is excellent. Probably your most recent release. How has that lived with you and how has his performances changed in your mind as you’ve, come into your own, throughout your career? Scott Tennant: Segovia will have always have a particular throne in my pantheon of heroes. Because, you know, when I was young, he was probably the biggest influence and he influenced, I remember reading a quote that he mentioned about John Williams, so everybody, Parkening, Williams, everybody had the quote by Segovia. And so he was the king. And, the guitar has progressed a lot. And there are players that play in with different techniques now with different approaches to plucking and all that, and certainly different approaches to fingering. So there’s been all that happening over the decades, but I still hold him in very high esteem and I listened to him a lot and now it’s even more pleasurable to go back and listen to Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Scott Tennant: A Segovia recording and watch a concert. Evan Goldfine: When I first started playing classical guitar, I loved the Spanish music. In the very beginning, just playing the root e minor chord and just strumming down. It’s like, what is this amazing big sound? All these different overtones coming through, and you felt it resonating against your body. So, that sound, the early Spanish music that I learned of Albeniz and Rodrigo and Tarrega, which, you’ve recorded and also Bach. I think that most classical guitar students, whether they’re in the beginning or they’re advanced, tend to like both the traditional Spanish music and Bach on the guitar, which is weird because those tastes don’t necessarily fit together on their own outside of the guitar. Do you agree with that take? What do you make of that? That we all love this music so much that’s so different from each other. Scott Tennant: I agree with that. I know what you’re saying. There’s something about people who are drawn to the guitar. It’s a lot to do with the sound. A lot of them, first of all, do come from a electric guitar background, so most of the classic guitarists I know now have, started in rock in playing with the rock band in the garage or playing jazz or, I know a couple that even played come from playing country and they just, and they aspire to this sort of classical, it’s kind of this mountaintop that everybody wants to get to. So with the finger style and the sound you get from the nylon strings, it’s a very special type of instrumental style. And so I think anything, to fanatics like myself, I remember back when I was, that person you’re talking about, that young student. Everything sounded good on guitar. I just loved to listen to anything and, but it was amazing that Bach, specifically yeah, it was, I got just as much pleasure and thrill out of listening to Bach than I did listening to a really fiery Spanish like Rodrigo. Yeah. Wow. There was a discovery. And now that I’m a teacher, I’ve been for a long time and I see young students coming. There’s still that fascination with the sound of playing Bach on a guitar just like Albeniz or any other composer. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Scott Tennant: You know. Evan Goldfine: Yeah, I love the way that the instrument resonates against my body, it just feels more connected. I’ve been learning how to play piano again, I took a 35, 40 year break in the middle. I’m getting back to it and there’s something very important and tactile, but the instrument isn’t resonating against me. And I think you get that with the guitar especially and probably some of the bowed instruments people to get that feeling. And it can be a quite a warm sound as well as you can get some real volume out of it too. You can play beautifully soft, and beautifully when going, fortissimo as well. So there’s a huge range and I think people resonate with that. Too. Scott Tennant: It is true. Yeah. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Scott Tennant: Very true. Evan Goldfine: So you’ve been a teacher for many years and one of the themes that I keep returning to in these interviews that I’ve been doing is sussing out what makes a great performance. And, you’ve been seeing these younger students kind of, put their own personal individual spins on all of these pieces that you’ve heard many times. How do you articulate what a good performance is? Scott Tennant: Ultimately, when I’m hearing a performance, I wanna make sure I hear the performer as well as the composer. So, I know what Bach sounds like stylistically, and a lot of other composers, I know sometimes I know the actual piece of music I’m hearing so I know the music, I know the style, but I feel if I don’t hear the performer speaking to me, then something’s lacking. And certainly you know, it’ll be a lifelong struggle with myself too. Just doing that. always trying to put my you know, how can my stamp on it, how can I communicate this? That really reflects myself. And I try to instill that in the students. And we work on that a lot. So obviously we work on learning. We want the right notes. Evan Goldfine: Sure. Scott Tennant: Stylistically ornamented in a certain way but not over ornamented, you know, this really intricate stuff. But then in the end I want to hear the person that’s playing it. So it’s making it personal. Evan Goldfine: How does that personality come through in a performance? And I, you know, I’m just bugging you on this ‘cause this is something that I’ve been ruminating on for months since I started these interviews. It’s like what actually makes, how does one convey one’s self through their musical performance. I mean, I hear it, I know all the different kinds of pianists and guitarists and musicians that just sound like them. I don’t know how you do that. Like it’s a magic trick to know that’s a Segovia record or that’s a Scott Tennant record, or, you know, that LAGQ is maybe cheating a little bit because of the sonic timbre that you get with the four guitars. But what does it take to create that unique sound? Scott Tennant: You brought up a good point about knowing when you’re hearing a particular performer, it comes down to, of course, their style, but their tone and with guitar, those listeners who don’t play classical guitar or know the details. You know, we pluck with, we have some fingernails grown out on our right hand to pluck the string. Depending on the person and their style and their teacher, et cetera, the nail could be longer or shorter. And that could change daily depending on the weather. You know, you reach into your pocket for your keys and you come out with half a nail left, something broke. So we’re all, we’re always gluing, repairing, things on our nails to just keep them so we can play. But ultimately you have to have control of your tone and because it’s a direct contact, we don’t have a key or a mouthpiece or a bow. It’s really, and that’s what I love about it’s very tactile. It’s a very personal thing. So ultimately it’s, working on your tone to the point where you develop your own touch, where I can tell just by listening, which one of my students or teachers or friends are playing. Right. Evan Goldfine: That’s so cool. Yeah. To be able to do that. I think some very astute listeners can do that. With their records, you know, that they just know which particular performances they are just by picking up, a particular beginning of the Beethoven fifth Symphony. I can probably do that with many records, but there’s thousands of recordings now of these things. You know, how many Albeniz you know, Leyenda have you heard? I mean, it’s there’s hundreds, Scott Tennant: A few. Evan Goldfine: I’d love to talk a little bit about one of your ex band mates, Andrew York, a great guitarist and composer. You know, given how much guitar people play. I’ve been sort of surprised by the relative lack of new classical repertoire for guitar that people love compared to, the flourishing of that music that people play that’s 80 years old. A lot of the energy, in contemporary guitar composition has moved towards steel string and there’s a lot of like popping and tapping and drumming on the guitar, some of which is fine, some of which is a very small amount is excellent but a lot of it is just sort of flashy my aunt would call it flash on trash. that’s, that’s what I’m gonna probably edit that part out. But I think Andrew is probably the greatest compositional voice of contemporary classical guitar. People love to play that music. And I’m curious as to what your take is on his music. You’ve played his recordings and his arrangements for decades and even featured some of his compositions on your solo records. So what can Andrew do? Why is his language so special? What makes it unique and what resonates with you about it? Scott Tennant: Well, of course Andy’s been one of my closest friends for so long. We met at USC when he first came in as a grad student. We had a program called Studio Guitar. It was called Commercial Guitar then for a while. But really, he was a jazz guitarist that came to study jazz. But he already had sort of mastered the classical guitar style, with the plucking, with the nails and, I know one of his heroes he would talk about a lot was Ralph Towner. Because Ralph was doing the same kinds of things that Andy, I think really aspired toward, you know, maybe writing his own music playing, you know, with the guitar in the left leg, you know, classical style, et cetera. And he was already writing music for acoustic guitar back then when I met him. And I’ve always loved his style. It is people friendly, it’s, It’s not challenging to listen to more than it as it is satisfying and deeply personal in most cases, you know, people can latch onto something that speaks to them when they listen to his music, including myself. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Scott Tennant: And, I’ll always be a fan of his music. Evan Goldfine: It is very user friendly, as you were say, or listener friendly? I wonder if there’s some pressure from the establishment when people are writing these music. I mean, we’re a hundred years after 12 tone rows were invented and 70 years after Shostakovich and then, you know, going out to like Webern and all these kind of really out guys are, is it sort of declasse to write something as user-friendly as that or is it not seen as impressive among in the conservatories? Is that why we might be not seeing such accessible music? Scott Tennant: I think music has to be genuine. I think, you know, Schoenberg for instance, started out as a neoclassical composer developed this idea of 12 tone tonality however you want to phrase it. And then a lot of people followed and it was kind of the new thing. Everybody’s looking for the new thing. But I always found that music not genuine. I have friends who it speaks to but ultimately speaking particularly of Andy’s music, it’s genuine. I mean, he’s, it’s really, you know, it’s him. And I don’t want to suggest at all that by saying it’s, it’s listener friendly, that it’s easy music. Evan Goldfine: Oh, no, Scott Tennant: no. Or that it’s not deep. But I think people, I know him so I can tell it’s, you know, it’s him speaking through the music, but I think those who don’t know him also feel a real connection because it comes from a true place. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Scott Tennant: And not something that somebody’s trying to be. He is just who he is and he expresses that exceedingly well. Evan Goldfine: Yeah, there was a track on an album he put out a few years ago called Yamour, the title track from that album where out of nowhere he starts singing and he’s singing along with it. And it’s such a surprise. You know, he’s, I don’t think he ever sung on record before, but it was such an amazing organic piece of music that, like, it felt a spontaneous outpouring almost, and it was so key to that piece. And, you know, Andy doesn’t have the best voice in the world, but it’s perfect in that moment. And, that piece really speaks to me a lot. Scott Tennant: He wrote a piece for me called, you know, he was always trying to get me to come out of my shell and it’s hard to believe, I guess, that I have his shell, but I am by nature a shy person and, so I could do the classical persona really well because it’s somebody else’s music. And I put my stamp on it and he always said, man, you gotta commit more and come outta your shell. And I didn’t know what he meant. So finally he appeared with this piece. I wrote you a piece, and it’s called Letting Go. And you have to sing. And I was oh God, don’t make me sing. Don’t make people hear me sing. Please. And, it’s kind of like Yamour, where the vocal part is very easy. It’s very simple, and it’s completely woven into the fabric of the music. You know, you have to do it. So, I play that. I don’t play it nearly enough now because I just, you know, when it comes time for you to sing, I just, I’m still a little bit shy about that, but, and he’s been doing more and more of that. Evan Goldfine: Someone, you know, Scott Tennant: kind of other elements. Evan Goldfine: As someone who is admitting to being shy, I mean, you’re a professional performer, in front of other people, does that play into stage fright or have you been able to manage that? Or do you just know the material so well? It’s just a part of you that you can easily make that outpouring through your discipline and your artistry. Scott Tennant: Of course we all get, you know, I try not to use the word nervous and I don’t want my students to use the word nervous. We say excited. So, yeah, I get overly excited sometimes with a little too much adrenaline and the sweats. I think that’s natural. I think it means that you care about what you’re going to present. You care about the music. But I always enjoyed sharing music with people, especially as a kid. I’d learned I’d play something half learned. In fact, I would just stop at a particular section if I didn’t learn that part yet. Just ‘cause I wanted to play it for people. I so just enthusiastic about the music and I wanted people to hear it. I still have that. I’ve never been the type to, I don’t over promote myself at all, or, I just enjoyed playing music for people. Whenever I felt I was too much in the spotlight I would shy away a little bit. And that’s, and that ties in again to Andy. Writing “Letting go” for me because, you know, he wanted me to open up and feel comfortable with going beyond just sharing notes and sharing more of myself. So that was a good lesson in itself. I think we all get nervous. It’s a fight or flight thing where you’re speaking in front of people and frankly, I get a little fight or flight with things like this where I have to talk. I’m not a great speaker. Evan Goldfine: You’re doing great. Scott Tennant: But there’s, I think it’s a natural thing when you’re suddenly in front of people and you feel that you’re in the spotlight, maybe being judged. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Scott Tennant: So what I’ve done is I turned that around and I consider people who are there staring at me waiting for me to do something. I see them as my guests, so they’re in my living room, right? And they’re all my guests, right? I’m not in their space, they’re in my space and, you know, I can look out, I like to talk to them and explain the music, and it becomes more of a communication love fest, and you make that connection. They make the connection and it completely lowers that screen you put in front of yourself of being scared. Evan Goldfine: I’m taken by your observation that you didn’t want too much of a spotlight on yourself. And you ended up having a breakthrough career in a quartet, which allows you to share that spotlight with three other people, which was Yeah. That strategy is great for you, that you had that opportunity. I was, it was, I always heard you as the anchor sound of that band, I don’t know if that resonates with you, but that, thanks. That’s a compliment that I’m trying to offer. Scott Tennant: I got, oh, I got most of the fast stuff just because I was a speed demon when I was a kid. Evan Goldfine: Mm-hmm. Scott Tennant: And I could just, if they wanted something fast, I could just at least fake it. I got a little tired of being the pyro technician, but you know, I have to say it was fun. It was just so much fun. And, yeah, it was good for a kind of a shy, supportive type like me. Evan Goldfine: Yeah, Scott Tennant: to be in a group. Evan Goldfine: Well, I’m glad we got to do a little psychotherapy also at the end of this conversation, Scott Tennant: I feel much better. Evan Goldfine: Thank you. Scott, thank you so much for spending some time with us today. I had one final question for you know, you’re, you’re working with ambitious students now at USC as you have been for many years. How are the kids these days doing? I’ve been reading about how the attention spans are going down and disciplines going down. Do these students still have the same sort of drive as the ones you saw 20 years ago? And do they love Bach as much as, the ones from that period as well? Scott Tennant: With all the things that are going on that you mentioned, the attention spans, it’s a real thing. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Scott Tennant: Of all the things I could mention, everybody still is crazy about Bach. They all wanna play Bach. And if I were to tell them to go listen to some classical not even broke, just go listen to some music, they would choose Bach. They would choose Bach. Evan Goldfine: Good choice. Scott Tennant: Yeah. And I, and I’m happy to listen, you know, when they do choose it. Evan Goldfine: One final question. Any particular recordings that are important to you right now that you’ve been listening to, of late? Scott Tennant: Oh, gosh. I still love listening to John. Anything with John Williams, my teacher, Pepe Romero and his brothers. I, they’re always on the top of my listening shelf. And then, David Russell, Yeah, just the old greats. I was really saddened to hear that Kazuhito Yamashita Evan Goldfine: Oh yeah. Scott Tennant: Passed away recently because I knew him. I was his chauffeur whenever he would come to LA. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. What kind of guy was he? Scott Tennant: He was very serious. Very, you know, you have to in context, you know, as a kid he was playing concerts from a very early age. His father. So I hear, I actually asked him about it. He agreed. He said, yes, it’s true. His father, he had to practice 12 hours a day. Evan Goldfine: Oh my goodness. Scott Tennant: His father took care of everything. Here’s when you eat, here’s when you sleep. We travel here, but even during the concert days, it was so instilled in him that when he finally got on the road by himself, he would practice all day and then give the concert. A very disciplined person, but my task, my self imposed task was, I’m gonna make him laugh. I need to see him smile to have some fun. And so we, you know, we would go out and have some dinner. He would loosen up a little bit and yeah. but he was very serious, in a good way. He really loved the guitar and loved music And, so he’ll be missed. Evan Goldfine: The only other person I’ve heard about the discipline, with the guitar from a father was the great jazz guitarist. Joe Pass. Scott Tennant: Oh, Evan Goldfine: A very abusive father, made him practice hours and hours a day. And he became one of the greatest, but I think it was at some personal cost. My favorite albums from, John Williams and,. David Russell are Latin American Guitar Festival by John Williams and, the Music of Barrios by David Russell, which is just a wonderful album. Scott, thanks for sharing that with us and also your love of Bach and for all the great music I will link to your website. And thank you again. Scott Tennant: Thanks, Evan. It keep doing what you’re doing. It’s a wonderful thing and people are gonna benefit from it. Just hearing how much you love Bach and how much you love music. Evan Goldfine: Thank you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yearofbach.substack.com (https://yearofbach.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

7. 

   26 Feb 2026

   Erik Hall on Bach and the Minimalists

   A conversation with Erik Hall, a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and one of the most compelling interpreters of the minimalist canon. We talk about the surprising resonances between J.S. Bach and composers like Steve Reich, Charlemagne Palestine, Simeon ten Holt, and Philip Glass. They discuss Hall’s acclaimed trilogy of solo overdubbed reinterpretations, his upcoming ensemble recording of Canto Ostinato with Sandbox Percussion and Metropolis Ensemble, the architecture of rhythm and harmony that links Bach to the minimalists, and what it means to engage deeply with another composer’s work. More at yearofbach.substack.com (http://yearofbach.substack.com). Albums Discussed: Erik Hall – Music for 18 Musicians (Steve Reich) (2020) Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/album/1htaihWHjMXZTupJanFnfC) | Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/reich-music-for-18-musicians/1498100844) Erik Hall – Canto Ostinato (Simeon ten Holt) (2023) Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/album/6nRzGIFEUCxf19vdEdZEZ5) | Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/simeon-ten-holt-canto-ostinato/1655755115) Erik Hall – Solo Three (2026) Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/album/2Jh9eQ939mpMk49dTWexTv) | Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/solo-three/1846381608) Dennis Johnson – November (perf. R. Andrew Lee) Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/album/0SBE1lxLDsk6AEyGX4kNtJ) | Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/dennis-johnson-november/646572858) Oren Ambarchi – Shebang (2022) Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/album/1khpMdVH3EXz5RWt4WRAbg) | Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/shebang/1630427079) Chilly Gonzales – Solo Piano (2004) Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/album/79hPlit22yH2TfyeW1a32K) | Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/solo-piano/1134154224) Todd Sickafoose – Tiny Resistors (2008) Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/album/26fHrmtKuu0KreNEbuB7AH) | Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/tiny-resistors/379770957) Links: Erik Hall website: erikhall.net (http://www.erikhall.net/) Evan Goldfine website: evangoldfine.com (http://evangoldfine.com) ──────────────────────────────────────── [00:00:00] Evan Goldfine:Hello and welcome to the podcast, A Year of Bach. My name is Evan Goldfine and today I’m welcoming instrumentalist Erik Hall, one of my favorite interpreters of what’s often called minimalist music. He’s released a trio of homespun, overdubbed solo records, including my favorite album of 2023, an interpretation of Canto Ostinato by the Dutch composer, Simeon ten Holt. He’s re -recorded that for a new recording with Sandbox Percussion and the Metropolis Ensemble for release in April 2026, which I’m very excited to hear live in New York in a couple of weeks. In January 2026, he also released Solo 3, a new album which includes interpretations of works by Charlemagne Palestine, Steve Reich, and others. Today, we’ll talk about the experience of playing and listening to Bach and the minimalist canon, and we’ll talk about how those rivers intersect. There is an underexplored crossover that I’m sure we’ll all find illuminating. And with that, welcome Erik. Erik Hall:Thank you very much for having me. It’s a pleasure. Evan Goldfine:So prior to these minimalist albums that you’ve recorded, you made some albums under the name[00:01:00]In Tall Buildings, which are more of a pop rock singer songwriter vibe with some electronic elements. And you were also in a band called Nomo, which was heavily influenced by Afro beat music. So where, where’s your origin, with your listening and where did you start? And how did that expand into all these different realms? Erik Hall:Yeah, I mean, It’s been a really winding path, and it started as when I was a kid, and I was always into very different kinds of music. I was studying classical piano, I was playing in a youth orchestra in Chicago as a percussionist. I went to college as a jazz studies drummer. And then, that’s where I kind of discovered Steve Reich and a whole lot of other kinds of contemporary music and joined a band and started going on tour making records. And, just kind of following every thread that seemed interesting to me. Somehow. I stumbled my way back towards classical music in this kind of modern era, this new chapter of mine, making these interpretation[00:02:00]records. Evan Goldfine:How did Bach play into the musical landscape at all? And I guess that was part of your classical studies when you were younger. And how has that music stayed with you even through all of these other bands? Erik Hall:I think Bach is someone we all come back to, always. And there was kind of the initial study when I was a kid, that I think we all do. When I was in college, I distinctly remember, voice leading classes with the great pianist and musicologist James Dapogny. He was a professor at University of Michigan and was one of the leading scholars. of early jazz. And, just an incredible guy. Anyway, he was my college level, Bach, teacher. And then, it was funny. At one point, Nomo ended up at this, like, jazz, it was Aspen, it was Jazz Aspen Snowmass Festival. And we ended up in this clinic, and we were taking[00:03:00]courses from, Loren, Schoenberg, I want to say. I think he’s on Substack, yeah. I wouldn’t be surprised, yeah. I haven’t checked in with what he’s doing lately, but he had this room full of like jazz dudes from all over the country, and every morning we started with him and every day for, I want to say like 10 days, We studied Goldberg variations and it was like, we started out by talking about the Goldberg variations and I think we all thought, well, this is great to talk about. I wonder what we’ll talk about tomorrow. We walked in the next morning and it was, no, still Goldberg variations. And like literally for a week and a half, the whole course was centered around that, that, that body of work. And, we all just, it was incredible. We got so much out of it. Evan Goldfine:What did the jazz guys start digging into the Goldbergs with? Erik Hall:Well, I[00:04:00]don’t actually know that everybody appreciated the level of depth that we took. If I’m being honest, it seemed to be like his kind of pet project that everyone kind of had varying levels of resonance but thankfully I, it’s always kind of stuck with me. And, I know that piece is probably a lot of people’s kind of gateway to Bach, but. For me, it’s, it’s still really, a go -to. Evan Goldfine:Were there any special recordings of Bach from your early years that you would return to as a percussionist? What, what kind of flavors of Bach’s music were you most drawn to? Erik Hall:I didn’t really listen to Bach as a kid. I studied it as a pianist, and it, so for, for better or worse, I had somewhat of an obligatory relationship with it as a kid. I love the Goldberg recordings. I love new[00:05:00]recordings by Vikingur Olafsson and, I, I have this particular kind of somewhat random, super dusty multi LP album of chorales, that, that seem to always come out at, at Christmas time. Perfect. It can be a little bit even like a kitschy relationship sometimes. Boy, it, it just, will always have a place in my heart. Evan Goldfine:I had a similar experience, when I was learning to play classical guitar, there’s a whole repertoire of Bach adapted, mostly by Segovia and his contemporaries and followers, adapting all sorts of pieces, the violin sonatas, some cello suites to the guitar, and hearing it, I listened to some records and it didn’t quite sink at first. But playing it along with hearing it, watching the architecture and how that came to life was something that really sparked a seed in me back 25, 30 years ago when I first started playing.[00:06:00]Yeah. And it grows, it’s grown over time as I got deeper. So that’s, that’s been part of the fun part about this project too, seeing how Bach is sort of the anchor point for so much of this music. Yeah. And maybe I’ll ask you how you got back to the minimalist composers and how that became the source of, and we can talk about the word minimalist and how that’s sort of a controversial word in itself. But yes, I use that to cover the style of music largely defined by, like, Steve Reich and Philip Glass in the 1960s and 70s. But how did you find your way back there, being like, this is music that should be reinterpreted in a different kind of way? Erik Hall:It happened pretty organically, honestly. I discovered Steve Reich in college. We focused on his early tape phasing tape loop pieces in my musicology course. But then, I stumbled upon Music for 18 Musicians kind of on my own. And that was like, my kind of,[00:07:00]epiphany, it really made a mark on me and it kind of stuck with me as one of my favorite pieces of music. Evan Goldfine:It is a seminal work of that whole era. Erik Hall:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s undeniable and it’s so, that was, over 20 years ago and fast forward to, I think it was 2018 or 19., I had been in various bands. I’d been making records, like you said, as In Tall Buildings, touring with the band Nomo, touring with the band Wild Belle, and I kind of was coming off of a couple of album cycles and tours and then wanted to kind of dig into something in my studio, but I didn’t really feel, compelled to be writing or writing songs, but I wanted to be recording, and I, was kind of spinning my wheels, and my wife made this kind of passing comment just like, wait, well, why don’t you just do a cover of Music for 18 Musicians or something?[00:08:00] Evan Goldfine:Oh, that’s so great. Erik Hall:And that’s truly how it began. And it immediately struck me as a great idea of something to try. And I started, and it just went pretty well every step of the way. I was happy. It seemed a little bit crazy, but I, I kind of felt it out and realized like, no, I think I could actually tackle this and it could be compelling. Evan Goldfine:It’s a bit of a crunchy record with a lot of electronics, more so than other recordings, which are. I think almost exclusively acoustic. How did you come to that? How did you deal with some of those gaps between the organic voices, for example, or bassoons and layering that onto other instruments and those choices that you made? Erik Hall:Well, the approach was really, it’s, it’s pretty simple. It’s just, it’s the instruments that I have and my studio and can play, rather than the instruments it was written for. So that was the concept and because I’ve been[00:09:00]making records in my studio with, like you said, more kind of like pop rock oriented works, but, still there’s electric guitar and bass there’s synths. But there’s also piano, an old Hammond organ, Fender Rhodes electric piano. It was actually mostly recorded acoustically, with mics and in, in my space. But, because there’s some electronic instruments, tones. Yeah, it has this kind of modern electronic sound. But, within the kind of overall palette of the instruments that I have and can wield myself, there were very much, decisions to make with regard to which instrument of mine ought to best convey each particular instrument of his. It wasn’t random. Each instrument had to adhere to a certain energy and convey the same, not exactly the same timbre, but just have the same kind of identity and, and, and energy as his. So it was[00:10:00]a really fun puzzle to solve really. Evan Goldfine:Yeah, yeah, it totally works. For me, the minimalists are about celebrating very subtle shifts in harmony and timbre that are accentuated through pulse and pattern, right? So Bach’s counterpoint. To bring it back to the, to our main subject at hand. His is more like explicit harmonic movement and the timbre is more implied through instrumentation or interpretations by the individual performer. But the rhythmic flow in Bach is also crucial. Without that, it just sounds sort of flat. So where do you, where do you think this overlap between these two genres, between Bach and the minimalists? Erik Hall:Well, I’ve never articulated this, but I agree that there’s this common thread, with regard to the rhythmic information and the harmonic development and this kind of gratifying[00:11:00]arc, there’s a journey that, you, embark on. And the pacing and the, and the, sometimes it’s repetition and, and sometimes it’s just the, rhythmic density, is absolutely a factor in, in conveying the spirit of that path. I think it’s, and again, I haven’t thought about it in this way, but I absolutely. I see a similarity there between someone like Bach and someone like Reich, for me as a listener at least. Evan Goldfine:Yeah, for sure. I mean, Bach is more dense in a certain way, and maybe even more intricate. But because it’s moving so quickly a lot of the time, it’s hard to get in this sort of trance state that you can get to as a listener with a Steve Reich or a Glass or like your more recent album with, with the Charlemagne Palestine, that piece, the name of the strumming, what’s, I’m sorry. Erik Hall:Strumming Music, Evan Goldfine:Strumming Music.[00:12:00] Yeah. It is very highly driven, but it is barely moving, and it takes a long time to get from one place to another, but, suddenly, you’re in a completely different spot than the first one, and you find that in Bach also, you’re in a completely different key, but he’s driving you, he’s bringing you there bit by bit, but you really have to be more focusing on, like, how he’s doing that, rather than recognizing yourself, In a new spot as in this other sort of music. Erik Hall:Strumming music is probably the most actual minimalist piece that I’ve engaged with, the most subtle shifts in harmonic overtone presence and information, that the most subtle increase in, in intensity and how you’re hitting the instrument. And how that change in the performance interacts with the gear I’m using to capture these[00:13:00]performances. Like where the mics are, and whether I’m compressing, or if so, how much. I really enjoyed tapping into some of the personality of the studio itself. I’m not talking about post -processing or any sort of trickery, but just using the studio as an instrument, using all of those tools together to really highlight those subtle tiny changes. I love that. Yeah. Evan Goldfine:What do you think about the beat in this kind of music also, because if you’re just like with Bach, I think it’s if it’s too much on the grid, it’ll feel metronomic and kind of boring and even lifeless. Yeah, but you need to keep the pulse going at the same time. So it can’t be too far off the grid. And this is something that I’ve struggled to articulate in words. A great[00:14:00]performance for me is one that is both not too metronomic and not too afield that it’s resonating with this sort of emotional rhythm, is, is the phrase that I’ve, I’ve come back to. What do you think about that in this sort of music that’s meant to be so exacting on the beat? Erik Hall:I agree that there’s a balance there and, for some of these more complex pieces that I’ve tackled, I have used a metronome, a click. and so in that sense, Like Music for 18 Musicians, for example, or on this new record Music For a Large Ensemble Those are on the grid technically and pro tools, but they’re not quantized, right? I’m using the grid essentially just as a metronome, because there’s a lot of things to cover and I want to make sure I don’t have some sort of train wreck, but there’s still a lot of,[00:15:00]smear in the time, that there’s, there’s that many performances stacked of just me playing and I am not going in and cleaning up and making it perfect. All of those little micro differences and where I’m hitting the, the beat are there, and, and so I, I have felt good about that level of imperfection and just the human element. And so I think that for this music to be on the grid is one thing, but for it to be quantized, that would be putting it into a completely different style of music, maybe. And so, yeah, I think it’s, I think it’s really important to be deliberate about those choices. Evan Goldfine:Yeah, I also felt the reason why the Canto Ostinato album works so well is that it does have this blend of the, the human on the grid. So far, for listeners who might not know this,[00:16:00]this is a relentless and wonderful piece. It was new to me when I heard it on your album. And I ended up going hunting for other recordings cause I liked the album so much. And I think that your recording is the only one that performs it with a sense of drive that it needs. And I think you’re playing it at a pretty brisk tempo relative to some of the others, and it’s a little bit more of a modest sized composition than some other, interpreters, which can go on for two, three hours long, which is, it just doesn’t, it didn’t give it to me, what I was wanting. And I think the compressed nature of it, and also the human imperfections of it provided some excitement that I didn’t have in some of those other recordings. On this record you were playing three different kinds of keyboards and overdubbing. What was the challenge and opportunities of doing that all by yourself with those three different Layers of tracking, what kind of decisions did you have to make in terms of balance,[00:17:00]were there re -recordings, were you chopping in, what were your misgivings, go on from there. Erik Hall:Yeah, that was one where, like backing up to Music for 18 Musicians, when I recorded that, I did each of the 14 sections in a day. So I would record every instrument on one section, and then the next day I’d start with the next section, and I would kind of sew them together, in Pro Tools. With Canto Ostinato, there’s 106 technical sections in that piece. It’s really more divided into, like, giant swaths of, chunks of that music. So, I got kind of a handle on the whole piece. But I knew that I wanted to record it, in pieces. Like, I didn’t want to just sit down and play the piano from start to finish. I wanted to record each hand separately. I wanted to record[00:18:00]two different, right hand variations that were recorded separately. There’s the left hand on the organ. There’s the left hand on the piano. There’s a Fender Rhodes kind of switching between the two different right -handed parts. So I did it in sections. At no point did I play the piece from start to finish without stopping. So that might come as a surprise to some listeners or like, like cheating, but it was just a matter, cause I knew I wanted to create a recording that was not just a straight acoustic performance, but this studio environment, kind of immersive, larger than life, like the instruments are right there, and you are amongst them, and the stereo field is wide, and, I was okay with that, and so, it’s funny, because it wasn’t until After[00:19:00]I had finished and released that record that I actually finally learned how to actually play the piece two hands from start to finish, straight through as as one would, and I can do that, but it was kind of like a backwards approach to getting to know that piece. Evan Goldfine:Yeah. There are a series of variations on that record, which I’ve listened to a lot. My son is deeply into astronomy, and we often go up north in upstate New York to an astronomy club, and when we come back at the end of the night, it’s often late, and he’s like, he wants to listen to that album on the way back so it’s such a cool thing so it’s like from like 11:30 to 12:30 in the morning and it’s just it’s a great after watching astronomy sort of album you can imagine yeah so there’s little groovy sections There’s this fun part[00:20:00]with like a dotted quarter where the it’s like coming before the beat. It’s like in the 20s or 30s of the sections that are just like little hooks that I keep remembering, even though these things are very similar to one another a lot of the time. But there’s little shades of differences in each of these variations, and sometimes they’ll go up an octave or two on the keyboards, but there’s an overarching feel of this beautiful development and drama. Which hits at about, its peak about two -thirds of the way through, and there’s all these great themes that you’ve got, and then there’s a gentle wind down, and it feels really satisfying, and it feels like there’s an endpoint, and this is about variation 87 or so, and then there’s another 15 minutes, and you get another recapitulation of that stretch, but it sort of feels like I was so satisfied at that, like 40, like maybe 42 minutes in, it’s in the score to keep going, right? Where did you feel about that? Is my experience resonant with yours? Did you feel like, do you, do[00:21:00]you like that last part or didn’t feel like, I was like, I felt so pleased at the 40 minute mark. It’s like, what’s happening? I have another, I have another 20 minutes with this. Erik Hall:It totally resonates and it’s so funny because I did consider stopping after 85 or whatever one it is. I thought about it, and because I also knew that I was going to put this record out with, I work with the label Western Vinyl and we were putting these out on LP and I wanted it to fit on an LP and I thought, well, if this were a 40, minute record it’ll sound all the better, on an LP, but, it’s interesting because if you listen to, I would say the kind of like quintessential, original recording maybe of, of Canto Astonado, it’s the four piano live concert recording. And, it’s three hours and that gives a whole[00:22:00]separate meaning and emphasis on the back half of that piece, it’s like that section it’s section 88 that actually seems to go on forever. On my version that’s 15 or so minutes, it’s section 88, that has all these, it’s like 88 A B on to double Z, I think. so it was a little bit of a needle to thread when I decided, no, I’m not going to cut that off of my recording. I’m going to include it. I want to do the complete piece. I like the length, that I ended up with, with 88 and section 91, which is kind of like a variation on 88, but, I agree, like after the initial, when you first hear the kind of main theme that, which in and of itself is this incredible reward, you’ve been listening to this crazy,[00:23:00]angular thing, and suddenly there’s this like beautiful melody. I don’t want to give too much away to anyone who hasn’t listened yet, but it’s, It’s awesome. It’s an incredible piece. Evan Goldfine:Huge payoff, Erik Hall:Huge payoff. But it’s like what I love about the complete piece is that you, you get to return, there’s without, without the back half of the piece, there’s no, there’s no refrain,? And, the way that all of the different recordings and performances choose to get back to that theme at section 95 I think is really cool to examine because sometimes it’s this great build up and this huge, like drop. Other performances it’s more kind of, it’s already kind of resigned and it’s a little bit more subdued and it kind of creeps back into it. I love the flexibility there and the endless ways of interpreting that. Yeah. That returned.[00:24:00]Yeah. Evan Goldfine:So did you become acquainted with the piece from that three hour long four piano? Erik Hall:There was that recording. Yes. That was the first one I heard. And then the other recording that, that I really, I’ve listened to a lot and love is the, it’s pianist Ivo Janssen is his name. And it’s him with, they’re called Amsterdam Mallet Collective. And it’s from the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. It was like, mid -2000s, or? Yeah, I think I listened to that one. Yeah, 2005 or so. Yeah, I love that one, too. So between those two recordings, I kind of figured out how and where I wanted mine to fit in. Evan Goldfine:Yeah, and you’ve come to re -record the album with a whole other ensemble. So how did that come about? What’s happening with all of that? and that’s coming out in April for everybody. Erik Hall:Yeah, it’s just been kind of one[00:25:00]step after the other. I put out my solo rendition, and at that time, there was a, the New York Times wrote about it, there was a piece about Simeon ten Holt that included me and my new record. Meanwhile in New York, Andrew Cyr, who is the artistic director of Metropolis Ensemble, I found out about it and got in touch about adapting the piece for a large ensemble outdoor performance at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, with Sandbox Percussion and Metropolis Ensemble and, Sandbox Percussion’s summer seminar that they do at the New School, which includes like 30 percussion students from around the country. So suddenly there was this invitation to arrange a sonata for 50 or so musicians. including mallet percussion, woodwinds,[00:26:00]strings, and for that concert we had, I was playing Fender Rhodes, we had a Wurlitzer, and we had two other synthesizers as well, so, and we did this in 2004,, outside, and it was, epic and beautiful, and we decided quickly that we needed to take that project into the studio, so we, we, we really kind of honed it from there, it’s not 50 people on this record, it’s more like, I think it was about a dozen or, I can’t even remember offhand, but it’s 12 or so people. I’m just playing the piano, two hands. It’s much more like an acoustic organic performance with this large ensemble, kind of chamber ensemble approach. And, it was, it’s just been a total dream. Being able to be a part of a project like that and just a recording like that, it’s truly surreal. I listen back to it and I[00:27:00]can’t believe that I get to be a part of it. It’s insane. Evan Goldfine:So there were new orchestrations composed based upon the harmonies and, and the notes that were there. Erik Hall:Yeah, yeah. And that was, that process was deep in and of itself, just choosing the ways in which we can, extract and kind of reframe each of these lines. Early in the process, I was working with Johnny Allen from Sandbox Percussion and a musician composer in New York, Ben Wallace, who helped us create this kind of map of the whole piece. And he kind of was able to extract... the original piano score is, is the single, it’s like the grand staff plus an additional one or two staves of optional music, and then there’s sometimes there’s an additional bottom staff.[00:28:00]Ben took these and he basically blew it up into this array maybe like 16 different optional lines that could be played that were each very, very simple. When you put them all together, you get the full picture. And we use that as kind of like a starting point to map out the piece for the different instruments. David Leon is a sax and winds player and composer in New York as well. Incredible musician and he really spearheaded the wind arrangement and did absolutely beautiful work. As for the strings, I took care of mapping out the strings and deciding what to have them do for this new album. and kept it really relatively simple and and just really capitalized on the ability to have sustained tones yeah and taking[00:29:00]a little bit of a liberty because that’s really one area where the score... Evan Goldfine:It’s pretty spare, right? Erik Hall:Yeah, and there’s no whole notes in the score, and, we’re having the violins just really like holding these almost like the way you would sit down at a synth synthesizer and play like a lush pad, it’s like, that’s what our strings are doing, but everything is adhering to the notes on the page. And so it’s, it was a really cool, really fun process of making all those decisions. Evan Goldfine:I’m getting to imagine it now because with a sandbox percussion group, you were going to be hearing a lot of those percussive notes on top of these smeary strings underneath with those harmonies. It’s gonna be great. Yeah. So, what could be next? I mean, would you consider recording Bach? Like, I’ve found that some of the adaptations of Bach have been, most are not successful in this sort of way. Could[00:30:00]you imagine one that could be successful in your aesthetic? Erik Hall:I have tried to, honestly, and... Evan Goldfine:What pieces were you, were you thinking about? Erik Hall:Well, each time I even start to think about it, I just... I don’t know that I actually have the chops as a player to do it at this stage in my life. I could see about putting in the time and, I don’t know. It’s funny because when Music for 18 Musicians came out, there were, in the discussion around the release of that record, there were absolutely some, at least a couple, comparisons to Switched-On Bach, right. And kind of thinking about it as like the synth version. I’m very deliberate about steering away from that[00:31:00]approach. To me, this is a kind of modern palette and production and, some of these electronic sounds are, are novel to this canon. But, the last thing I want to do is make something that’s distracting in that way. And, and that’s any sort of. gimmick. Yeah. Or novelty. Yeah. I want it to be just a new framing of how this music can come to life. I don’t know what Bach could or would do, and I am open to all ideas. So, your ideas, your listeners’ ideas, I want, I want to hear them. I’ll start thinking. Evan Goldfine:All right, everyone write in to me, and we’ll forward over to Erik, what you think. what kind of pieces will be. Switched on Bach for those people who don’t know this is a very hard album to find online. It’s not on any of the streaming services.[00:32:00] It was from the 1970s by a performer named Wendy Carlos, who adapted a number of short Bach pieces, the most popular ones for synth and synthetic organ. Well, synthesize an organ sort of, and some of the pieces are more successful than others. The ones that sound more like, I think overly synthy are probably the least successful, and they sound very much of their time and the other ones that are more organ-ish. I think it sounds fine, but I’ve never really connected with that record. Erik Hall:Yeah. And, don’t get me wrong. I think that record is an important piece of modern music history, but not one that I’m trying to emulate. Evan Goldfine:Yeah. So this one, this question came from my son, cause I told him we were talking today, but he said, if Bach had an overdubbing machine. or pro tools what might he have done with it with his aesthetic[00:33:00]with the tools that you have. Erik Hall:I mean, it would be probably the most radical music we can imagine. I would love to, to hear what, what he would have done with the tools that we have. I mean, I think that we have this tendency to assume that the artists. of the past were kind of like very stoic in their, in the relative limitations that they were working within. This comes up a lot with regard to just studio recording, and ear and microphones and computers. I would like to think that If the tools that we have now were available then, I mean, it would have only been a good thing. They would have been making just some of the raddest stuff we can imagine. Evan Goldfine:Yeah. Well, this has been great.[00:34:00]I’d love to ask you for a couple, record recommendations. What are some albums, I guess in the minimalist canon or anything else that come to mind that you would share for people to understand your music and your sensibility. Erik Hall:Sure, well, let’s think here. Two very different vibes. Great. There’s, there’s this, piece that I actually know very little about. I’m not very well equipped to actually speak on it, but, composer by the name of Dennis Johnson. It’s a piece called November. It exists in a couple different places online. There’s this one version on Bandcamp that’s actually kind of recent, I think. It is dark, it’s slow, and it’s hours long. I love it, but it’s like, it’s when you kind of want to, like, get a[00:35:00]little bit down and stay down. It’s phenomenal. Evan Goldfine:You listen to it on a walk? Are you, are you going to sleep? Are you having a glass of wine? What, what do you use it for? Erik Hall:I’ll put it on at home when I’m, when I’m moving around the house, doing different things, but I’m not trying to be energized. It’s very mellow, very, very beautiful and kind of dark. So not for everybody, but something to check out on the other side of the spectrum is a record that came out a couple of years ago by Oren Ambarci, and it’s on Drag City. It’s called Shebang. Okay. It is kind of a weird cross between free improvisation and subtly manipulated electronic music. It’s kind of a collaborative record. There’s different players that contributed remotely. He’s playing electric guitar.[00:36:00]I don’t remember the name of the drummer, but the drumming is incredible. Jim O’Rourke contributed some synthesizer and piano. It’s this just like pure, it’s just pure energy. It’s very rhythmic. It’s about a half hour long, it’s continuous, and just really cool, really energetic. I put that on when I want to feel the opposite of the way that November makes me feel. Evan Goldfine:What about one in the middle? Do you have a recommendation for your everyday, less energized, but maybe less catatonic? Erik Hall:This is, how this is the most difficult question to answer, like what’s your favorite music? Evan Goldfine:Of course, oh no, yeah, and it’s because what are you leaving out, right? Erik Hall:Yeah, exactly. The answer to this question could never be comprehensive, and[00:37:00]oftentimes it’s not even accurate, because you suddenly can’t remember what you even like. Evan Goldfine:Of course, and you don’t want to say Revolver, and you don’t want to say, Aja, and you don’t want to say, Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, because there’s this thing where, if you like esoteric music,, you don’t want to be too esoteric, there’s a whole bunch of layers here, all that I’m trying to do with my project, And I think my listeners is to be exposed to new and interesting things that are great, that they might not have had. So this doesn’t necessarily have to be Erik Hall’s favorite, three albums of all time, but just, what, what other album would you recommend for people that they might not know? Erik Hall:Yeah, well, so one that I always come back to that I just love, that I’m kind of a sucker for, is Chilly Gonzales Solo Piano. This is a, relatively contemporary record, of just like these wonderful little etudes that, very[00:38:00]much kind of indebted to Satie, but clearly modern,, very beautiful. There’s already solo piano two and three. I don’t know three very well. Two is also great, but I would start obviously with the first one,   Chilly Gonzales Solo Piano. Evan Goldfine:Excellent. Erik Hall:It was actually put on, like I first heard it when I was playing in a band called Wild Belle. And we’re about to sound check at a music festival in Mexico. We’re on this big stage and it was like early in the day. There was no audience yet present. And we were setting up and to test the PA, the front of house engineer put on this record, Solo Piano by Chilly Gonzales. And we’re outside in this almost kind of rain forest setting. It was in this national park, crazy, beautiful, surreal day. And we’re out on this giant stage and there’s this lovely, felted,[00:39:00]solo piano record playing. And it just was the perfect contrast to where we were and what we were doing. And it’s just always stuck with me and then, I ended up just fully adopting that record. I love it. Evan Goldfine:That is such a great way to encounter interesting art. It’s when you’re not expecting to get knocked over by anything, and it’s just the right place at the right time that it happens for all of us. It’s just an amazing thing. I had a sound check record. This is not one of my top three records, but one that I’ve listened to a lot. I was at a soundcheck at, not a soundcheck. I, it was before the act was coming out. It was like the, just, in the club. There was an album called Tiny Resisters by a bassist named Todd Sickafoose. Which is like this nonet and it was like this really cool, like grooving, like post Mingus thing going on, but it was like really rock oriented also, but like great brass and[00:40:00]I was like, this is great and like it kind of almost like put me off center for whatever kind of, angular guitar concert I was going to at that point, but and then I got that record and I’ve listened to it like 20 times since then, but it’s great to be put in those moments. So I’m going to link to all of these records that we talk about in the show notes so people can click on them on youtube and apple music and spotify. Great. Well Erik this has been great check out Erik’s website for tour dates is it on there Yeah. Yep. Erik Hall:Erikhall.net. Evan Goldfine:Great. And that’s with a K. And, I will be at the show in April, and at the New School in New York and I’m very excited. and it’s free. So go RSVP. It’s crazy that this is going to be a free show. There’s no reason to not go. So, go check it out. Erik, thank you again for your time today. Thank you so much, Evan. It’s really been fun, and I appreciate the invitation. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yearofbach.substack.com (https://yearofbach.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

8. 

   4 Jan 2026

   Violist and author Edward Klorman on Bach's Cello Suites

   Violist and Author Edward Klorman discusses his new book, Bach: The Cello Suites, and adds commentary at the keyboard. Edward's website: http://Edwardklorman.com/ (http://Edwardklorman.com/) A Year of Bach Substack: https://yearofbach.substack.com (https://yearofbach.substack.com) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yearofbach.substack.com (https://yearofbach.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

9. 

   22 Sept 2025

   Historian Richard Tedlow on Bach's Charisma, and Trump's

   Historian Richard Tedlow joins me to ask what made Bach charismatic in his own time and ours. He also argues that no matter the political situation, “Bach’s music is going to exist as long as the human race exists and can’t be taken away.” Along the way we consider the charisma of Bernstein, Gould, Clinton, Hitler, and Trump. Here’s Richard’s Substack (https://richardstedlow.substack.com/). Playlists of works referenced in this episode, including those by Shostakovich, Bach, Brahms, and Strauss. Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/richard-tedlow-a-year-of-bach/pl.u-4JomK7lT75GJe) and Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/user/evangoldfine/playlist/0KRn376FPIi9r2XMHQzorH) below. Transcript: Evan Goldfine: Hello, and welcome to the fifth episode of A Year of Bach. I'm Evan Goldfine. Today my guest is Richard Tedlow, one of our leading historians of business. He was a longtime professor at Harvard Business School and later an instructor at Apple where he taught executives in their internal Apple University. Richard studies how leaders persuade, connect and make decisions how they deceive themselves and others. And he's put a special focus on the elusive force of charisma in leaders. Today we'll speculate a bit on Bach's charisma and what it might have been, and we can see how charismatic conductors act in the world today. We'll also touch on our president's charisma and Richard's deep connection to Bach's music. Richard, welcome. Richard Tedlow: Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here. Evan Goldfine: Before charisma, let's talk about Bach and your connection to the music itself. Richard Tedlow: I didn't start music with Bach. One of the characteristics of Bach is that one finds [00:01:00] oneself listening to his music without realizing that he composed it. The Air on the G-string the Jesu, Joy of Man's desiring, this is part of normal sort of living in this world, and you hear it without necessarily connecting it to the name Bach. I've been listening to music seriously since I was a kid. My parents introduced me to it. The first opera I went to was Carmen with Risë Stevens at the Miami Opera Company in Miami, Florida. And so I've been interested in this kind of music my whole life. I went to Bayreuth three times to hear Wagner's music there. And Bach I began to seriously listen to when I was in college. I graduated from Yale in 1969. And there I first heard the Cantata 140, Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, and other music by Bach, and you realized that this was an [00:02:00] extraordinary creative human being. So here's a question. How much do you have to know? How much do you have to sort of work, if you will to how much does music have the right, if you will, to ask you to invest in it, in order to get the most out of it? Versus to what extent does music hear itself? So you're not involved at all, basically. So move, moving from noise. To really find complex music, how much do you need yourself to invest? And I think the older the music is, and Bach was from 1685 to 1750 the more you have to invest for the most part with the exception of some pieces. The Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor would be a classic example. Everybody's heard that and they don't necessarily [00:03:00] associate it with Bach. On the other hand, at least to me, the Goldberg Variations. You have to concentrate, at least I have to concentrate. And the difference between Glenn Gould's first recording of that set of pieces and the last one is really dramatic. And I saw when I was at Apple, I saw a remarkable presentation about this, and that presentation greatly increased my own ability to enjoy and appreciate it. So that's a question. How much do you have to know, or how much do you have to invest in order to get the most out of the music as opposed to the music just hearing itself? Evan Goldfine: What a beautiful question. I think that you can be a passive listener and enjoy it. You can be an active listener and enjoy, and you can be a player and enjoy. And then you can be a scholar to learn about the historical importance and where each of these composers, Bach included, fit on the great timeline of the composers of Western music. I think you get back what you invest. [00:04:00] And even then some. And just like with anything else, you could glance at a book of poetry. You can read Shakespeare Sonnets on the first glance, and there's some nice stuff and you might not get it, but if you really take your time with it, you're going to unearth more and more things. And, what's great about Bach in particular is that often in some of the pieces, not all of them, but it's a pleasant first listen. And as you listen again, something happens inside as you are processing the multiple moving lines. Often you're hearing different musicians emphasize different parts of the music. So there's the performance side that you're enjoying, and also the core of the music itself. So if you're playing it yourself on a piano or on a guitar, you see the architecture of how things are moving in order to create this thing that just sounds pleasant or moving even. There's really no way to explain why Cantata 140 might move you to [00:05:00] tears. That's not explicable, and that's the beauty of why we're talking about this today, 300 years after Bach's time. Something about that music has really moved us for centuries and many millions of people. And I've described this as a backwards explanation for something divine. I've heard one of my favorite musicians, a bassist named Victor Wooten says that music needs us as much as we need the music. Music can be abstract, but if it's not resonating through a person doesn't exist. It's one of the great mysteries and pleasures of life and Bach is one of the greatest exemplars of how to create it with deep meaning and with deep emotion. Because without the emotional connection, it's just a curiosity. Richard Tedlow: I think that's very well put. I think that there has to be this emotional connection and going through life as you and [00:06:00] I are doing, and just encountering curiosities to use your word as opposed to deep emotional connections is not a very fulfilling way to go through life. So that's one thing that draws one to Bach. What is it about Bach that is magnetic and charismatic, if you will? What is it about it that's so utterly appealing? And I think that once again, to use your phrase, if the first listen is not an invitation, you are not likely to have a second listen or to go to Wagner. If all you hear is the noise, and there is a lot of it in Wagner. You're not gonna go to the next, listen. So there's gotta be something that resonates with you, some, something that is harmonic with you in this music and Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, is just that's that piece. It works. So why? If Bach could've said it another way, he would've said it another way and he would've been a novelist or a poet or you name it, he said it through his music and by almost by [00:07:00] definition tho, those aren't words, even though he is setting words to music. I think that with the words of music, there is a matching of sound and sense that is very powerful with Bach. Can I play a little one snippet of music Richard Tedlow: From the B minor mass. Okay. It's the Gratias Agimus Tibi. In other words, we give thanks for your great glory. Thinking about the B minor mass, the most accessible part of it is the Gloria. You can't miss it, and I only got to this later, but you listen to it and you listen to it and you realize this is really this, this is glorious, if you will. In addition to the fact that the music is simply beautiful to listen to there is an authenticity about Bach music, which is very hard to capture in words. You have to capture it in music, you have to listen to it. But there's an authenticity, a sense that you are touching the ground truth of a human being and that human being's relationship to [00:09:00] the everlasting the divine. Bach to state the obvious was a profoundly religious Lutheran. And that comes through. I mean the genuine, I mean, in a world where there's so much that's phony, frankly, that to touch something genuine is a large part of the inspiration of Bach and a large part of, if you will, the charisma of him. So I think that it's the first listen has got to work. Authenticity. The more you discover, the more you listen to it. And with Bach especially, the more you discover as you age and you listen to it, I started listening to this music, to Bach music when I was about 18. I'm gonna be 78 years old tomorrow. That's a long time. And it's, it sounds different and it moves you in a different way now that I'm elderly than it did when I was a kid. Evan Goldfine: Could you dig into that a little bit more? Richard Tedlow: I think [00:10:00] that without sounding cliche ridden, which is not something that I want to sound, but Bach touches something fundamental in the human experience. And the more human experience that one has, the more one can go back to that. And be enriched by his own, if you will. Insights. It's a cheap word. This is music we're talking about, not words. The more you can be touched, which is the real thing. Bach himself as a religious person was profoundly in search of communion. For him, it was communion with God through Jesus Christ. That's in all his music. And for us, it's communion with him. It's true contact, genuine human contact, which I think we all crave in order to be fully alive. I think there are a couple of other things that I'll just mention, which are quite remarkable to me anyway, about Bach. One is that this guy, this man, this [00:11:00] genius lived basically his whole life. In a 90 mile by 70 mile area of Thuringia and Saxony. There was no Germany at the time of his life. But, he could have gone to Paris, he could have gone to London, like Handel did, or Milan or Venice or, there are a lot of other places that he didn't go. The man was a provincial. And for someone for this genius to emerge from that soil is very intriguing. And there's something else, which is that the 30 years war took place from 1618 to 1648. And in certain parts of what is now Germany 50% of the people living there lost their lives. There was massive depopulation. He was born in 1685. The Peace of Westphalia, which ended the 30 years war, was in 1648. It's not that long. So I think that perhaps [00:12:00] growing up with that heritage and certainly his parents, his family, this must have been a very vivid reality in their lives. The slaughter of the 30 years war, looking for the divine in the context of inhumanity might have some been something else that propelled him, I don't know, but that's just speculation. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. And it's beautiful how you sense and I sense this great human truth, wordlessly, In the Goldbergs in the solo cello suites in the violin sonatas, and it doesn't need the words, but it's still touching on something profoundly real. And that's the genius and hard to get to. Richard Tedlow: Yes. Evan Goldfine: I'd like to pivot towards talking about what we can speculate about Bach's charisma, and I'll talk about maybe my lay person's understanding of the idea of charisma. I've met only a handful of charismatic people in my life. And what I think of that is, is someone who attracts other people through their aura, [00:13:00] something more than beauty or grace or brains. There's a unique personality force, people who might light up a room to be the person that other people want to be near, a gravitational pull. And I'm just going to share a couple people who I've shared a room with before, who I felt that with. Probably first was Bill Clinton. I saw him coming out of a restaurant once and he was like, this demi-god walking out. He's this huge guy and people were losing their minds. This was in the early two thousands, but he had an incredible aura about him. I met Cindy Crawford once. Paul McCartney I had the great fortune of meeting for a few minutes. Christopher Hitchens, the writer. I had a couple former classmates, a former coworker, a VC guy or two, but it’s exceedingly rare. So what is charisma? Why is it so rare in the real world, or maybe I'm conceiving of charisma slightly differently than you do when you speak about it from a scholarly way. Richard Tedlow: No, I think that without going into the definitions in the history of the word, which comes from religion, by the way, in the 19th century, a man named [00:14:00] Rudolph Sohm, which was picked up by. Max Weber, who really is the person, the sociologist who moved it into common parlance. By the way, I met Bill Clinton, a grand total of one time. I shook his hand one time. It was in December of 1992 in Little Rock, and it was astonishing. Mean just the circle of people around him. The magnetism of the man. Yes. The sense when you were around him that the normal bounds of your life didn't necessarily have to contain you. The idea that trees can grow in the sky. And so as far as the meaning of charisma is concerned, Potter Stewart famously said about pornography. I know it when I see it. And he certainly had it in 1992. Steve Jobs is a classic example in the business world. Of somebody who had it. Why is that? He didn't seem to be constrained by the normal bounds that I am contained by. One of his famous models was think different [00:15:00] and even that term think different. It's not “think differently,” which is the normal way. It's “think different”. And when I started there, which was in 2010, you got a plexiglass little set of nine people. There are nine people here Jim Henson of the Muppets, Wynton Marsalis Maria Callas Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso and Amelia Earhart, Bob Dylan, and so on. And these people are all people who thought different. They're all people who got out of themselves the Dalai Lama and Graham, the great modern dancer. And this didn't come with instructions. The idea was you should, you should be like the misfits because fitting in is not the goal. The goal is to to use Robert Noyce, who was the Intel employee, number one don't be encumbered by history. Go out and do something wonderful. That was the idea at Apple and it was very [00:16:00] inspiring. And the results are there for all to see. So that was charismatic, if you will. But I think it's a question of someone who inspires you to think beyond reason about what you can achieve in this world. And if you find that person you cleave to him or her, because that's a wonderful way to live. Evan Goldfine: Charisma is used best when it is doing that inspiration to other people. But charisma implies a certain amount of power, if they're inspiring you to think different because you could be thinking different in a way that is not necessarily healthy for yourself or society. Why don't we talk about some of the downsides of charisma? And often some of these charismatic people that you've featured and charismatic political figures have used that charisma to nefarious ends. Richard Tedlow: Leadership is dangerous because you can lead toward a laudable goal and you [00:17:00] can mislead. So Robert J. Lifton, who's this famous psychologist who passed away just recently at the age of 99, used a phrase called ‘thought terminating cliches’. And that's something that leaders can come up with and it's dangerous. So one has to be careful about the person. Or people in whom one chooses to place one's faith. Evan Goldfine: Mm-hmm. Richard Tedlow: That word faith, that's not reason. And when you take leave of your reason and live on the basis of faith, if your leader is not morally centered, you've got a problem and the world has a problem. And that's difficult. Now with a man like Bach as you pointed out you don't start off being him and attract the kind of attention that he was able to attract without social media, if you will. Unless there's something very special. And if you read [00:18:00] about the first encounter that people of his musical ability, Dietrich Buxtehude type people, you name it they came to understand. That here was an individual who had something special to contribute not only to the human race, but to the development of their art, which music, depending on how far you go, is as complicated as anything in this world. Music theory is, you know, higher mathematics, which by the way is one of the problems with music. I've heard people say that the Grosse Fuge Beethoven's Grosse Fuge is beloved of mathematicians, which I'm not. On the other hand, with Beethoven you really, you don't have to study a lot to appreciate the Emperor Concerto or the ninth Symphony, or the fifth Sym, or the sixth Symphony. [00:19:00] His music is quite accessible for the most part, I would say from a percentage standpoint. More accessible, for a couple of reasons. First of all, it bridged the classical and the romantic period. Beethoven states were 1770 to 1827. So we went basically from being in the world of Mozart, to the world of Chopin. And Chopin, by the way, was deeply influenced by Bach, as was Debussy, which you wouldn't necessarily expect anyway. I think that you could listen to Beethoven's complete oeuvre and never have a moment when you're asking yourself, why am I listening to this exactly. Whereas with Bach I don't know what your experience is. I'd be interested in knowing. But, for example, the English Suites, which I have seen performed when I was living in Silicon Valley, they didn't speak to me. Evan Goldfine: Oh goodness. You've been listening to the wrong recordings. Richard Tedlow: It was a live performance. And it's possible that the [00:20:00] performer wasn't able to communicate the beauty of that to me. Also, it was the first time I heard them. Evan Goldfine: Yes. Richard Tedlow: And I think that's a dilemma because you don't know in a sense how to listen. But for example, the Toccata and Fugue and D Minor, the interesting thing about that piece of music, so, on YouTube there is a Latvian woman whose name now I can't remember. But you can go and search Latvian woman playing Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor. And she's wonderful. She's playing on this gigantic organ in Riga. And that you don't have to study that. But what is interesting about that piece of music, which I first heard what in 1967 or something like that, was that the more you listen to it, the more you hear. And that's extremely intriguing to me because the first thing that you hear is okay the original, the introduction to it, this is extraordinarily accessible. But now I realize that the last few bars are absolutely [00:21:00] wonderful. But I it, it was important for me to see her playing that as well as to listen to it. I will send you a link for this recording so you can see what I have in mind. Terrific. I think with the English Suites, it wasn't that accessible to me, and I had never heard it before, so I don't know. But Evan Goldfine: I have some thoughts about all of this, so thank you. I feel as though Bach really lays a performer bare. There's no place to hide in Bach. It's spare. It's demanding a lot from you. There's not a lot of markings in the score to say, this should be at this tempo or at this volume. It should crescendo like this. It's very open for interpretation, which is why you get a very wide range of it. At the same time, if you don't have something really meaningful to say about this music, it will fall flat. It will just sound a little bit robotic. It could sound stiff. You can be very bored, and it really depends on the recording. We have been blessed with many [00:22:00] extraordinary performers in the recorded age. For the English Suites, I'm gonna link again to everybody Martha Argerich's Bach album that starts with the second English suite in A Minor, which is just the top of the mountain for me. You cannot get better than that. The first movement's probably four of the best recorded minutes of music in the 20th century. I love it. So you'll connect with that soon. I feel as though you really do have to find the right match of the performer in the piece and yourself in that moment. I feel like you should find something to hang onto in the moment that makes you wanna listen again. I think in Bach there's always something to hang onto. It just is a matter of the right performance and your own right temperament. What kind of mood that you're in are you open to hearing a certain thing? And also, I'll say that I've heard many extraordinary performers live in concert play Bach's music and do very poorly with it because they're better suited to different sorts of music. It's [00:23:00] extremely hard to do well, which is why every great recording is a blessing. And even when, I don't care for Glenn Gould's second Goldberg Variations. I think it's way too slow. I don't connect at all. The first one is a tour de force for me. I prefer it more blazing. But then there are other interpretations that I've listened to over this past year that are so different, so unusual, very deeply personal to all these people. And they're not blazing. There's contemplative ones, there's mysterious ones. There's interpretations on harpsichord and on clavichord and for String Quartet, so super interesting stuff can be done. And that's gonna provide the connection to the music. I'll also, I've been thinking about something you said a few moments ago about how there has to be something deeply accessible at first. I think that's true, but I think it doesn't necessarily mean that it's harmonic or tonal. For example, when I listen to the tenor saxophone of John Coltrane, when he's playing at his [00:24:00] at his peak in the early sixties, ‘61 might be my favorite time of his, ‘62. There's a clarion call, a piercing-ness and like a deep grounding to the truth of what it means to be alive is coming through that horn, through that man and whatever he went through to get to that point, which was also a quasi-religious experience for him in that he, gave up hard drugs and put himself on a mission to become the most extraordinary musician he could up until his death. And he came up with, from 1957 to 1967, 1 of the most concentrated 10 year decades of greatness that we've seen in only a handful of other people in human history. Van Gogh only painted for 10 years. He was a failed priest and he picked up his art and just went nuts for 10 years and died. You've got 10 years of Schubert. You've got 10 to 12 years of Chopin's great writing. If you can connect to the greatness of any of these people, it doesn't [00:25:00] necessarily have to be to your ear at first. You'll get it eventually that the cream rises to the top with this sort of stuff. And if you keep going at it, even the more obscure things, even the out jazz, I think if you're open to it, you'll be able to hear the greatness inside of it, even if it's not super easy at first. Richard Tedlow: I do think it is intriguing. It's been said of Schubert that if he did not live at the same time that Beethoven lived, people would be remembering him as the equal of Beethoven. I do think some of Schubert's music, for example, is to me extremely accessible. Yes. The Unfinished symphony is simply great music. I do think that the lieder, especially the lieder cycles, this is very performer dependent to me. Really depends on who it is. Who's communicating that music to you because the wrong performers kill it. There are probably some kinds of music that are performer proof when you're young, the ride of the Valkyrie, [00:26:00] the introduction to Die Valkyrie. And that by the way, brings up something that you mentioned about tempi with regard to the first and second Gould recordings of the Goldberg Variations. My impression of Glenn Gould was that he was something of a fanatic with regard to that issue. Evan Goldfine: Yes. Richard Tedlow: For example, this is probably on the web too, by the way. There is a famous example of his performing Brahms first piano concerto with Leonard Bernstein. And Bernstein comes out in front of the audience and says, I have an announcement to make our words to that effect. And every and the first thing he says is ‘Relax, he's here.’ In other words, Gould being Gould you want to be sure he showed up. But then he said you know this is going to be performed in a way you've never heard it before. And that's because this is what the pianist Glenn Gould wanted. And [00:27:00] he says words, I haven't looked at this for a while, but he says, words to the effect of the integrity of Gould's desire is what has carried the day here. And that's why we're doing it this way. And Bernstein was a man of a gigantic ego. So for him to submerge that because of Gould's vision, which was about, and among other things, tempi Gould my recollection is, was very disturbed, and I think not without reason, about the fact that people, great conductors, for example, conducting, choose a piece of music, Beethoven Seventh Symphony, he would play one conductor, then he'd play another and ask you, the listener, can you tell the difference? And oftentimes you couldn't. And he said, that's a problem. If they're all doing it the same way, they are not to use Steve Jobs's formulation thinking different. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Richard Tedlow: They're not, go ahead. Evan Goldfine: Richard, in that recording, I don't have the exact words, but Bernstein steps in and says, I don't agree with this. Richard Tedlow: Yes, [00:28:00] I know. Evan Goldfine: He, so he let his ego in there to say, if you don't like it, don't blame me. Blame Glenn, which is definitely part of his charisma and ego. You're got these two giant brains and egos on stage together, and it's a weird recording, it's worth listening to. Bernstein, for me, one of my favorite symphonies is Tchaikovsky's, last symphony, the sixth. And Bernstein's recording is terrible. It's like well over an hour, and it should be about 48, 49 minutes. He stretches it way out and it's completely wrong. Don't listen to it. But there's dozens of others that have a kind of excitement, pathos, everything that you want from it. And so that's another one of these moments where the artist and the piece itself might be in friction with one another. Of course, de gustibus, right? If some people might love Tchaikovsky's sixth at Bernstein's, like over, an hour long, God bless 'em. Let 'em have fun with it. And as I've gotten older, one of my maturing things was that it doesn't make me mad about what other people like anymore. It [00:29:00] used to really get under my skin. Like, how could you possibly like that? This is my twenties, even some of my thirties now. It's if you're into whatever you're into, great. Like, enjoy your life. We have this multiplicity of options and people might think that my tastes are awful as well. I've tried to be as broad and open as possible in my project here on, on the blog, which is one of the reasons why I like talking to people who have different kinds of flavors than I do. Richard Tedlow: Just very briefly, I think of Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony. The last movement is in my opinion, the best thing Bernstein ever did. I found Bernstein very difficult to see live because I found him a distraction on the podium, the wild gesticulation. And it was, if it wasn't about the music, it was about him, but on a recording, you don't have that problem. Evan Goldfine: But he's the charismatic man, right? Isn't he like the Ur-, charismatic, classical musician America in the 20th century? Richard Tedlow: A lot of people feel that way. And the thing about charisma is if it doesn't speak to you, [00:30:00] you have the opposite reaction to it, which is, ah, what's going on this podium? And when you, when one is lucky enough to have seen really great conductors, sometimes conductor composers. Who are not about themselves, but about the music. And then you see somebody who strikes you as different about himself in case of Bernstein and not about the music. For me, it's distracting. But once again, if you just listen to it and you're not in the presence of the man then it's possible to still enjoy his artistry, which is Bernstein's artistry . The first concert I ever heard at Lincoln Center I remember my mother took me there was Brahms first symphony and the conductor was Joseph Krips. An interesting fellow my recollection, which could be wrong, is that he was a Roman Catholic, but his father was born Jewish. So when the Anschluss took place in 1938, he had to get out of Austria. In [00:31:00] other words when the Third Reich incorporated Austria into the Reich, and he was very important in the rebirth of music in Vienna after 1945. So it was exciting to see him and at least in my experience, he was about the music, not about himself. And my preferred recording of Don Giovanni is with Joseph Krips conducting and Cesare Siepi as Don Giovanni. But once again, this is something about which everybody can disagree. The wonderful thing about music and the wonderful thing about what you just said about the English Suites is that what basically you've told me is, Richard, you've got a treat in store. And that's fine. It gives me something to look forward to. And that, by the way, is part of the miracle of Bach. The more you listen, the more you hear, the more you listen, the more you're touched. But as you said at the very beginning of this conversation. [00:32:00] There's gotta be something about it that strikes a responsive chord, no pun intended, on the first hearing. Otherwise, you're not gonna have a second hearing. So for me, for example, atonal music doesn't do that. I used to really enjoy opera a lot. I ha I actually haven't been to the opera since Covid and that may change this season. I used to go all the time when I was around New York City especially, or when I was lucky enough to be in Europe. And modern opera doesn't do it for me. It just doesn't. For me, opera basically ended in 1925 when Puccini died. But the early operas of Richard Strauss and Wagner, what have you, and Evan Goldfine: Can you get into Janacek? Richard Tedlow: Yes. Evan Goldfine: Yes. He's probably the last one, right? Richard Tedlow: Yeah, absolutely. Evan Goldfine: What about Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle? Richard Tedlow: I saw that in Budapest. In 2004 or two. Evan Goldfine: I thought that's a cool piece. Richard Tedlow: It's a remarkable piece. But it's not something [00:33:00] that I would gravitate to. And that, by the way, is an opera you have to see in my opinion, because it's, yeah, it's well staged. And to see it in Budapest and here he was, Hungarian I was writing a biography of Andy Grove. Andy Grove was born in Budapest, so that's why I went and Andy was very interested in opera. So Andy Grove was one of the great figures of Intel when Intel was a great company. If you can remember back that far Intel employee number one was Robert Noyce. Number two was Gordon Moore. Number three was Andy Grove. And Andy, as I mentioned, was born in Budapest. His parents were Jewish, so he spent the first 10 years of his life trying to escape the Nazis and the second 10 years of his life trying to escape the Communists. And when there was the Hungarian Revolt in 1956, he escaped from Budapest, made it to Vienna. And my recollection is before he actually came to the United States, thanks to the IRC, the International Rescue Committee, he managed to get a ticket and see Cesare [00:34:00] Siepi and Don Giovanni in Vienna. So he was, I remember I saw Magic Flute with him in Northern California, and it was very interesting to see great music with him because he had insight into it and you could learn a lot. Evan Goldfine: Strangely enough, I live in Westchester County, north of New York City. About three miles from my house is a cemetery where Bartok is buried, and right next to Thelonious Monk, the great pianist, which is bizarre. I do wanna spend some time talking about your Substack Yes. Writing about what you consider to be the dark charisma of our current president, and the dangers that poses to the fabric of our country right now. I like covering my bases. I'm a grandchild of Holocaust survivors. I just recently got my Polish passport for myself and my kids. Richard Tedlow: Wow. Evan Goldfine: 'Cause I qualified for it and it's great to have options. It's a cheap call option. Or maybe it's a put option depending on how you look at it. Tell me, tell us about [00:35:00] your great concerns about what's going on right now. What might people be missing? This is not a political podcast, but you're my guest and you've been spending a lot of time thinking about this. Richard Tedlow: I have. I'm, as I mentioned I'm a historian of American Business Enterprise. I'm not a political historian, but I have a fairly good education in the history of America generally. And what struck me last summer was that, the question facing the United States is, can it happen here? And so I began this set on Substack, this set of chapters, if you will, and it is entitled Dystopias and Demagogues. And I post each week. And it's been very useful for me and less expensive than psychotherapy to explore what is happening in this country. And the question that this all began with was, can it, whatever you define it as being happen here. [00:36:00] And chapter one was about a book that's actually a classic called the Nazi Seizure Power. And it's about one particular German town, Nordheim in Germany from 1930 to 1935. Hitler became chancellor on January 30th, 1933. So it's an exploration of what happened there, a town in which antisemitism played next to no role. A town which was basically social democratic, so slightly left-leaning and the Nazi seizure of power, how is it that they went over to the dark side, if you will? And I first read that book in 1967 when I was an undergraduate at Yale. So I reread it and was deeply impressed, especially also by this famous statement by Pastor Martin Niemoller, who was, this guy was a pastor of the German confessing church, and it's known as first they came. So first they [00:37:00] came for the communists and I was not a communist, so I did not speak up. Then they came for the socialist. I was not a socialist. They came for the trade unionist. I was not a trade unionist, I did not speak. It came for the Jews. I was not a Jew. So I did not speak up. Then they came for me and there was no one left to come from to speak up for me. So I reengaged with that and I started writing about the various angles through which you could see what's happening here. And then when the election took place I wasn't shocked that Trump won, but I was particularly disturbed about a couple of aspects of it. The most disturbing for me. So let's take a look back at 2016. Okay. That was when he was first elected. I could understand people were sick of politics as usual. They were sick of having things shoved down their [00:38:00] throats. They were sick of just a white noise of political Babel. Evan Goldfine: And the Democrats ran a uniquely disliked candidate in 2016. Richard Tedlow: It was highly problematic. The fact about that election was that it, it's a great flaw in our constitution that put Trump in the White House, and that flaw is the electoral college. She actually got over 2.8 million more votes than he did. So people sometimes will say to me, who read my Substack that the United States simply is not prepared to elect a woman. And my response is they actually did. We actually did. She just didn't win because of a terrible problem with the Constitution, which was a great mistake. And you can look in the history of why the electoral college was created to see that the people who created the Constitution, threw that in there because they didn't know what they were doing at the end of a long, hot summer in [00:39:00] 1787? In Philadelphia. Anyway, I was surprised that Trump got a plurality of votes in 2024. And I was a little startled. More than a little. I went to bed early in the night of election night in 2024. 'cause I figured he was gonna win. But I didn't think he was gonna get a plurality of the votes. By the way, the voter participation was actually lower in 2024 than it was in 2020. Evan Goldfine: Yes. Richard Tedlow: Nevertheless, he got, my recollection is 77.3 million votes. So 77.3 million Americans thought that it would just be dandy to have Donald Trump back in a White House. So the difference for me between 2016 and 2024 is by 2024. There was simply no reason why you could not know who Donald Trump is and was [00:40:00] and has been. The risk of stating the blindingly obvious 2024 took place after January 6th, 2021, the first attempt violently to overthrow the American government. Even the Civil War. If you look at the election of 1864, which Lincoln thought he was going to lose in the summer of 1864, that election took place. Anyway, the Confederacy, some people have said, I don't buy this, but a guy who won two Pulitzer Prizes wrote this, said it died of democracy. Now democracy is on the chopping block. We don't know what's gonna happen. And so navigating this period where you have a man who has openly spoken about being a dictator, a man who has made it clear that he does not accept any election that he lost, January 6th, 2021 was a dreadful moment in American history and a warning. And people say to me often, 'cause now that you publish this stuff, people get in touch with you. Just wait for the [00:41:00] midterms. There's no guarantee at all. I've been saying this since August 1st of last year. There's no guarantee at all that we're gonna have free and fair elections next year or in 2028. There's no guarantee at all that Trump isn't going to run for a third term. Amy Coney Barrett, Justice Barrett was asked, could he? And her response was words to the effect of the 22nd Amendment says it can't. Instead of, you would've expected that somebody would've answered that question with one word: no. Round it off to the nearest, no, that's not what she said. Is this significant? We're in uncharted territory right now. In 2024, the Supreme Court gave him an opportunity to get back into the White House. If you look at article three of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, that article says that if once you have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution, and then you incite a rebellion against it, you cannot hold public office [00:42:00] again. Black letter law, the Supreme Court said, what's the constitution between friends? These are major concerns for me, and I'm involved in various ways to hopefully see to it that the elections in next year are free and fair, and of course in 2028. One last comment and then I'll be quiet. JB Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, is showing up pretty well right now. But I mentioned this in one of the recent substack that I wrote. He said, basically what goes around comes around and the pendulum is going to swing back. I don't think there's a pendulum and it's not just gonna swing back. I believe it was Martin Luther King Jr. who said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” It doesn't bend by itself. People have to make an effort to make it bend toward justice. And whether this country has within it, what is necessary to make that happen, that's an issue that agitates me. In my [00:43:00] old age, Evan Goldfine: I am no fan of the current president. When it comes to seizing the power, like with a dictatorship at this point, I think that he's too weak. He's too unliked by too many people, and I think he doesn't have that kind of bloodlust to actually go through with anything. I have two big fears about the next little stretch. The first is like a big tail risk, which is like a ‘night of the long knives’ style purge, which was one of Hitler's early moves to just eliminate people in his own party, and people in the other party and consolidate around a group of loyalists for himself and when he also siezed control of the army, there was no place to go at that point. So that's a kind of tail risk, game-over US. Slightly before that, you're a historian of business. I think about business all the time in my real life outside of this hobby. But I think that in terms of the courts, if [00:44:00] people can't feel that their contracts will be enforced because they're a friend of the party, then people will stop entering into business contracts with one another. And that thing that keeps us all going is that, that we have some sort of check on our individual private agreements that we make with one another that'll be enforced by a neutral party and a fair and government supported party. If that goes away, I think that's an early sort of game over. So I don't wanna see that kind of clannish rule in Washington for any party because it will corrupt the courts, which are keeping business honest, which is keeping all of our prosperity going. I'm not saying it's a perfect country, but that is the baseline of how we've succeeded over time. Richard Tedlow: Yeah, and I think the sanctity of contracts is also in doubt now. The federal government had a lot of contracts with Harvard University researchers, and by the way, some of those [00:45:00] grants I apparently are going to be re-instituted unless the Supreme Court says that they shouldn't be. But Harvard won one round in the courts. We'll see what happens. I don't know what Trump is capable of. I don't, if you think of ICE as his own personal police force, or if you think of the, the people who desecrated the capitol on January 6th, and he then pardoned as his own personal police force. His SA or his ss I don't know. And it's astonishing at this stage of the game to be questioning. Evan Goldfine: Yes, for sure. Are you familiar with the book, Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning (https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0060995068), a World War II book? Richard Tedlow: I'm not, no. Evan Goldfine: This is my favorite Holocaust book. I can't believe I'm ending my Bach podcast on a Holocaust book. But this is a book about a regular Polish police force, like your neighborhood cops. Were enlisted by the local Nazi leaders to murder with guns, little Jewish villages that they would go [00:46:00] from place to place. And you see the diaries of these people, and it's about how ordinary men, just regular policemen who were not necessarily virulently antisemitic, were following orders to do these things. There's also some of the officers who declined to do it, but they were not exiled from the police force. They weren't murdered themselves. Fascinating book about what happens when you're put in these sorts of situations. Brilliant book of history. Christopher Browning. I think I won a bunch of prizes in the early nineties, but I will put a link to that. Richard, do you wanna end with something a little brighter? What are some absolutely favorite recordings of Bach or anything else that you wanna, Richard Tedlow: I, it's interesting. My favorite recording of the B minor mass is John Elliot Gardner. Okay. I'm deeply impressed by him. For me, any recording that has Elizabeth Schwarzkopf singing is a big plus. And by the way, if you want great recordings that are not Bach it is Elizabeth Schwarzkopf and George Szell, [00:47:00] the four last songs of Richard Strauss, which it's interesting because Strauss, early in his career was a great composer. And then by the twenties and thirties, after the death of Hugo von Hofmannsthal, who was his librettist, you could live without the stuff. And then toward the very end of his life, he comes up with these four last songs with orchestra. And by the way, that recording of the four last songs is played in a movie called The Year of Living Dangerously, which is very effectively used in that movie, but that music is literally heavenly. I think a lot of Bach music is literally heavenly, and that's why you can listen to it time and again, hear new things, time and again, and. As you age , the music grows with you. It is there when you're 30, the music is there waiting [00:48:00] for you to be 40. When you're 40, it's there waiting for you to be 50. And this is a man who, what did he have? 22 children and like 15 of them died or whatever before the age of two. And the fact, by the way, that his scores survived it all, it was CPE Bach who was very important. And then the fact that he was rediscovered through Abraham Mendelssohn and then Felix Mendelssohn and 1829 was St. Matthew's Passion in Berlin. This is all miraculous. But one of the great things about his music is that no matter how dark, it's wonderful that we have this music. No matter what the political situation is. Evan Goldfine: It's a balm. Richard Tedlow: Absolutely. And it's a link with something that's authentic, with something that's beautiful and something that's going to exist as long as the human race exists and can't be taken away. And so that's this unbelievable [00:49:00] gift that Johan, Sebastian Bach has given you and has given me and has given the whole world because his music is appreciated or enjoyed, or the communion that it makes possible is available all over the world. There are plenty of people in East Asia who wake up and go to sleep to Bach. It's not just the Western tradition. There's a universality of the experience through music. As a matter of fact, Ingmar Bergman made a movie about the Magic Flute and the message of the movie is quite simple. Music is the universal language. So I don't know how many languages there are in the world. 5,000, 6,000. Noam Chomsky, the famous linguist, said I happened to be dining recently with a woman who has a PhD in linguistics from MIT and she said that Chomsky's definition of a language was a dialect with an army. [00:50:00] Just an extremely intriguing definition of language. And do you understand what I'm saying? One of the wonderful things about a universal language is you don't have to learn how to speak a foreign language to appreciate the beauty of music. And Bach not only gave us his music, but he is probably the foundational figure more than Handel more than anybody else for the Western music that the world enjoys. So he not only gave us his music he gave us Haydn's music, Mozart's music, Beethoven's music, as we mentioned before, Chopin's music, Debussy's music. What an unbelievable gift of sanctity, of pleasure that one man made possible for the rest of the world. To use another religious word, it's [00:51:00] awesome. It inspires awe. And that's part of his charisma. Part of his charisma took place after he passed away in 1750. So that's, I think, a high note, if you will, to conclude. Evan Goldfine: Wonderful, Richard. Thank you again. Richard Tedlow: Oh, you're very welcome. Evan Goldfine: And go check out Richard’s Substack. I'll link to that in the show notes. Thanks again. Richard Tedlow: Very kind of you. Thank you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yearofbach.substack.com (https://yearofbach.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

10. 

    19 Aug 2025

    FCC Commissioner Reed Hundt on the early Internet, Bach, and "ER"

    As Commissioner of the FCC during the Clinton administration, Reed Hundt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_Hundt) helped shape the modern internet. We speak about his attending the first Beatles concert in the USA (with his friend Al Gore), and the democratization of publishing and broadcasting wrought by the internet. Reed had many questions for me about Bach and my listening, so this is an episode to hear me talk more than I typically do. Here’s the video on YouTube (https://youtu.be/ZAu26CWteYU). Transcript below. [00:00:00] Evan Goldfine: Welcome to the fourth episode of the podcast, A Year of Bach. My name is Evan Goldfine. Today we'll explore how policy helps shape who among us gets to hear Bach in the first place. My guest is Reed Hundt, who was the chair of the FCC from 1993 to 1997 in the Clinton administration. Highlights from his tenure include the earliest days of digital television and satellite radio, the launch of spectrum auctions, a massive wiring of schools and libraries for internet access, and the opening of the five gigahertz band that became our modern Wi-Fi. He's a longtime public interest lawyer, an early champion of carbon taxation, and a great fan of Bach. And we'll talk about some of those things today. Reed, welcome. Reed Hundt: Thank you, Evan. Thank you for that very nice introduction. Evan Goldfine: My pleasure. So, over the past 30 years, the landscape of media reflects one of the biggest changes I think in American life, probably even bigger than the changes from the sixties through the start of your tenure in the [00:01:00] nineties. Even this setup that we're doing right now seems unimaginable. We're on real time, high-definition video with automated captioning. My production budget is zero and the distribution is effectively free to everyone in the world. So  I'd like you to reflect on the scale of those changes and maybe some of the things that surprised you about how we got to today. Reed Hundt: That's a great question. Almost everything that we imagined in the early nineties has come true. And then a lot of other things have also happened that we did not imagine. The things that we imagined were all good things. And the good things have mostly come true. And the things that we did not foresee that were not so good; they’ve happened also. So those are my two big sets. So, with respect to the first, you've just mentioned a number of really important attributes. All through the first year of the Clinton [00:02:00] administration we had weekly meetings hosted by my ninth grade classmate Al Gore, to discuss the vision. At the beginning of 1994,  in January , he gave the first speech ever given by elected official in an international forum about the internet of the future. If you go back and look at those artifacts, you'll see the things that came true. What, specifically, we wanted to have is that creators like Bach or like you -- I see two guitars behind you on the Zoom screen. Evan Goldfine: Humbly. Reed Hundt: -- anyone of any talent, any capability anywhere in the world, at almost no cost could get a chance to see if anyone liked their product. That came true. We envisioned that for a video. We envisioned it for, for auditory, for music. We envisioned it for typing and writing. and you see all of this everywhere now. We also [00:03:00] envisioned that it would be possible to gather an audience for output anywhere in the world, which you're doing right now. You have very low cost. You still have to figure out how to market, but you have a chance. You don't have to go through a gatekeeper. We didn't sit there thinking we have these ideas, no one else does. The opposite. We had all kinds of people coming and telling us this is what's possible. And then we adopted. We adopted these ideas as the vision for public policy. You might say, what were the public policies? Number one, we negotiated by the beginning of 1997 a treaty in which 69 countries said they would let the internet come in without taxation. That's a big deal. Secondly, the spectrum auctions that you were kind enough to mention. Not only did we start the digital cellular industry in the United States, we started it worldwide [00:04:00] because in a variety of ways that I won't go into right now because of the shortness of human life, we had it those auctions and the rollout of the same digital technologies for wireless occurring  in every country in the world. And that did actually happen. That is why when Jobs in 2007 got around to inventing the iPhone, there already was an infrastructure there to utilize the iPhone on a global basis, right? It is a chicken and egg story, and you needed to have both the chicken and the egg. so that was the infrastructure part of the story. Aside from the foreign policy part, we had to make sure that all this connectivity would reach everybody in America at the same time. It wouldn't be, you have a lot of money and then your innovation would trickle down, which is the iPhone business model. It was the opposite. We wanted to establish the lowest conceivable cost for the new access technologies. To [00:05:00] make a very complicated story, I will just summarize in one thing. At one point there were 6,000 internet access providers in the United States. Now you think of just the mega companies, and you're right, there are mega companies. But that's what happened over a 30-year story. The start was an absolute cauldron of entrepreneurship, which is what we wanted to create. So here you are , you're the avatar, you're the manifestation of all these dreams come true. There are a lot of horrible things in this new world as well. It turns out you can lie easily. You can lie like a dog on the internet, and everybody believes that you are a human and not a dog. You can lie at the highest levels of power and authority and get the lies heard all around the world. These things are also possible. We didn't think those things were impossible, but we trusted that ultimately public opinion, if it could be mobilized, would create a better world. We, I guess we still have to see if that's true [00:06:00] Evan Goldfine: To that end do the major TV and radio broadcasters still matter in this environment? Reed Hundt: Somewhat, not that much. You asked about public broadcasting. This particular Congress wants to kill anything that has the word public in it. Killing public good as a concept seems to be very, very important to them. We now are told we don't want the public good of messenger RNA. We don't want the public good of research. Apparently, the government does not want those things anymore. I don't think that's the opinion of most people in America or most people all around the world, but I think it is the animating spirit of this particular administration. So, what is the case with public broadcasting? Public broadcasting goes back to the 1960s. My great predecessor, Newton Minow, is one of the fathers of the whole concept. The [00:07:00]  original mission was to have entertainment content that would be in some way enshrining family values, and wouldn't be subject to the constraints of advertising. That does not actually make very much sense anymore. It's not all that powerful an idea now because again, the internet makes almost everything available to anybody. You can find that kind of content on the Net. Evan Goldfine: Yes. Reed Hundt: But what's needed in more volume is non-commercial news. News that isn't dependent on advertisers or beholden to major corporations as for-profit owners, because those corporations can be cowed, intimidated, arm-twisted by the government. Well, that's been happening. So, there's more need than ever before, in my opinion, for nonprofit news. And I'm not alone in believing [00:08:00] that what's publicly broadcast should be reflected in every media. Publicly broadcast news is inquisitive news, investigation and reporting. It’s honesty and reality being presented, not contingent on the business goals of for-profit companies.So, where's that going to come from? This administration doesn't want that to exist. I mean, they've said that. I'm not accusing them of something they haven't admitted. They don't want that to exist. That's going to have to come from a redirection of philanthropic money. And if what we know as public broadcasting is no longer dependent on the government, that's good. Meaning, now that the government's not a reliable partner, don't deal with them. Evan Goldfine: Is the audience an issue to capture also in that kind of environment? I mean, you've got to cut through. Reed Hundt: We do have a public broadcasting TV network that is intrinsically extremely valuable [00:09:00] and has stations all across the country. They're now going to be cash starved. This is a job for philanthropy to do. There's a lot of people in philanthropy that have the wherewithal to step up. It's part of the battle for presenting reality. That's what's necessary. Don't go thinking, oh, we need to get the House of Representatives on our side to cut some deals. That's not going to happen. And then introduce a modicum of advertising in order to have sustenance. What's important is that the ownership does not have a for-profit motive. Evan Goldfine: So, you could argue that in a way YouTube's recommendation engine is the single biggest arts promoter in the world now. Reed Hundt: It's a big deal. Yeah. It's a big deal. Among the many people that I met early on and somehow failed to have them adopt me were the creators of YouTube. And, I was like, what you guys are doing is totally great. It turned out to be really, really, [00:10:00] really true. Evan Goldfine: Do you think that the ranking algorithms are like editorial or what, which would be First Amendment protected, or would they be subject to neutrality? Reed Hundt: The First Amendment bedevils people in government, because it stops them from affecting the content. Until it doesn't anymore. Meaning, once you have an administration that uses other levers, like regulatory approvals to affect the content, then you have an administration that's found a way around the First Amendment, right? So, what do you do about that? Well, the courts don't welcome the intrusion of people like you and me who still want to hear the material. They tell us, we don't have standing to complain. So, what do you do about that? Because the First Amendment has been evaded by the use of regulatory approvals as the mechanism for affecting the content. I think what you have to address is the structure of these markets. And so again, it’s going to be necessary to have people that are not in it for the money to be involved. Like yourself. You're not charging for this podcast. Evan Goldfine: Nope. Reed Hundt: It's going to be necessary for people who aren't in it for the money to decide , that they can give meaning to their life and the lives of others by generating the content, that is real or that is or that is whatever you want to describe your friend Bach. Right? Which is, I don't think you want to use the word real, but you want to use some other words. Evan Goldfine: Transcendent in a way. I mean, there you are creating meaning. What I find amazing about all of these great artists of the past is that they're providing meaning to our lives, even though they could have no real conception about how our lives have been led. We're utterly foreign to them just as they're utterly foreign to us, especially when you go back to his time. So, tell me about how you've got the Bach bug. When was your first experience with it? [00:12:00] How did you realize it was important to you? Reed Hundt: Just a couple of things. I did take a history of music class my first year in college and that caused me to realize that I didn't really know what was going on in the music. And I remember vividly, the professor who was speaking about Debussy. He said, if I remember correctly, he played like a hallucinated organist. I think he was actually not talking about Bach, but he might've been talking about Bach. And it was just a revelation to see what was behind the music. And of course , I'm part of a generation that believed that a whole genre was invented for us. My ninth-grade friend, Al Gore and I, went to the first Beatles concert in the United States. Evan Goldfine: Oh. Lucky you. Reed Hundt: We were, we were lucky. We were 15. And so, we had to have a classmate, Stocky Clark, who had a driver's license because he was 16. and [00:13:00] he drove us to the place in Washington DC where they had their very first American concert. As you have evoked yourself, once you hear the very first chord in, it's A Hard Day's Night, it's epiphanic. Evan Goldfine: Could you hear anything at the concert? Reed Hundt: We were really close, so yeah. The jellybeans soared over our head and banged off of the cymbal. You could hear it right in front of you. And off the drums. For those that don't know, the fans, particularly the girls, brought jellybeans and threw them at the stage to show their appreciation. I'm told from history books that Bach's audiences were equally demonstrative. The past is a foreign country. They did things differently there. But apparently, they swooned and wailed and howled out. So, I guess people there [00:14:00] appreciated his music in the same way that we did The Beatles. And then the third thing that I'll mention really briefly is , I took a date once to hear St. Matthew's Passion. And that convinced her that she really liked me and I'll just leave it at that. Who knew that Bach was erotic? Evan Goldfine: They're called the passion plays for a reason. I don't know. Reed Hundt: That seems sinful to say, but it was. Evan Goldfine: So that the connection started early. And, and how did that run through your professional career and, and into your adult life? Reed Hundt: Oh, I'm just a casual listener, on and off. Every so often with typing. Now, one of my topics, for you, is what is in your experience. Well,, I don't know if I can get into my topics now, Evan, Evan Goldfine: Please. Reed Hundt: One of them is, what is your method of hearing? Do you sit with earphones and concentrate? Do you stare out the window and dream? Is everything [00:15:00] permissible or is there only one right way? Evan Goldfine: It depends on what I'm listening to and what my goals are for it. And sometimes my behavior changes depending on what I'm listening to. So, I'll often walk while listening, which allows me to think. If I concentrate more, I will find that I'm able to concentrate more while walking than just sitting and closing my eyes in a room. Sometimes it's not in the background while I'm typing, depending on what I'm listening to. And there have been a few treasured moments in my life when I thought I was listening to something in the background, and I had to stop because of what I was hearing. It was like, what is this? And I'll even say, one of the moments that I had was with a pop singer, which I don't listen to much  in recent years. But there's a young pop rock singer named Madison Cunningham who I listened to in big first major release, and I just was [00:16:00] working in the background and I just stopped and I listened to the first half of that album, plugged in completely. I couldn't believe she was like 22 or 23 when it came out. Really just off the charts talent. But that happened also with a number of the pieces in my Bach year as well, especially when it came to some of the singers, I think had a really meaningful experience, I just found it touching and it hits the heart in a way that you can't explain. And that's the beauty of the music that is beyond words and I think connects the people who were really interested in this. So, I listen in all sorts of ways. If I'm listening to a Beatles album, I've heard it so much before, or some of my favorite recorded rock music and pop from the sixties and seventies, I don't need to focus really so closely on because it's all sort of internal. It's just reminding me, Reed Hundt: Well, because you're so much younger, you had access to the entire Beatles [00:17:00] corpus, years after it came out. Evan Goldfine: Absolutely, yeah. Reed Hundt: Our experience was different, meaning… Evan Goldfine: You listened to the sequence, you had to. Reed Hundt: The songs would come out typically as two on a disc or an album a little bit later. And you'd hang on waiting, and then you'd hear one or two on the radio. And we would wait for the event of the release to see what fabulous new creation was coming that would speak directly to our generation, to our moment. So do we suppose that these, I think typically very small audiences that Bach would have, I doubt that they were big. We don't know very much, but there might have been 50 or a hundred, or 200 at the most, right? Mm-hmm. Evan Goldfine: Yep. In the church. Reed Hundt: Do we suppose that these groups of people go to church thinking, gosh, what has he got for us now? Or how, how do we react [00:18:00] and what do we know about what we just heard? Evan Goldfine: I mean, Bach was in demand. He was, he went from place to place over four or five different jobs. There's a famous story of him getting thrown in jail by one of the local royals because he was threatening to go to another. Reed Hundt: Four weeks in jail, supposedly. Yeah, and he composed during those four weeks. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. So, I think he recognized the scope of his talent. I mean, he obviously had an incredible drive to create and to achieve despite the probably mediocre musicians he had with him. and the frustrations with the climate and the instruments and the feckless nobles that he had to deal with. But he just kept going and going and managing through, wading through all the BS to be able to continue to create. And I think that some people probably really recognized the specialness of who he was, which is shown by the market demand that was there for his work. He composed for weddings. He composed [00:19:00] for some secular things, but mostly it was church music. Because I think he was legitimately a pious man. And I think he thought he was channeling his gifts for the glory of God with every note that he played. Reed Hundt: So, the way you're describing it, and I'm not challenging it, he didn't have much of a commercial audience. Isn't that right? He wrote the Brandenburg concertos for Ludwig, who apparently never played them or had them ever played, and lost the manuscript. It wasn't found until a librarian found it in an attic in 1849, which is a lot later than when it was written in 1721. He sends the Musical Offering to Frederick the Great who also never plays it. This is not the definition of an audience. It certainly wasn't like us with the Beatles or you with Madison Cunningham. He didn't publicize; he didn't get his material printed and circulated. But Haydn was born in the same year. [00:20:00] He used the printing press, and he had his scores printed all over Europe. He ended up being a favorite in the royal court in London. So, when you compare Bach to either our modern experience or even to Haydn, his contemporary, it seems like he was a reclusive, Evan Goldfine: I guess compared to someone with wider commercial ambitions. I think also probably where he was in Germany at the time may have provided fewer of those opportunities. I can't say I'm an expert in all of that, but I would say that he benefited greatly from the revival of the interest in his work by Mendelsohn, who promoted him endlessly and led to this revival where he became the new touchstone for everyone after that. Reed Hundt: Yeah, that's right. 79 years after his death. See, I buffed myself up by reading about and for your excellent podcast. So, it still seems to me to be [00:21:00] strange and weird and a bit enchanting that you have Haydn, who's commercially very, very successful, becomes extremely well known, who's living in Hungary and under the patronage of a rich nobleman. And he gets frustrated because he wishes he was in Vienna. Mozart is born while Bach is still alive, and Mozart hangs around with the glitterati. But Bach is just Mr. Stay at home. Occasionally he walks a hundred or 200 miles to look for a new gig, but he doesn't do that very often in his life either. He stays at home and has two wives and 20 children and buries 12 of them. It’s a completely different life than Haydn or Telemann or Scarlatti, other contemporaries. So how do we -- or maybe this is completely illegitimate-- [00:22:00] think about his life and see that reflected in his music? Or is that not a legitimate inquiry? Evan Goldfine: I think it's too hard. We don't really have enough color on, there's no letters of his. We don't really have accounts of what his sons thought about him., We’re about a hundred years too early. Later you would've seen a lot more personal letters to people crying their feelings. Reed Hundt: Too early to get the psychodrama. Is that what you mean? Evan Goldfine: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And, and I think it might even be a fallacy to project the psychodrama onto him. I think that their psychology in that era was just different from what we may be able to understand. Reed Hundt: Well maybe, but I want to take a crack at it anyhow.Transposing any medium into another is a work of translation. And like any work of translation, it's going to produce something that only resembles the [00:23:00] original. Evan Goldfine: Yes. Reed Hundt:Whether it's translating Nabokov's Russian novels into English, or whether from one medium to another, but nevertheless using words to describe music, what are the adjectives that come to your mind to describe his music. Bach’s?Evan Goldfine: I mean, at its crudest, you can call it mathematical. But I kind of reject that also because I find it to be extremely moving and he was an underrated tunesmith. I think there's a lot of beautiful melodies. I think he's the king of structure. Whereas one small idea can play out over minutes and everything is preordained. It's almost as every note, even if there's surprises, as the keys are modulating from measure to measure, it's where you're going to wind up. You're going to wind up either into a new era and a new key, or you're going to pass through that and back to your original key. [00:24:00] He's going to continue to surprise you, but there's an inevitability to how the pieces are structured that is enormously satisfying to a listener. And there's a magic to that. And I think it's, he's unsurpassed with that talent. Reed Hundt: So, I like a lot of those adjectives, although I do think it's that mystical. You and I have to agree on mystical. Evan Goldfine: Yes. I think that's part of the magic. It's like there's this very highly structured mathematical king of the counterpoint, but it turns into something ineffable. There is something really mystical and beautiful about it that is inexplicable. That's why I think so many of us over the past 300 years have been so drawn to this music. Reed Hundt: I don't think Taylor Swift is mystical. But I think she's really cool. But I don't think that I don't think her songs are mystical, and I don't think that they are mathematical. So [00:25:00] I think that these adjectives are different and for sure, they need to be different. Evan Goldfine: Well, I read this beautiful book of criticism that was music criticism that became famous about 15, 20 years ago, called Let's Talk About Love by a writer named Carl Wilson, which I highly recommend. The premise of the book is that he's this great fan of Elliot Smith, a brilliant, dark, Canadian singer-songwriter who took his own life. Elliot lost an award in Canada to Celine Dion. And Carl was so mad about this because Celine Dion was this kind of pappy schlocky thing, and the book is an exploration of him trying to understand why people love Celine. And he said that they're after it for different reasons from why he was into Elliot. So, it was this real broadening of taste for him, people were looking at it as a way to connect with the lyrics. They found a connection with Celine herself. So, in a way, that the mystic [00:26:00] connection that they had with the performer still existed. It's not intrinsic to the music itself in a way. Reed Hundt: That part of the connection you mentioned. Evan Goldfine: I think people are after the same sorts of things. No matter what kind of music they're listening to, they're looking for connection. And they're looking to be moved. Reed Hundt: That's a great perception. And leads to my next topic, and I did threaten that I had multiple topics. Evan Goldfine: I'm here for it. Reed Hundt: So, people even in Bach's era wrote a lot about keys. It was generally believed that keys evoked emotions. So, I have a couple of questions for you because you listened to the whole thing. First of all, do you hear the keys? Can you do that, or did you have to learn to do that? Or do you have to read the score to see it? Evan Goldfine: I don't have perfect pitch, but when I play through some of the pieces on the piano, you find yourself in the key that you're in.[00:27:00] And I read more about Beethoven actually, where I think this might've postdated Bach a little bit, about the evocation of keys with certain emotions. It was very important for Beethoven. C minor was like a huge Beethoven key. Because it evoked, I mean like pages and pages of this about certain things that it evoked in him. It helps when you have perfect pitch. I have pretty good relative pitch, like, but I can’t sing you like an F sharp right now. Reed Hundt: Since I looked all this up, C minor supposedly evokes innocence, sadness, heartbreak, and yearning. Evan Goldfine: Those are very post Bach kind of feelings, right? Like, that's romantic. Those are post-Bach feelings. Reed Hundt: But the internet tells you -- thank you Mr. Internet -- it tells you for all the keys the set of adjectives. I think maybe the descriptions much more fulsome and worked out after Bach, but I [00:28:00] wonder if they're not, I wonder if they're not still a little bit accurate for his music. Evan Goldfine: I'll tell you when, when I'm playing guitar, a guitar feels different because of certain shapes that you put your fingers in, where, how the strings are related to one another. C chord in the first position feels very different from the C chord in the second position, just the way that the notes are stacked on top of each other, where the first thirds and fifths are of that and the timbre of each of the strings as you're playing them. You can kind of hear when it's just like an open C it's kind of like a Woody Guthrie kind of open position. And then the open G in the very beginning, you can hear these things over the, like the root D chord in first position is like a very James Taylorish sound. So, you can hear those sorts of things. Although you can change the key by using a, a trusty capo like I have on my desk. So, you can still play in the first position, but change your key up by moving, effectively using this to move up the nut on the guitar. You can evoke those same sorts of feelings even while shifting the key. And I, I'm not, [00:29:00] go ahead. Reed Hundt: Well, I was just going to say, so during your listening-- it was 200 hours. Is that what it was --? Evan Goldfine: Thereabout? Yeah. Reed Hundt: During your listening, did you change your perception and capability of hearing keys? Evan Goldfine: I don't think about hearing keys. I think I got better at hearing how the keys shifted, and especially when I would watch with the score. I got better at reading music. Because the scores are freely available online, which is amazing talking about what the internet can do for us public domain. Every score is available for all of these pieces. You can just print it right out. Okay. Reed Hundt: See, what did I tell you? Evan Goldfine: You did it. Reed Hundt: That's what we wanted, right? Evan Goldfine: I know. Yeah. No, this is perfect. So, I got to just, when I was listening to something, all I had to do was like, I could bring up the music immediately and then creators have gone out to YouTube and you can listen live along with the score. So, you'll have like a pianist going along and then the score trails on along with it, which can be enormously [00:30:00] edifying. But sometimes, it can move faster than you want it to. Of course, you can slow down the video now. It's really amazing. My brother-in-law is a VP at Apple. So, he's been thinking about tech and media for a long time, and he's in the video division and he said the most interesting thing about the internet is that you can go on YouTube and learn anything in the world. Reed Hundt: Absolutely. And do thank him for Apple Music, which, through Sonos is how I listen to Bach. Evan Goldfine: Same with me. Reed Hundt: I want to go back to history just for a second. The times make the opportunity for the person. That's a maxim. You don't have to believe it. But I do believe it. Evan Goldfine: Sure. Reed Hundt: That was true for some of the great horrors of history. For Hitler. For him it  is certainly true. It's certainly true for Trump. Trump is not a figure who was possible in American [00:31:00] politics until recently. Evan Goldfine: Yep. Reed Hundt: Neither is Mamdani. The idea that a socialist Muslim can run for mayor in New York and maybe win. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Reed Hundt: That's something that comes from our times and wouldn't have been possible even 10, 15 years ago. Evan Goldfine: Yep. Reed Hundt: So, in what way can we think that the times may have created an opportunity for Bach to be so incredibly creative? Or do we think that he somehow stands apart from the era? Maybe because he didn't have great and famous patrons? His son works for Frederick the Great, but he doesn't. What do we think about that? How did the times relate to Bach? Evan Goldfine: There wasn't as much music before Bach until him. There was so much for him to get, and he ordered scores from all over Europe to be able to study them. And he adapted a lot [00:32:00] of Vivaldi's concerti for, I think there's the four harpsichord concerto has adapted from Vivaldi. So, he was interested in what was there, so he pretty much had the ability to absorb everything that had happened before, and he transmuted it. Like I think now it's impossible given the breadth of music that's out there for someone to condense everything that has ever been created in Western music and come up with their own thing. You can, of course, have individual artists that are affected by what they've listened to, but it's not complete. It feels like Bach really got everything and he was in that moment. I'm reminded when I took a philosophy class in college, I was reminded of Rene Descartes. Wrote a book called The World, which was like everything that was known to time, At that time it could fit in a book. Now you can't do that. So, I think Bach kind of fit music in one volume and then reshaped everything from there and utterly changed it. And so, he really took advantage of the moment that he [00:33:00] had just like many of the people afterwards. And there couldn't have been Beethoven before or after him. Same thing with Mozart. Any of the great ones. I mean, Schoenberg could not have written 12 tone rows unless everything that happened before in the music had happened. And I think some of the stuff of most contemporary music, especially in the formerly composed world, maybe has sort of stagnated since minimalism and serialism, Steve Reich and Philip Glass I think are, are great composers, but I haven't heard anything really after that. I mean, there's some people playing around with electronics, but it's not, these are people of their moment, but it's not, I think anything terribly breakthrough. I mean, I think the greatest art that we've created in America was jazz music that was, from like the twenties to the seventies, of the last century. And that those people were of their time as well and just continually iterating on each other while also kind of grabbing everything [00:34:00] they could from the broader American culture and filtering it through their own experiences. Reed Hundt: So this taking it all in and synthesizing and creating something new -- I think you say it very well -- leads me to a question, why didn't Bach do the same thing with respect to the piano? So, he knew about the piano, the piano forte. It is invented when he was just 19, 20 years old if I have my dates right, in Italy. And then, he gets a version of it later in his life. But he doesn't like it, and he criticizes it. He doesn't become an inventor. He doesn't say this thing could be really cool. And history tells us that when in 1847, he has this famous meeting with Frederick the Great, ,   king ( let's put it in the best light), has [00:35:00] about a baker's dozen of these piano forte all over the palace and rudely and arrogantly forces old Bach to walk from one to the other and play on them. And then he tells him here's 21 notes that I've cunningly contrived, just to show you what a jerk I am. Evan Goldfine: Mm-hmm. Reed Hundt: And why don't you create a three-part, counterpoint piece right away. Which of course, Bach does on this instrument, but this is  an amazing instrument that he doesn't actually have all that much interest in. Why is that? Evan Goldfine: I'm going to say that this is highly speculative right now. I'm not a Bach scholar, but I am going to say that those instruments were probably not very good, especially compared to the pianos that came after them. Even Beethoven a hundred years later was kind of frustrated by the quality of the pianos that he had. He was always trying to get the next better ones. I would say that Bach had very, very sophisticated, really good sounding organs to play on, and he [00:36:00] composed on those and he had fantastic sounding harpsichords, and he had some pretty good clavichords. I don't know about that one for sure. But I've found through my listening, one of the things that changed for me is that I actually enjoy listening to a lot of these pieces on harpsichord now. And before it was a kind of sound that grated on me, but there's something about the way that the works can be played on the harpsichord that feels almost more correct than on the piano in certain pieces. And so, I prefer listening to the Goldbergs on the piano, but I love a lot of it on the harpsichord now also. So, I think he probably was exploiting the technology that was strongest for him, which was the organ or the harpsichord. Reed Hundt: Well,  I'm just going to say back to you what you just said very well. He took what was as a given. His mind was somewhere else. This is not the Steve Jobs story of [00:37:00] creativity about creating the ecosystem and the infrastructure. That is the Steve Jobs story. I just made a short list of the things that came along just a little bit later. The modern piano, the clarinet, the tuba, and maybe most importantly, valved brass instruments. We don't really have to strain our imagination too much to imagine how it would be to have Bach play with these instruments, because people do play Bach with these instruments. And I don't know if it's better with these instruments for the reason you just said. But part of the experience of listening to Bach on the original instruments is that it enhances the mystical nature of the experience. Evan Goldfine: It can. Reed Hundt: I think that's fair. Would you agree with that? Evan Goldfine: I think it can. And I think that if you're playing it on a piano in a way, it's sort of like the translation [00:38:00] that you're speaking about beforehand, it's being translated. Reed Hundt: I have two other weird topics just to wrap it up. Evan Goldfine: Yeah, let's do it. Reed Hundt: So, here's the first. You said earlier that it is hard to resist using the word mathematical to describe the music because it is so susceptible to mathematical analysis and construction. Does that mean that artificial intelligence almost certainly can recreate Bach and then give us infinite production of Bach material? Evan Goldfine: Possibly. I'm becoming more open to it, but I have not heard any compelling AI developed music as of yet. Reed Hundt: I haven't either, but Evan, in addition to other things that are on your website, you’re an experienced financial investor, a successful real estate investor and a great Bach aficionado and explainer. You also could [00:39:00] be Bach AI. Evan Goldfine: No thanks. I just want to be Evan. Reed Hundt: It's just hanging out there ready to be created. Evan Goldfine: Um, oh goodness. I just, there's so much richness is what that's there. Look, it's 200 hours of music. I think part of the novelty of my project was that not a lot of people have really dug through all of it, and it's all there for you. And it's being interpreted by other real people channeling this music that they could not have heard originally through the scores, through their own bodies and their own modern experiences, sometimes historically informed and sometimes rejecting that historical information and just coming up with whatever's there today in, 2025, almost 300 years after Bach time. I don't need it. I'm curious as to what's going to come up with the AI Bach, but that's not my game. Reed Hundt: Well, it could be some amazing material. It seems like it is a real possibility because of the mathematical, [00:40:00] nature. That gets to my very last topic. Evan Goldfine: I, I do want to add one, one more thing about why it's not just math. I think harmony can be taught mathematically, and rhythm can be taught mathematically, but I think that there's been no good mathematically composed melodies. And there's some mystical thing about melody. There are some rules that you can follow. I took a music theory course when I was in high school also. It was a little bit on melody, but it was mostly harmony and rhythm. And then you can kind of tell the story of what the melody is doing with that underpinning. But the melody is mysterious and very, very hard to explain. And if AI can start writing great melodies, then we're all going to whistle. Great. I don't know. I still have to get sold that it's going to happen. Reed Hundt: Well, that reminds me of Haydn who suffered eye surgery from the same guy who killed Bach. Evan Goldfine: Yes. Reed Hundt: But he, Haydn, survived that and lived [00:41:00] six or eight long, painful years of decline. And he said, I have all these melodies in my head. I don't have the capability anymore to put them into real musical creations, but I still have the melodies in my head. Evan Goldfine: And we all do. We all can. You can start to whistle down the road and you don't know where it comes from. Reed Hundt: So, there you go. That's the human-centric version of AI that we hope is possible. I want to thank you, but I want to end by evoking something you said earlier about your project, your all of Bach project. So, I made a list of some "all of’s". Evan Goldfine: Okay. Reed Hundt: That I've that I've done in my life. Evan Goldfine: I love “all of.” It's great. Reed Hundt: You made me think about them. So, I've read all of Anthony Powell’s novels, including the [00:42:00] 12, in Dance to the Music of Time, and his non-novel, John Aubrey and his friends. I've read all of Proust's 1.26 million words about a cookie. I've read 16 of the 20 Nabokov works. All of Dashiel Hammett, all of Patrick O'Brien'sJack Aubrey books. But most importantly, in terms of contemporaneous news, my wife and I have watched all of the episodes of ER. We just finished. They were aired over 15 seasons between September 19th, 1994, and April 2nd, 2009.They went from Clinton to Obama. There are 331 episodes. It took us approximately four and a half months. Evan Goldfine: What did you gain from watching 331 hours of ER? Reed Hundt: It was completely and totally engrossing. [00:43:00] First of all, in the early years the showrunners and the writers were one to two decades ahead of the rest of America on social issues. They were ahead on gay marriage. They were ahead on AIDS, they were ahead on public health. They were ahead on numerous issues. They had huge audiences in the nineties. and ultimately, they were canceled because the show fell below number 50 in the ranking of the most watched shows. But in the early years when they were at the absolute top it makes you think that that medium was very much a way in which the social agenda was advanced because they weren't wrong about where the country would ultimately be on these topics. [00:44:00] Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Reed Hundt: The second thing is what the historian Maitland said, we must always remember: what is now in the past was once in the future. Okay. When you watch these early shows, partly because you know what happened in their lives, but partly because you can just see it, you just go like, that person is going to be a big star. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Reed Hundt: And as soon as you see George Clooney in show number one, you're like, that guy is going to be huge. That's fun. And it is really kind of cool , with hindsight helping you a lot, that you can also appreciate the talent. And then the third thing is the methodology, the way that the art is made. At the very beginning it has a breakthrough quality. It’s an incredible step, and I [00:45:00] think that it does relate to your appreciation of Bach, right? This breakthrough quality. The breakthrough quality with ER was long, long tracking shots , sequences where the camera would follow people from the intake across the hall into the trauma room. People would come into the room. The emergency nature of the ER was clearly demonstrated in a gripping manner by the method in which the camera was showing it all, which is very, very different from the way TV was presented on other shows in that time period. And then by the end they're struggling to find anything new, anything new in terms of the method. I don't think Bach had that problem of struggling to find anything new. Those are some of my “all of’s” that I hope you don't mind. Evan Goldfine: I'm glad to hear them. I'm imagining it was more pleasurable without the commercial breaks also. [00:46:00] Reed Hundt: Oh. That's totally cool. Otherwise it would've taken us forever. But who wants to watch any ads? Not to mention ads on products that were discontinued three decades ago. Evan Goldfine: Let's wind it up there. Reed, this has been terrific. Thank you for pressing me on a number of things too. And, and great to hear about your perspectives on both Bach listening, and how art has moved you in your life. Reed Hundt: Thanks for having me, Evan. And I will wait to find out what other podcasts you have on this theme and also what your next "all of" is going to be. Evan Goldfine: I don't know. That's up for grabs right now. Thank you, Reed. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yearofbach.substack.com (https://yearofbach.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

11. 

    7 Aug 2025

    Tyler Cowen on Bach, Beethoven, John, and Paul

    I’ve listened to Tyler Cowen (https://x.com/tylercowen) talk for hundreds of hours about economics, music, history, art, travel, and regional cuisine, so meeting him on Zoom felt a little like stepping through The Purple Rose of Cairo. My composure mostly held, and it was a pleasure to trade favorite recordings, speculate on Bach’s motivations, and wrestle with uneasy feelings while enjoying recordings from wartime Germany. Full transcript follows. Here we are on YouTube (https://youtu.be/j8btuzEX3OM). Artists discussed: Leo Kottke The Beatles John Eliot Gardiner Philippe Herreweghe Otto Klemperer Martha Argerich Karl Richter Sviatoslav Richter Glenn Gould Alisa Weilerstein Pablo Casals Peter Schreier Jason Vieaux Eduardo Fernandez Mogens Wöldike Hans-Christoph Rademann Carlos Klieber Keith Jarrett Benjamin Alard Angela Hewitt Samuel Feinberg Pierre Hantai Berlioz Artur Rubenstein Andres Segovia Julian Bream Wilhelm Furtwangler Fabio Biondi Frank Peter Zimmerman Nathan Milstein David Robinson Pierre Boulez Masaaki Suzuki Wilhelm Backhaus Leonard Bernstein Msistislav Rostropovich Yo-Yo Ma Jean-Guihen Queyras Janos Starker Heinrich Schiff Kim Kashkashian Edgar Meyer Sergei Rachmaninoff Yuja Wang Transcript: Evan Goldfine: Welcome to episode three of the podcast of A Year of Bach. My name's Evan Goldfine and today I'm delighted to be talking to Tyler Cowen. Tyler's one of our foremost public intellectuals. He's an economist at Virginia's George Mason University and one of the original internet bloggers whose work continues into its third decade at Marginal Revolution. I think about money a lot, and Tyler has reshaped my thinking about economics, especially around how economic growth leads to human flourishing, the importance of incentives and how every economic decision has trade-offs. Tyler and I share a deep love of Bach and the Beatles, and we're both products of Bergen County, New Jersey, so maybe there was something in the water there. Tyler, welcome. Tyler Cowen: Happy to be here. Thank you, Evan. Evan Goldfine: Your earliest exposure to the music was seeing a Bach performance on public television. Could you talk about that? Tyler Cowen: Well, it wasn't exactly a performance, but I was watching William F. Buckley's Firing Line and uh, on public tv, and they play [00:01:00] the parts of the Brandenburg Concerto number two as the show starts. And it just so happened that we had at home, I think three classical records. And Brandenburg number two was one of the three. So I had it on the record and then I heard it on Buckley and it's like, oh, I know what this is. And so it was one of the two or three first classical pieces that I knew. Maybe the first one, and I liked it. Right. That's important. Evan Goldfine: And how did you start digging more? Tyler Cowen: Uh, it took a little bit longer. So we had a copy of Rimsky Korsakov Scheherazade. And Tchaikovsky, the Pathetique sixth Symphony. But I was so into classic rock, and that was such an incredible time to have that interest. It wasn't until I was 18 or so that I started really becoming interested in classical music. I moved down to be an undergraduate at George Mason, so I started going to the Kennedy Center, and my first love really was Beethoven. I just kept on going to hear all the Beethoven and all the Brahms I could, [00:02:00] Evan Goldfine: but somehow it flipped over to Bach. Tyler Cowen: Well, I don't know. I don't know if I would say it flipped. May, maybe they're on a par. Sure. Uh, Bach, A true love for Bach was two or three years later, but I would say until I was 40, I definitely was more interested in Beethoven than Bach. Right now. It would arguably be the opposite. Evan Goldfine: I'd say the same. Uh, although I probably got the Bach bug a little bit earlier, just by playing classical guitar. Some of those Bach pieces are the cornerstones of that repertoire, and I think especially Tyler Cowen: I did that too. I played the prelude, uh, the transcribed cello, sonatas, some, you know, parts of the violin, sonatas and partitas, uh, different short bits from Cantatas for guitar. It works pretty well, doesn't it? Evan Goldfine: It works great, and Beethoven does not, so no, Tyler Cowen: nothing, none of it. Evan Goldfine: So there's a. There's a pleasure in being able to get deeper and deeper into it. And I've found, as I've gotten older and listening to these things, you know, of course the Breamadth in which I listened to it last year, but [00:03:00] also going deeper and deeper into it, I find it's, uh, sort of an infinite Well, Tyler Cowen: that's right. Oh, another early exposure I had around the time of Buckley. I had a Leo Kottke album called Mudlark. And he was mostly, you could say, a folk guitarist, and he did Bouree on that album for guitar. And I just thought, well, I wanna play this. And in, you know, in due time I did. It's not that hard to play that piece at all. Evan Goldfine: Correct. And I love Leo Kottke. I've seen him many times in concert in Tyler Cowen: Same here. Evan Goldfine: And, um, what a, what an incredible American, uh, weirdo character, but also he performed the, uh, Jesu Joy of Man's desiring on the Six and 12 string guitar album. Tyler Cowen: That's right. Yeah. Evan Goldfine: Which is just a beautiful, beautiful arrangement for steel string, not usually done on the steel string guitar. And I recommend everyone take a listen to that. Tyler Cowen: It's better than most classical guitarists, how he has some sort of feel for Bach, even though it would not count as traditional in any way. Evan Goldfine: Yeah, he, uh, Bach can translate into folk music, uh, if, if it's in the right hands. [00:04:00] You've called Bach the greatest achiever of all time. How did he do it? Tyler Cowen: We don't know. So there's plenty of records about Johann Sebastian Bach. But what he really was like to me is quite a cipher. And I've read the major books on him by Gardiner, Wolff. Others, uh, you can read about the records, different places he worked, tax records. But at the end of the day, he's the least easily graspable major composer. I feel Beethoven in Mozart. If I met them, they wouldn't fundamentally surprise me. Oh, you're Beethoven, you know, Bach. I don't know. It's, uh, that's part of the mystery and challenge, isn't it? Evan Goldfine: It's maddening. And, and also I, I've been left flat by a lot of the biographies also. I just find, I don't, I'm not getting enough out of them to, Tyler Cowen: they're well done, Evan Goldfine: especially for. Tyler Cowen: Yeah, I'm not blaming the authors. They just have nothing to work with and he's so consistent. You don't learn much about the variation. You [00:05:00] said this yourself in your 37 propositions about Bach over time and styles. He's. More or less always the same. And that too makes it harder. Evan Goldfine: Yes, there's the Tyler Cowen: opposite of the Beatles, right? Evan Goldfine: The opposite of the Beatles. But you know, I'd say that there is an extra little bit of depth, I think that Bach gets to towards the end of his life. I'm thinking of the Art of Fugue in particular, but you know, I'd say this, his output from his teenage years up until that point, it just remarkably consistent and uh, you know, it doesn't really feel like very much of an early and late style as compared to others. Tyler Cowen: I agree with your general point, but sometimes I wonder if Art of the Fugue and Musical Offering are his greatest depth. Evan Goldfine: Hmm. Tyler Cowen: I'm not convinced that's true. So something like the first partita are parts of Well-Tempered, clavier, uh, they sound less complex, but in a way they're more compelling and the fact that there are so few good recordings of Art of the Fugue or Musical Offering, [00:06:00] it could just mean they're so deep. No human can do them. Uh, but maybe in a sense they're too far out there and in that regard, less deep. I think about this pretty often. Evan Goldfine: I don't listen to them as much as the other pieces that you mentioned. Tyler Cowen: Exactly. Or even the brandenburgs, maybe those are his deepest works and his most accessible works. Evan Goldfine: He was a tune, he was a tunesmith as well. And he gets short of, he gets short shrift for his melodic mastery because the harmony and the, and the counterpoint are so intricate. Tyler Cowen: What's also interesting to me, I mean B minor mass, which of course, you know, it might be considered by many his greatest work, but just how much he threw it together. It's a bit like a Paul McCartney song like Uncle Albert, Admiral Halsey, where there are all these pieces and somehow it works. And you just wonder like what really went on with the other works where you don't know how it was built. Evan Goldfine: Right. And we, we'll never know. And we just have it looks that way. Tyler Cowen: Yeah. I don't think there's much more about Bach to be [00:07:00] discovered. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Tyler Cowen: AI or not. Evan Goldfine: Um, to that end, when you think about the B minor bass, can we hear today Bach in the way that he intended it? And I'm not talking about period instruments. I'm thinking the people who are listening to the B minor mass, you know, they're sitting in a church in, uh, the Lutherans, in in Leipzig. They're shivering. Life is much more precarious. They're hearing the loudest sounds that they've heard all year. Is the gap between us and them too large? What do we miss and what do we gain? Tyler Cowen: The gap is quite large. Now what we gain, obviously, is that we're comfortable. We can put the music on pause. If we're in a concert hall, that's different, but that's so stagey. The people there, maybe they're old or they're Asian, few of them really believe in God. There's just so many differences, but I think the biggest difference is all the music we've heard in the meantime, and you cannot erase that from your mind. So yeah, it's a completely different [00:08:00] experience in my opinion. Evan Goldfine: Everyone is downstream from the Romantics. We've all heard Chopin, if you're gonna be playing Bach on piano, you've also played Chopin . i'm wondering how you hear certain performances now because our current composers, I'm sorry, our current performers have been listening to all of this music all of their lives. Tyler Cowen: Well, if I listen to Otto Klemperer conduct B minor mass, which is a favorite of mine, it's sometimes called a bit heavy or elephantine, but it makes perfect sense to me 'cause I know Romantic music and Wagner and Beethoven, Brahms, and it just clicks. In many ways, I prefer the heavier versions of B minor mass. So when I hear Gardiner or Herreweghe or any number of other people who do it, the earlier style, it sounds like a cleansing to me. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, but it's not how it was intended. That was simply how people heard it, but perhaps more radically so. Mm-hmm. [00:09:00] Evan Goldfine: I prefer, uh, some of my favorites are, um, Karl Richter's performances, who, you know, a lot of that is, I guess, not, not of the current day that, uh, in terms of he plays it very Romantically. All of his Cantatas, they're very drawn out. They sound like they could be, they could be coming from, uh, 18th and 19th century. And I, I prefer it. I, I kind of like how it fits in that mold, although I'm glad it's not the only way you can be hear, uh, you can hear those pieces. Um, Tyler Cowen: I don't like Richter as much as you do. You know? Evan Goldfine: Tell me why. Tyler Cowen: I, I admire him for having been the first person to make Bach sound a certain way consistently, and he is very, very important historically, but I just think there's always someone after him who did it better. Evan Goldfine: Hmm. Tyler Cowen: He's a bit like Toscanini for me. Very admirable, important, but I never wanna listen to Toscanini. Really Not any performance. Evan Goldfine: I loved Richter singers. Tell me who you prefer. Post Richter. [00:10:00] In that vein, Tyler Cowen: well name, name a piece, and I'll tell you maybe, oh, Evan Goldfine: maybe for the cantatas or for for the passions. Well, uh, you, you have different particular recordings of each of these, uh, these pieces I'm imagining. So, so what comes to mind of, of as favorites of yours? Tyler Cowen: Well, for St. Matthew's Passion, my, you know, Mogens Wöldike, the old Danish conductor, Evan Goldfine: I don't know that one Tyler Cowen: who did it very full blown. Uh, that's an incredible recording. And then Otto Klemperer. Would be my two favorites. But even Peter Schreier, which is not a top recording, but I think it's a bit better than Richter on St. Matthews. And then you may or might not want to go the original instruments direction, uh, but at least there's three I would take over Richter. Evan Goldfine: Mm-hmm. Tyler Cowen: So he's just not that useful to me. Now the Cantatas are interesting. 'Cause I think they're the worst served part of box output in recorded music. And they're the ones that suffer the most from being yanked out of the church. Evan Goldfine: Yes. Tyler Cowen: I think most of them just don't do that well [00:11:00] either in a symphony orchestra hall or recorded. So they're more boring to the listener. I'm not saying they're worse. It's not, not not the point. But it's tougher to come to terms with them and there's so many, and they tend to blur together. Uh, I suppose the cantatas I like the most are the Suzukis, which I think you don't like so much. Evan Goldfine: Yeah, Tyler Cowen: it was just something problematic about the whole exercise. Evan Goldfine: I agree. It took me a little while to get into it and because that was, so much of it was about half of the material that I listened to and I was mostly unfamiliar with it. It was sort of a slog sometimes to, to get through them, but I kind of started to understand the rhythm of them a little bit more about how they paced each of the movements and how he orchestrated each of them. They all have their own. Particular kind of charms and flavors. There's a recording cycle that happened last year live in, um, in Germany by, uh, the conductor's name is Rademann, R-A-D-E-M-A-N-N. Very exciting performances, very live and gripping. And I, Tyler Cowen: I've heard they're very good. Are they [00:12:00] released on disc now? Evan Goldfine: They are not entirely yet. They're, we're in the middle of 2025 right now. I think they're midway through. The release of those, but I think about half of them have been released. They're all, they're all very strong singing strong. And, uh, it's exciting. Uh, it reminds me a little bit of, uh, Carlos Klieber recordings, that kind of excitement in the, yeah, in the room. That's Tyler Cowen: good. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Tyler Cowen: Now, maybe it's best with the cantatas just to keep on listening to the one after the other, which is counterintuitive. Normally you'd say, well, pick one aside, or just listen to one movement, but just keep on going. Evan Goldfine: You gotta immerse yourself. It reminds me of another question I wanted to ask you. So you, you've, you famously, when you go see the movies. Sometimes you'll pop in and leave after an hour. And having had the flavor of it, how do you manage that? Tyler Cowen: Well, I never wait an hour. I wait an hour, I'm there. Evan Goldfine: Okay, so, so 15, 20 minutes, you get the geal. 40 minutes maybe? Yeah, 20 minutes of a movie. So, so how does that play into your music listening, especially with serious music? Do you, [00:13:00] do you get a flavor and leave, or do, do repeats make you nuts? What's your, what's your consumption function on, on those pieces? Tyler Cowen: Well, there's a big difference. So I think you more or less know in advance what is good. So one belief I hold is that every composer considered to be great is indeed great, that the critical market for classical music is remarkably efficient. And the people who would be called the best, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, they are the best. And you really just can't argue it that much. So someone like Schoenberg who took me a while to appreciate, I knew he was the most important and best composer of atonal music, so I just kept on listening. I knew I'd get there, I did. And there's no uncertainty. Or as a movie, you can read reviews, but it's like you know more than the reviewers often. And if you don't like it, you don't like it. Don't necess. You don't usually have some historical reason for wanting to know what the movie's about. You would with some films like Citizen [00:14:00] Kane, but say, that's great anyway. You can't go through life not knowing Citizen Kane, so you're rarely investing in like knowledge of history and cinema. Evan Goldfine: So it's really just an an aesthetic feel that you're getting and you're in the world of a particular film for 20 minutes, and that feels like enough. Tyler Cowen: And I go to a lot of movies, so the ones I walk out of, I'm pretty sure about. They're not that marginal. They're typically just bad, and I don't look back and it's not the case. At three years later, someone says, oh, did you see X? I'm like, oh, I walked out of that. Should I rent? You know, watch it on streaming now. You know, Evan Goldfine: probably not. Yeah, Tyler Cowen: that's fine. Evan Goldfine: I don't watch a lot of movies 'cause I, I think I'd walk out of most of them and I don't have your discipline, I think to, to just leave in the middle. Um, Tyler Cowen: the movies, they're a bit like, they're not quite as efficient as classical music, but the critical market for classic movies is reasonably efficient. The classic movies would be in the New York [00:15:00] Times, but if you read serious cinematic criticism and just watched those movies, you'd be on very firm ground, I think. Evan Goldfine: You've written about celebrating societies that allow weirdos to flourish, and I think that one of our great weirdos, uh, in this space is, was Glenn Gould, uh, the, perhaps the, the largest weirdo, uh, to become a celebrity in great music in the 20th century. Is it strange that his recordings have become the most famous ones? Tyler Cowen: The good ones are the best, and they make it impossible to hear other people do the same pieces. So I was just listening to the new Tocattas recording. I think it's by Jonathan Ferrucci, and it's very good. Like on a scale of one to 10, maybe it's like a 9.1, but at the end of the day, is it gonna replace Glenn Gould? I don't know. Now his bad recordings are like the worst Bach ever done. Yeah. Like, well tempered clavier, which Henry Oliver also hates. Evan Goldfine: Mm-hmm. Tyler Cowen: Uh, but something like Partita in number [00:16:00] one or Partita number six, all the Partitas is, uh, just untouchable and you don't go anywhere else. So it's weird. And I als the two Goldbergs, uh, English Suite in. A minor would be a peak by Gould. And unlike many people, I like it when he sings. I think that makes it better. Evan Goldfine: I don't mind it. Do you like Keith Jarrett? Do you listen to him at all? Tyler Cowen: I do. Uh, I like his Shostokovich. I don't prefer his Bach. It's in the, I'm surprised how good this is category. Mm-hmm. But I do listen to his Shostokovich, which is jazzier to begin with. Evan Goldfine: His French suites I think are excellent on harpsichord, and he actually came out with an album, well, it was, he recorded in the eighties and it was released a couple years ago, um, of CPE Bach, the Wurtenberg Sonatas, which were new to me. And that recording is extraordinary. Tyler Cowen: I like that too. Evan Goldfine: I really, really like that one. Tyler Cowen: But you know, I actually prefer CPE Bach on Clavichord, and I don't like Clavichord for Dad at [00:17:00] all. Maybe I'm just inconsistent, but when it's a bit clunky and coming out in spurts, I think it makes CPE's music more interesting and he needs that a bit. Evan Goldfine: Mm-hmm. Tyler Cowen: Do you know the Benjamin Alard set? It's like, it's the complete keyword keyboard. Works of Bach. Evan Goldfine: I have not listened to that. Tyler Cowen: It's come, been coming out over the last two or three years. I think they're all out now. Uh, he does, you know, keyboards, harpsichord, a lot of clavichord. I think it's the closest you can get to hearing how it ought to sound while the quality of the performance is in the top tier. That said, they are never my favorite versions, which will typically just be with piano. Angela Hewitt being another one. Evan Goldfine: Hmm. Tyler Cowen: Or Richter, or do you know Samuel Feinberg? Evan Goldfine: No, uh, Tyler Cowen: you know, Well-Tempered Clavier, which I'm sure you love. His volume one is better than Richter. It's Soviet and dreamy. It's in the same direction as Richter, but that you should [00:18:00] really listen to. Evan Goldfine: I will. Tyler Cowen: It's quite special. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Have you listened to, we're just gonna trade names back and forth. Have you listened to Pierre Hantai on Harpsichord? Tyler Cowen: That's my favorite harpsichord version of the Goldbergs. I think he's very good, but I still mostly listen to those on piano. Evan Goldfine: I love his Well-Tempered clavier too. That that was a great, that very, yes. Yeah, that was a great discovery for me during this, uh, during this exercise for me, Tyler Cowen: he's my favorite. Bach on harpsichord, I would say. Definitely. Evan Goldfine: When you were talking about how Benjamin Alard, uh, playing, how it ought to sound. Can I press you on the word ought there? What did you mean? Tyler Cowen: It's the closest to how I think box sounded relative to what we can recreate today. Mm, the same feel kinds of rhythms, motions, energies, instruments in, in many cases, not all. So that makes them quite interesting. And again, the quality is very high, but at the end of the day, you learn that you want something that's not [00:19:00] exactly quality or authenticity. You want something closer to the Glenn Gould or Richter. I do, at least Evan Goldfine: I, same with me. And I'd put Martha Argerich in the little bit of Bach that she recorded. Tyler Cowen: Absolutely. Evan Goldfine: Um, you know, she, she's Tyler Cowen: sweet by her. Yeah. Evan Goldfine: The, the best. The best. Tyler Cowen: That's right. And she's the best at many things. Not just Bach.. She, she is the Evan Goldfine: best at, she's threatening to come to New York in a couple years, but, um, Tyler Cowen: isn't she 85 now? Someone just sent me a summer recording by her. Evan Goldfine: She rec my friends who flew to Italy to see her, just 'cause they, they wanted to catch her again while she was still playing, but they said she still got it. Tyler Cowen: Yeah. Pretty amazing. So I'll listen to that recording soon. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. So you going back to Bach, the man. You've taught that incentives matter. This is, uh, something that, uh, those two words together have reshaped the, putting that at the forefront of economic thought, uh, for me. So, you know, what were Bach's incentives? You had a lot of a big family, you know, you wrote that a lot of musicians are after some [00:20:00] sort of fame or notoriety also, I'm not sure how much of. Bach, I'm not sure how much Bach actually received that in his lifetime, uh, relative to the amount of fame he might have gotten today. You know, a lot of these pieces were played once and, you know, cast off and never heard again. They're incredibly intricate. They lasted by the skin of their teeth, uh, through the ages. What was Bach's motivation? To do so much or how can you, you know, if, if that was his incent, what were his incentives to put Tyler Cowen: it up? At first he was paid and he was quite a tough bargainer, as you can see in the correspondence. And multiple times he would leave one place for another. So he goes, what, from Arnstadt to Muhlhausen? To Cothen to Leipzig. Right. Is that the correct order? Evan Goldfine: That's from what I understand, yeah. Tyler Cowen: And every, you know, every time he's pissed off or he wants to do something different or there's more money, uh, or he didn't like the ruler. So he wanted, I think, the freedom to create and he wanted to be paid. And he had all those kids to look after. And as you know, his first wife [00:21:00] died. Mm. And he's even writing a lot of music with her gone. And presumably to some extent Bach himself is looking after the kids. So it's an incredible story. The free, you know, the freedom and ability to create. But I, you know, a bit like Shakespeare, I think he suspected. He would be more famous than it seemed 'cause think about all the sheet music he got from Italy and France from which come, you know, Italian suites, French suites, English, suites broadly in those styles, uh, I think he knew that trade would develop and that he could become quite well known, and I strongly suspect he thought of himself as the greatest musician ever to that date. I knew he would someday be recognized as such. That's my hypothesis. Zero direct evidence, but it is what I believe. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. He seemed to have distilled the history of music into one point and that was himself and then changed everything afterwards. He's like a fulcrum point. Tyler Cowen: Yeah. And Renaissance [00:22:00] polyphony, everything is in there. Evan Goldfine: Yeah, Tyler Cowen: there's precursors. Evan Goldfine: So I, I, you know, we're talking about music. I'm enjoying our conversation and I've enjoyed writing about my experience, but I find overall talking about great music to be less satisfying than talking about any other art form. So when I go through a museum with a friend, we can have so much to say to each other about what we're seeing. And after a play, I feel like I can, uh, speak about the words that we heard and the performances that we saw with music. I can pretty effectively complain about what I didn't like, but I can't talk about. That was great. If I were sitting next to you in a hall and we saw a great Bach performance together afterwards, I'd say that was wonderful and there wouldn't be so much in it. And I, on my blog, I've been trying to get to this point a little bit and I, I was wondering if you have an I idea about what gives about that phenomenon or if you experience it in that way. Tyler Cowen: I think one can do that more with popular music. That would be one point. Especially studio [00:23:00] popular music. Evan Goldfine: Mm-hmm. Tyler Cowen: Uh, but I largely accept your point, and you also argued elsewhere in something you wrote. There's not much good writing about music, and I partly agree with that. But if I had to give an example, I would say something like The Memoirs of Berlioz, which are not mostly about music, right? They're about Berlioz, and they're about that period in history, yet in some funny way that is still writing about music. Evan Goldfine: Hmm. Tyler Cowen: Uh, and maybe that's what writing about music is, is filling in all the blank parts of the surrounding context. Or Arthur Rubenstein, you know, My Early Years. There's a lot of great books like that on the fringes of music, and maybe that's what we're looking for and the best we're gonna get. But with writing, you know, the new Ian Leslie book on John Lennon and Paul McCartney. That's wonderful. Evan Goldfine: Beautiful book. Tyler Cowen: And that book Revolution in their heads about the Beatles, that's an incredible book. Evan Goldfine: Mm-hmm. Tyler Cowen: So popular music, there's, it's easier to talk about and there's often [00:24:00] better writing, Evan Goldfine: and that's a function of, uh, the popularity itself and also probably because the lyrics and, uh, are something that we can respond to in a way that is more relevant to our lives. The history is so close to us and maybe the people are actually still around. Tyler Cowen: That's right. Like few people can actually discuss. How Bach's St. John's passion revised the account of Christ relative to some of the other notions at his time. Yet it did, but it completely goes over everyone's head. Evan Goldfine: Right. The addressable market for that one's fairly small Tyler Cowen: for now. Yeah. Evan Goldfine: Right. Uh, I have a couple lightning round questions, so, uh, give me a, your best deep cut from, uh, Lennon and McCartney's solo catalogs. Tyler Cowen: When, when you say Deep cut, what does that mean exactly? Uh, Evan Goldfine: I would say not, uh, one of their singles or hits Tyler Cowen: Well, with Paul, there's so many are hits, but you know, my C Moon is a favorite of mine. Mm-hmm. I think that's 1974, but there's a second version of [00:25:00] C Moon that he redid with tighter orchestration that is only on the B side of a cd. Single, and even to this day is not on Spotify, YouTube, or anywhere else. You cannot hear it unless you own that CD single. So that's the deepest Macca cut. I know. And it's amazing. It's even better than the original C Moon. Evan Goldfine: And what about for John Lennon? Tyler Cowen: I think Mind Games is an underrated album. Mm-hmm. Most of it is very good. The production is imperfect, but maybe it ought to be, I think I'd actually prefer it right now to listen to Mind Games than Imagine, which is a little too polished. Two precious or self-conscious or even pretentious. And then there's the nasty bits about Paul. Hmm. Um, so any, you know, Meat City would be one. I know that, you know, but almost everything on mind games is quite good and it's not that well known other than the mind game song. Evan Goldfine: Right. That mind game song is, is terrific. I'll, I'll play but a very Tyler Cowen: deep cut. This one, I [00:26:00] don't know if it's from Solo Lennon, the Beatles, but John with only acoustic guitar doing Rock Island Line for about two minutes. Evan Goldfine: Was that on one of the anthology albums? It might have been, Tyler Cowen: I don't think so. I own it on an LP that I acquired maybe 40 years ago, and I still have it and it blows me away. Just the Lennon voice killer. Evan Goldfine: I'll try to find it on YouTube and link it to everybody. Try to find it. Yeah, that might take me a little bit. Uh, I would go with, uh, Every Night for Paul McCartney off the first, uh, McCartney album, which I think is just a beautiful little tune. Tyler Cowen: I agree. But is that a deep cut? To me, that's quite famous. You know, the second live version or just the deeper background chorus. In some ways I like that even more. Yeah. Evan Goldfine: I love that first Al. I mean, it's, it's so janky, but it's very lovable that the very first album, it's Tyler Cowen: a fantastic album. Yeah. A shame that it was so panned at the time. Evan Goldfine: What was, what is the greatest classical song cycle, [00:27:00] Tyler Cowen: I suppose Die Wintereisse, there's a lot by Brahms, but as a cycle, I'll say. Yeah. Die Wintereisse Evan Goldfine: that's fair. Tyler Cowen: Clear first. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. I, I'm more charmed by, uh, Schumann's Frauenliebe und Leben. Tyler Cowen: That's quite good. Yeah. Evan Goldfine: I, I just find myself listening to those. I, I just, I, I love those guys. But, um, yeah, I think in terms of the artistic depth, I would agree with Wintereisse. Uh, question for you, crossword puzzles, waste of time, are they engaging for you? Tyler Cowen: I don't do them. I did them for about nine months in high school. Probably it was good for me. I learned things. If people just keep on doing them throughout their lives, um, I don't know. I guess it makes them happy. Probably they're not that ambitious in some big way or they're super ambitious and that's their relaxation. It's a portfolio question, Evan Goldfine: I feel like I wanna be told, Tyler Cowen: take care of it. Evan Goldfine: I feel like I wanna be told to stop [00:28:00] doing them 'cause they're a waste of time. But I'll, I'll take that as a, as an endorsement. Um, okay. So tell me, besides, and you've talked about the risks of, of war, what financial systemic risks are you most concerned about right now? Tyler Cowen: Well, in the very short run, I'm not that worried, but if you mean the next five years, uh, the fact that the banking system in the US in relative terms keeps on shrinking. It means that more and more is outside the deposit insurance umbrealla. Evan Goldfine: Mm-hmm. Tyler Cowen: And things like private equity, which in this very moment really does seem well capitalized enough that I'm not worried. But over time there just are so many loose pieces with maturity mismatches and people will game those things off balance sheet or mm-hmm. Just take undue risks and I think it will lead to another financial crisis. I, I have no prediction. When Evan Goldfine: is it okay if they're not heavily levered? Tyler Cowen: You know, every institution has implicit leverage, and if you don't understand the implicit leverage in the institution you're thinking [00:29:00] about, I would say you don't understand the institution. Evan Goldfine: Hmm. Tyler Cowen: So, yeah, right now they're not heavily levered. And again, it's fine. It's not gonna happen next week, but at the end of the day, it's a question of how long will it take before people forget the past. And there, I just don't know. Evan Goldfine: Keeps happening. Tyler Cowen: Keeps happening. Evan Goldfine: Let's say you're, I throw you into the seat of the Secretary of the Treasury and you have a very powerful executive branch. What are the two or three things you'd wanna do first? Tyler Cowen: Well, if I don't control Congress, I don't have a lot of power, but I think we need to restructure the trajectories of entitlements. First of all, Medicare, there were just some Medicaid cuts in the so-called big beautiful bill. Evan Goldfine: Mm-hmm. Tyler Cowen: I would start with that and apply something Doge like to Medicare Advantage and to the Pentagon and to a lot of unnecessary surgeries that we pay a lot of money for. But that all requires Congress. So if I'm just a treasury, uh, I don't know, I guess I'd, uh, [00:30:00] sell my memoirs. Evan Goldfine: Sounds good. Uh, give me a few other Bach recordings that are, uh, you, you frequently put on, uh, that have stayed with you for the years. Tyler Cowen: Well, you could name a piece like, you know, there's these two new recordings. The guy's last name is Zimmerman of the violin sonatas and partitas, some of Bach's Greatest Works. Mm-hmm. For me and his account is incredible and there's an Italian Fabio Biondi, I think his came out the year before, but quite recent. Again, the solo violin works, those are amazing. Evan Goldfine: Mm-hmm. Tyler Cowen: My classic favorite. I bet you'll say the same, but Nathan Milstein. Evan Goldfine: Sure. Tyler Cowen: Then if someone like wants to give you a hard time, they're like, which are the three versions? But actually there's four. Do you know the first mono one? I think it's the second. That's the classic best one, but you'd have to check on that. Mm-hmm. But the famous Deutsche Gramophone, Nathan Milstein is, is where you would go. But these new recordings are just as good, and I like to just keep on buying [00:31:00] recordings of the solo violin works. Evan Goldfine: They're the best. So Tyler Cowen: those would be some picks, but you could try naming something maybe. I just won't know. Evan Goldfine: Tell me about Well, you, you tend to, I'd say like. When I know, I know you like the, the conducting of David Robertson and, uh, Masaki Suzuki, and, um, you know, and Boulez, these are sort of more crystalline and clear, um, conductors and performers and a little less maybe, um, playing with the tempo, stretching things out. They're, they're sort of, uh, on the beat, I would say. Sure. Do you, do you find, do you find that that characterization is true? Tyler Cowen: I agree with the characterization, uh, if there is a beat, uh, in the case of Robertson, but my favorite conductor of all time is Otto Klemperer, and he definitely stretches things out. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Tyler Cowen: And he understood all music in an amazing way, and he actually lived in some version of the society that produced it, which I suspect is [00:32:00] essential and really cannot be replicated. So his Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, everything. Wagner. Bruckner, just incredible. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Tyler Cowen: And he must have been such a mind, and unlike some great conductors. There's no soiled spots on his record, so to speak. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. When I was choosing who to feature on my blog, who do I wanna listen to? You know, I have Apple Music open, there's 50 different versions of of each piece. I still. Chose some Nazis. You know, like I will, Wilhelm Backhaus has an amazing Bach album, and he, he dined with the fuhrer and, you know, uh, even though his, there's an asterisk next to his name, we have his record and it's compli. I know Karajan had a real big career for his, you know, for 40 years after the, after World War ii, maybe 50 years Tyler Cowen: more. Yeah. Yeah. Well, do you know what's the best recording of Beethoven's ninth? Evan Goldfine: I am. Some people would say Leonard [00:33:00] Bernstein after the Berlin Wall fell. Tyler Cowen: No. I mean I wish it were, but Wilhelm Furtwangler Hitler's birthday in 1942. Mm-hmm. Did it live? And that just so crackles and I feel guilty listening to it. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Tyler Cowen: But I do think it's clearly the best. Evan Goldfine: It's tough. Tyler Cowen: It's tough. I know Klemperer is one of the best. Speaking of Bernstein, obviously you can side with. The recent Minnesota Orchestra, recording of the ninth, oddly enough, is one of the very best, I think. Mm-hmm. But Furtwangler, the atmosphere there was something there. Evan Goldfine: So you're, you're feeling that it's a live recording, so you're feeling the audience, you're, you're along with them Tyler Cowen: and look Hitler's watching, so you can bet they rehearsed. A lot. Evan Goldfine: The audience too. Tyler Cowen: Nothing mattered. Incentives matter. You said that before. Evan Goldfine: Yes. What was the thing with Stalin who was gonna, uh, clap? Who was gonna stop clapping first? That there was gonna be no one who was gonna do it? Uh, after the, uh, yeah. [00:34:00] Uh, what else? Tyler? Tyler Cowen: Well, the cello sweets. I don't think you've ever written one of your Evan Goldfine: I did. Tyler Cowen: I tell me. Then Evan Goldfine: I featured Rostropovich, uh, who? I, okay. That Tyler Cowen: might be my top. That's a very, very good one. Evan Goldfine: Yep. I, I think Yo-yo MA's first set as excellent. Uh, I like Alisa Weilerstein, who's a contemporary, uh, player. She's fantastic. What else, uh, comes and, you know, the originals from Casals I think are important to hear, but nothing that I, I will put on very often. How about you? Tyler Cowen: The Casals I find profound but painful. There's just too much scratching and the sound quality is poor. Yo-Yo Ma. I've heard do those live and that was amazing. A plus. But each of his recordings, I feel somehow does not project enough and I don't listen to them. I think I've only heard two, what's he done? Three or whatever. Evan Goldfine: I think he's three now, Tyler Cowen: but I don't love any of them. The Bylsma. I'm glad it was done. It's perfect in its own way, but it's not what I want. The early Janos Starker, [00:35:00] and he has two recordings of the Bach, but the later stereo one, uh, Heinrich Schiff is quite good. But, uh, Queyras, Q-U-E-Y-R-A-S, who now has two recordings. The first one is incredible for me. It's the main rival to Rostropovich. Uh, the second one I don't like at all. But try that one. Do you know it at all? Evan Goldfine: I don't. I'll have to listen to that. Tyler Cowen: I think he's a Basque. He's from Spain. Uh, very, very impressive. But there's a lot of great recordings of the cello suites. Evan Goldfine: I'll pitch two, also adapted one for Viola from Kim Kashkashian on ECM records. Tyler Cowen: Yes, yes. Evan Goldfine: Excellent. And very unusual record. Um, the, the. The timbre of the viola is just shocking when you know those agree pieces really well. Also, one of the thing that's cool about that album is that it starts with the second cello suite. So, you know, you normally get do, do do do do, do, do, do. And that's not how the record starts. You're just thrown in. You're, you're out of order. So [00:36:00] already you're off kilter. So I recommend that one. And also Edgar Meyer, the bass, uh, the Acoustic Bassist, uh, great at Bluegrass also has a really lovely album of the Cello Suites adapted for, uh, acoustic bass. Tyler Cowen: Yes. That's good. There's another good viola version, but I can't remember who did it. Not a very famous person, but Excellent. Evan Goldfine: Yeah, Tyler Cowen: and as we said before, they work well for guitar. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. I just, uh, interviewed, uh, one of my favorite guitars named Jason Vieaux for this, uh, who's just fantastic and great to talk to about adapting, you know, 'cause these weren't arranged. They had, you have to move some of the things, uh, on instruments and you have to make some choices and sacrifices to adapt it to guitar. Um, and some people go overboard. And how mu how much or little do you play certain notes? Uh, it's a real hard form to be able to adapt to the six string. Tyler Cowen: My favorite Bach guitarist is the Uruguayan Eduardo Fernandez. Evan Goldfine: Hmm. I don't know him, and I've listened to a lot of these. Tyler Cowen: He's in his seventies [00:37:00] now. He hardly plays around anymore, but I've seen him live and there are recordings. He did all the lute suites. He's in general also excellent with 20th century music. Neither Segovia and Bream. I think for guitar. It's interesting, the very early recordings like Segovia and Bream, they've held up much better. Then say the very early cello recordings. Evan Goldfine: I agree. Tyler Cowen: Or violin recordings. Uh, I'm not sure why, but I think you, Segovia and Bream are still at the very top. Evan Goldfine: I think they were the two greatest instruments, uh, players of those instruments, uh, in, in that era. And they were both pioneers of that instrument. And I think that, you know, in some ways the people who started at the beginning of the recorded music era were thrown there and we don't know what the, the great, um. Violinists and cellist of the 19th century sounded like maybe they were, you know, much better than the people who happened to have started recording in the 1940s. Tyler Cowen: So I think mostly [00:38:00] they were worse. We can talk about this in a moment, but maybe with Segovia and Bream, it's that contact with the earlier world. Realizing, 'cause you're growing up when things like Debussy, Satie are still new. So there's some way in which all guitar music ought to be kind of acoustic, ambient, almost like Brian Eno. And they understood that intuitively. And the fellow you mentioned, you know, V-I-E-A-U-X, how do you pronounce it? Evan Goldfine: Vieaux. Tyler Cowen: He's technically great, but I don't feel he gets that. It's too straight laced for me. Evan Goldfine: Hmm. Tyler Cowen: Uh, and Fernandez is a bit closer to the earlier tradition. Just as Uruguayan culture is still a bit like, you know, in Buenos Aires and early 20th century European culture, but here's why I think the, the early players are mostly worse though, exciting. We do have a lot of recordings from the transitional era. Evan Goldfine: Mm-hmm. Tyler Cowen: So there's like Sauer playing the piano Rosenthal, you know, so many people and I love [00:39:00] hearing them once or twice, but I just don't think they're the best even for Liszt. Evan Goldfine: Mm-hmm. Rachmaninoff is not my favorite Rachmaninoff player. Tyler Cowen: No, he's quite good, I think, and more even keeled than you might have been expecting, but I agree. Not my favorite. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Yeah. Well, one of the, one of the questions that came up on your post asking what to ask you today was asking about were there many of these great artists on the level of Bach that we might not know about, uh, in the past, and maybe they just hit an era where they're not known. Maybe not in classical music because that's sort of risen to the top, but in, in other genres, do you think that we may have missed some folks? Tyler Cowen: Well, certainly in wor it's called world Music. So if you look at pygmy vocal music, which is incredible, I don't think you would attribute it to individual composers. But the people who make it, we, you could say, we still dunno who they are. Evan Goldfine: Mm-hmm. Tyler Cowen: So in earlier times there must have been many musics like that. [00:40:00] Probably mostly collective mm-hmm. That are simply vanished and were amazing. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Tyler Cowen: But the instrumentation will be limited. I, I don't know. I, I don't feel there's so much lost in a way. Evan Goldfine: I feel like we're really blessed. Tyler Cowen: Yeah. And this, you know, what little we know of. Very early Medieval Roman, ancient Greek music, it might just not have been that good, is my sense. Evan Goldfine: Hmm. Tyler Cowen: And, uh, they didn't know it wasn't that good. Evan Goldfine: How could they, Tyler Cowen: because they didn't have Bob Dylan or whatever. Uh, just the different pieces you need to produce a Bob Dylan. When you think about it, it places quite a burden on those earlier eras. Evan Goldfine: Could you speak, I, I know you've written about this, about how economic growth and capitalism have led to the innovations that have led to the shifts in music, uh, that we've heard . Tyler Cowen: when I go to concerts today, it just strikes me what a remarkable technological innovation [00:41:00] the acoustic symphony orchestra is. It's so loud. The pieces all fit together. A symphony is amazing. It just all works and it's perfect. And the main what it is, I mean, you can debate exactly when it when it was in place, but arguably middle of the 18th century, certainly by the early 19th century. And it's actually one of mankind's greatest technological achievements. Forget about liking the music. And that all had to gel so many pieces, you know, from these networks coming together. So, uh, without that, I mean, you don't have a Beethoven, Brahms, or whatever people did later. Bach himself was kind of always hoping for better technology and keyboards improved a lot throughout his lifetime. Mm-hmm. He tried to improve orchestra as he had his own Collegium, you know, Music, uh, Beethoven's always frustrated with the quality of his pianos. He wants bigger, better, more resonant sound. So technology really [00:42:00] matters. In the 20th century, it's more obvious like electric guitar. You also can have larger arenas that brings in more money, supports people in other ways. The recording studio in the 1990s, well even eighties, you know, digital music in different ways. So yeah, technology is central to all of this, Evan Goldfine: and even downstream from that, the technology allows us to be able to speak today and become connoisseurs of these uh, artists. And hopefully some of the people listening today will start clicking on. The recordings that we've spoken to, which helps put more money into the system and maybe encourages some people to go and, uh, create more network effects by putting more money into artistic performances. Tyler Cowen: I do feel that right now there's something broken in the money loop. Mm-hmm. I think Ted Gioia is too pessimistic, but he does have a point that what you earn per stream is so low. Evan Goldfine: Yes. Tyler Cowen: So you and I talk about someone, someone goes to YouTube, to Spotify, that click is worth [00:43:00] almost nothing. Now, you might think they're more likely to see that person play live. I'm not sure that's the case. It's clearly the case in popular music. Evan Goldfine: Mm-hmm. Tyler Cowen: Uh, I don't think it's the case with performers of classical music. Most people are going to hear pieces, or they're going to venues they know. They're not, the marginal listener is not usually going to hear the performer unless it's someone like a Yuja Wang mm-hmm. Where it's celebrity value. And you and I saying, oh, I loved her four-hand Stravinsky Rite of Spring piano, whatever that she did. That's not what gets people to go. It's the fact that she's a celebrity and she's excellent. Evan Goldfine: Right. Tyler Cowen: So I, I worry that the marginal incentives right now are in a somewhat bad place, but I, I don't know how to fix it? Evan Goldfine: What if we're pitching to the curators of these institutions, you and I, that, Tyler Cowen: that would be wonderful, but I'm not sure we are. Or maybe to the donors. Right? Evan Goldfine: Right. Tyler Cowen: So someone you know, calls up the local symphony orchestra, well, I'll put up $50,000 if you have Volodos [00:44:00] in to play Bach and, Brahms, and Schubert. And then it happens. It's not that big a donation, but someone has to pay the fee. They probably just couldn't afford it flat out, and then the donor gets to have dinner with the guy. Evan Goldfine: Mm-hmm. Sounds I. Say it again. Tyler Cowen: Let's hope. Evan Goldfine: Let's hope. That would be great. Tyler Cowen: Yeah. Evan Goldfine: Tyler, uh, I'm gonna wrap it up here and thank you again for your insights. Uh, you can find Tyler all over the internet. Go to Marginal Revolution, go to Emergent Ventures, go to the Free Press. Tyler, thank you again and, uh, we'll be posting this soon. Tyler Cowen: My pleasure, Evan, and I would just repeat, I think Bach is one of the greatest humans and human creators of all time. And whatever you're doing with him, with the podcast and writings, keep it up. It's, in my view, something very, very important. Evan Goldfine: There's so many fan casts of different sorts of pop people. Why not the greatest artist of all time? Tyler Cowen: Exactly. Evan Goldfine: Thank you again. Tyler Cowen: Bye. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yearofbach.substack.com (https://yearofbach.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

12. 

    10 Jul 2025

    ‘Everything is melody’: Classical Guitarist Jason Vieaux on Bach

    Episode 2 of A Year of Bach Podcast features my conversation with the great classical guitarist Jason Vieaux (https://jasonvieaux.com/). We talked about the pleasures and sorrows of adapting Bach for guitar, how not to play too big in a recording studio, and the pleasures of live performance. Jason is hosting a guitar retreat for students of all levels in Benicia, California from October 10 - 12, 2025 — learn more about it here (https://www.musicworldretreats.com/classical-guitar-with-jason-vieaux). My podcast editing AI got a little aggressive on jump cuts! I’m working on getting better at this. As with everything, it’s all harder than it seems to do it right… Links & references Jason’s Grammy award winning album Play: His album Images of Metheny, a desert island disc for me: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kt99hh3nx2Rc2xK1GryK-YLzYu0qiltu4 (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kt99hh3nx2Rc2xK1GryK-YLzYu0qiltu4) Jason and Clancy Newman, Live in Philadelphia during COVID: Fernando Sor’s tricky Etude #1 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQ0un6o0R1U) Ponce’s Sonata Mexicana And we name-checked a bunch of brilliant guitarists: David Russell Julian Bream Andres Segovia Christopher Parkening Zoran Dukic Lorenzo Micheli Aniello Desiderio Kazuhito Yamashita Marcin Dylla Colin David Support & subscribe * Get the full transcript and future episodes straight to your inbox. * Subscribe on Apple Music (https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/a-year-of-bach/id1818112446) or Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/6YQNV6GXzAvP3OKvwHM34C) Chapter markers: 02:43 Techniques and Approaches to Playing Bach 12:48 Teaching and Developing Musical Skills 19:25 The Influence of Julian Bream 23:27 The Essence of Musical Intention 25:08 The Challenge of Recording for Commercial Labels 26:33 Recording Techniques and Spaces 32:18 The Pandemic and Performance 34:50 Pop and Jazz Influences 38:46 Upcoming Projects Intro music: Adagio of BWV 974, performed by your host on his home piano. Transcript: [00:00:00] Evan Goldfine: Hello everyone and welcome to the second episode of the year of Bach Podcast where I talk with people whose lives have been touched by the great master. Today I'm very grateful to host one of my musical heroes, Jason Vieaux. That's V-I-E-A-U-X, for everyone who should start typing his name into Spotify or Apple Music right now. Jason's widely recognized as one of the world's finest classical guitarists. I've spent hundreds of hours with his recordings. I recommend them all, but my special favorites are his Grammy award-winning album Play, and of course, Images of Metheny where, Jason adapted the tunes of Pat Metheny for classical guitar. I've also, of course, enjoyed his two albums of Bach, and today we'll be talking about the special thrills and challenges of adapting Bach for guitar. So Jason, thank you so much for joining us here. Jason Vieaux: it's my pleasure. Thank you, Evan, for having me. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. So [00:01:00] Bach never wrote specifically for the classical guitar, but his works are touchstones for all of us who have picked up a classical guitar. I was hoping you could speak to the particular pleasures and sorrows about Bach has adapted for the guitar as we play it today. Jason Vieaux: There Are definitely challenges of transferring the music to the guitar, not only just in playing the notes themselves, the pitches themselves, but making decisions I try to make it sound as if Bach did have a guitarist next to him, a modern guitarist with this more modern instrument, and how he might have made things sound better. In other words, change either octave displacement or, or even fill in, or in the case of cello works make something that sounded more germane to the classical guitar. And I think that's a good approach because then you don't get too stuffy or analytical about, well, this isn't what he would do. I jokingly say to my students at Cleveland Institute of Music or Curtis, it's like, well, we can't ask [00:02:00] him 'cause he's dead, so if we could ask him, that'd be great, but we gotta just, you know, have a little faith and press on, Evan Goldfine: Where do you get stuck when you're trying to do the adaptations and what are those decisions that you have to make? Jason Vieaux: It's more like, it's more like baseline kind of things usually. Right, or where you have to decide on an octave displacement, a lot of times you get stuck and then you've gotta work backwards, you gotta go to your destination point where that phrase or that section would finish and then kind of work back. It's like checking your work and, and, I don't know, trigonometry or something like that, you know, math kind of thing. But that's all right. I mean, that's a fun process because it's satisfying when you come to something that you've figured out that sounds good and you feel like it sounds good and that it's something that you can, perform. It's always hard, it's always difficult to play. The most difficult thing about playing Bach well on the guitar, in my view is making the polyphony sound effortless. Because that's a [00:03:00] big, that's a big thing for me. Like I've refingered Prelude and Fugue and Allegro 998, since I've. When I first learned it at age 20 in 95 I would've been 21. Just short of when I did my first recital of it, my graduation recital, I was 21. From there on, I probably changed fingerings on that piece. Over 30 years, about four or five times, four or five go rounds. 'cause I, I tend to rotate them in and out of the solo program. I'll play 'em for three years, then I put 'em away for five or seven or something. Then I bring 'em back mainly because I'm learning other ones and then I want those, or if it's for a record. It's those, periods when you're away that are nice because you're learning new. Things from the stuff that you're adapting from violin or cello or whatever it might be. I've not really attempted a keyboard one to date. But then you come back to say Prelude and Fugue Allegro or. The third Lute suite [00:04:00] and you have fresher ears, more experience, and that part is very satisfying. Evan Goldfine: Have you found some of those interpretations to have changed when you came back? Yeah. Three or five years later. What happens? Jason Vieaux: Sometimes the tempos get faster, sometimes they get slower. Sometimes they, to some, if they get a little slower, it's again to accommodate more up stem, down stem kind of things. Like things in the, in, you know, that are in the top line that are you start to hear more as, two line type of, things. And then I want to refinger some of that stuff across two strings to bring that out. You know, just things like that I would've missed when I was in my early twenties, Evan Goldfine: that's interesting 'cause I find you're playing to be especially orchestral, you know, Segovia describes the guitar as an orchestral instrument. I think part of that is being able to foreground and background the melodies with the accompaniment. 'cause you're trying to do a number of things with Bach especially are, do you have tricks to keep the contrapuntal lines [00:05:00] clear given the mechanical limitations of the instrument? Jason Vieaux: Well, one of the things I do more often, this is really an oversimplification of it, is I don't do the thing that I think my best colleagues at the time, say 30 years ago, or where you push, you push your fugue subject line way out in front. Mm-hmm. Like an almost like an 80 20 ratio to the other voices. I like doing now more of a 60 40 if you have the touch to do it because. It's like everything, everything is melody. So even though maybe a tenor line is not as interesting as, not as the now alto line that is now getting a spotlight for two measures, I don't, I'm not a big fan of subjugating the other lines for the purpose of really pushing this one line out way out in front. So I might give a spotlight to something that I think is particularly melodic, but generally I, I think. When you, when you do listen to, you know, good performances [00:06:00] of, of Bach or like the orchestral the actual orchestral pieces, Brandenburg concertos and this kind of thing, there's more of like an even mix generally, uh, to the various instruments, the ensemble and that. And so I've always had a, I've always had a kind of a orchestrally minded or group, group of musicians minded type of approach to it. So I guess that's one of the things I think that, that have maybe changed a little bit, or deepened. Evan Goldfine: I know you, you've been thinking about guitar for pretty much your entire life, but for most of us who are amateurs or less, the idea of moving from 80 20 with, certain melody lines to 60 40 seems like a superhuman achievement because for people who don't play guitar, that could mean, different fingers at different sort of plucking ratios. Yes. And also some left-handed techniques also about how you're gonna be articulating in the left hand. Jason Vieaux: That's right. Could you talk Evan Goldfine: a little bit about get, get real nerdy about this? Yeah. Do you even think about it or is it [00:07:00] natural? How does that work? Jason Vieaux: I don't have to think about it as much because I mean, uh, to be I, this, I mean I've performed probably somewhere between, at this point, after 32 years professionally, I. Probably 50 to 70 hours of different music. So after a while you're not, it's all that kind of stuff becomes much more instinctive. But I will say that over the past 15 years, I definitely employ a lot more left hand damping or articulation. Or articulation if I wanna articulate. Say a fugue subject. I'll do a lot more of that with my left hand now than I did with my right hand, say 25 years ago. Because my left hand is just more developed and a lot of why it's more developed is specific challenges in those, dozens of hours of, of music, whether it be avant garde stuff where a composer's asking you to do something that you basically have [00:08:00] never really done before on the instrument or the various textures and things that are in romantic era pieces. Classical era, especially Fernando, but in particular Fernando Sor. Left hand is super, super important in, in Fernando Sors music in general because it's so highly detailed in, its in its polyphony. He's really often you can almost kind of hear like he's writing for string quartet in a lot of these pieces. Even the so-called simple etudes, which are really not so simple and, and not particularly easy, to play. Sor is a great education in how to voice things on the guitar. There's a lot. Evan Goldfine: I love playing through the Sor etudes just because they look really simple like the c and c chord in the first position. Yeah. But you can spend your whole life trying to get it exactly right. Jason Vieaux: That's right. Like Segovia one, which is, I'm forgetting the opus number right now, but it was in Segovia's collection. It was number one. It's the three voice chorale in C major. Like that is [00:09:00] not a picnic. And it's, it just always used to crack me up. You know, when I first started teaching. When students would say they studied with, someone or whatever, and that was the first thing they handed them. I was like, well, this, and, and they're like, and they couldn't understand why they've been working with it for five years, 10 years, or this was years ago and I did it and I still can't play it. I'm like, you realize this is like a very, very difficult piece of music to play. Yeah. And then we're like, really? But it's number one in the Segovia, handpicked etudes, Sor, etudes. And it's an etude, so it should be easy. Right? It's like, no. Sor struggled a lot his whole life with quote unquote dumbing down, right? The difficulty level of finally, by the end, he started to get it right, like OP 60, the progressive studies, that set of progressive studies, he finally started to, you know, kind of go, oh, wait a minute. And they're not. So I have to come down to their level in order to, [00:10:00] you know, to get them started. But it's nowadays we have like from unlimited, you know, really good, you know, training Etudes, Brouwer for example, was just really kind of the modern. It's the most obvious example of the 20th century, but since then, you know now really lots of guitar star writing really good things that really help train a first year student, second year student, third, and so on and so forth. Evan Goldfine: And they're musical, right? Jason Vieaux: And they're musical. Evan Goldfine: Exactly. Yeah. Some of the pianos exercise, I, I went back to start playing piano again after many, many years. And to start at the beginning is pretty brutal. I, I'm, I'm trying to do what I did at this, the time in the beginning where I was learning guitar is try to play the pieces that I like and start from there. And it's a real motivator. Yeah. Uh, for me. I'd like to go back to Bach and thinking about how, you're thinking about these performances again over the years. When you're approaching one of these piece, are you coming at it like thinking, I have a predisposed idea for what tempo and emotivity [00:11:00] and dynamics are trying to be. Are you feeling it in the moment when you get to the recording studio? Do you have a particular idea? How do you come up with your interpretations? Because I, I think they probably develop over time. How does that work internally for you? I, I, this is might be a challenging question. Jason Vieaux: Yeah. It's, it's a challenging question, but it's, I mean, the, it's really simple actually, to answer. I'd never come in with any preconceived notions about anything. When I start a piece of music, I don't have a concept. I don't, I don't assign anything. My whole thing this whole time is really with, whether it's Ponce, sonatas, or. Transcriptions and arranging is a different animal obviously, but, but say playing, like making the Ponce Sonatas record 25 years ago, or the Albert Albeniz transcriptions even. I just try to play what's there. I don't really try to do anything I, and that I just make the decisions along the way according to my skill level [00:12:00] and. I think the main kind of thing is, is it, does it sound good? Like my ear? I'm, I, I think if there's anything that I'm good at, it's listening to what my playing is outside of myself. Like I'm, I'm, that's if if it's the only thing I, if there's one thing I'm good at, it's that like I can, I have a good sense of the performance aspect of what I'm eventually gonna do. I'm not there yet when I start. Right. But I have a good sense of what I want to have happen and how that's going to sound coming out of my instrument in a space, in a live space, which is why live is the best way to hear me actually, despite, I think the recordings are nice, they're fine, but like, really the live, live is really the way to hear me. I would say personally, Evan Goldfine: I still recommend everybody queue up the Play album, which is just so wonderful. How do you inculcate that kind of skill in your students to be able to listen to yourself [00:13:00] outside of yourself? I think we all have to listen to ourselves speaking outside of ourselves. Well, yeah. In the world. But how do you do that for musicians? Jason Vieaux: Well recording, continually telling them to record themselves and, and even if it's not on the best equipment, but just recording early run throughs. Even snippets. It can even just be a section of a piece. If that's ready to go, go ahead and do a run through of it, and play back and listen back so that you're seeing yourself in a, in a kind of a sonic mirror. That's the best way to develop that, that sense. I mean, I had a good fortune of in, in growing up in Buffalo, of playing a pretty fair amount of recitals for a kid. I mean, starting with a full first, full length one at 12. And in those days, just that we just, someone sort of slapped up a audio recording of it and having it on a cassette tape and listening to it. And then within a year, the local classical radio station, WNED, was [00:14:00] featuring me on something. I'd come into the studio and play something and they go, okay, we're gonna play this on da da da on this date, and then you and your parents and would tune in to listen. And that's very exciting to hear yourself on the radio, but that's also the sensation of hearing yourself through the radio. It's all this, this, that kind of process. I had a good early education in that. So, yeah. Um, I think that's a great way for students to develop that sense of being kind of being pretty critical actually of what, what you're hearing. I mean, you can enjoy it and at the same time be of two minds. You can enjoy the accomplishment aspect of it, but okay, now what's next? What, what? How, how can this, where, what area do I, of the, 200 areas that there are to work on in music, which, you know, what areas do I try to improve in that? Evan Goldfine: Most lay people don't like to listen to themselves speak. Do you have that experience as a musician or with your students listening back to what you've played and being like, ah, darn it. Or just, I wish it were [00:15:00] better. Jason Vieaux: Yeah. It's, it's kind of a lukewarm response from me. It's kind of like, well, that could have, that could have been better. But, you know, every, every time you're making a record, you're really under sort of like some these kind of time constraints that they're, and they're not really conducive to a hyper busy schedule where you're traveling two thirds of every year and then you gotta find a date to slam in, two Bach suites or something, and then you come back another time and then you're working on those in a hotel room after, sometimes after a concert. I mean, I used to do that kind of stuff sometimes with like a couple glasses of wine after the concert. Like, you know, just kind of like, oh my God, I gotta get this, I can't do that anymore. Yeah. I just, Evan Goldfine: It's an age thing. Jason Vieaux: It's just an age thing. And I value sleep above everything else, including practice. Actually, I, as you get older, sleepy actually becomes number one and practice number two. Whereas when you're in twenties and thirties, practice is number one and sleep is number two or three or five or whatever, you know? Evan Goldfine: I [00:16:00] hear you. Jason Vieaux: Yeah. So it's kind of like you get it in when you can and then you listen to the result and you're like, well, I do that better. I do that passage better now, but there's, there's probably, it would've been unrealistic to expect that I would play it the way I did then. Then. Evan Goldfine: Sure. Jason Vieaux: That I play now after what, 50 performances of that piece. It's of course. It's gonna get. Better and better and deeper and deep. You know, it's gonna become more and more high definition, of course, as you perform it in front of people. Evan Goldfine: What's that moment? Jason Vieaux: Let's just, I should just add that half of what you hear on my records, I learned for the records like Bach volume two. Here's a copy of right here, line two. I have it. I have one in here. Yeah, I never did Lute suite number four. I learned that. For the record. So I play the prelude a little faster now because I've now played in about 10 to 15 recitals only starting this time last year. Evan Goldfine (2): Yeah, Jason Vieaux: it was when I finally started playing fourth Lute suite. Third Sonata haven't played live yet. Sonata [00:17:00] one played it for since 1999. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. And how does it feel to get more high definition from going from the initial engagement with a piece where you can play it with facility and it sounds okay. Jason Vieaux: Mm-hmm. Evan Goldfine: To going high def, what does that. Look like to you? How did the performances at the end differ? Jason Vieaux: It was awesome. It was awesome. Because you're moving forward, you're not moving backwards and you're not standing still 'cause you're moving. You're just it's moving. The thing is moving forward. Yeah. And it's great. Yeah. Yeah. Evan Goldfine: And the deepening, you get more connected to something when you keep going. Jason Vieaux: Yeah, yeah, for sure. One of those things that's hard. I played Ponce, Sonata, Mexicana last weekend, and two weekends before that. Those two performances were the first time I'd done that piece in 10 years. And, and the, the previous 10 years of life experience and musical experience that went, that went into just prepping them and getting 'em ready to play in front of other [00:18:00] humans was like amazing. Like it's just so much deeper. It's just so much more real, then, and that's why the, that's why I try to tell my students that are making recordings and stuff like that, just remember that this is a snapshot. This is like a photograph of you. Like as a, pimply, 14-year-old or whatever, right now you're gonna look back on this in just two years and go, oh my God, I play that. So I look so much better now. Right. We relate that to sound it's all really about growth. Evan Goldfine: I wonder how to explain that to people. 'cause I've, you know, you live with maybe some, the way that people engage with certain pop music they loved, like, you know, how does the first Pearl Jam album feel to you now versus when it came out when you were a kid or you know, speaking I listen to Bach differently now than I did when I got the first Segovia guitar record. I was like, what is this? It like kind of knocked me back. Oh. Just getting deeper and deeper into it enriches it and all of us as listeners, if you can listen deeply, it's another layer deeper when you're [00:19:00] actually playing it. And that's a sort of pleasure that's reserved for musicians. I. Right. And maybe actors too. Jason Vieaux: Oh, I think so. For actors, I think for anybody in the arts. And, but in general, I think that's the, is the thing is because it's, it's quite normal and should be expected that you, well, one, this is kind of a two part answer. One well, one that early on, if you're doing anything right, you probably should be rejecting. Some of the, previous things that you, thought were great, like, I had to get away from Bream. Honestly, when I, my teacher suggested John Holmquist when I got to college I was 17. And, he wasn't just him like, Carlos Barbosa-Lima Alice Artzt, David Russell, they heard a lot of Bream influence in my playing, and that was purely from records. 'Cause that was my guy, right? Like of, you know, between Segovia and Parkening. I [00:20:00] loved the Parkening recordings that we had too, especially in the Spanish style. My dad and I wore that out. But Bream consistently excited me as a listener, right? And so much so that I wasn't actively trying to, I wasn't never actively, actively trying to copy his style. I never, that never even entered my mind. It just. I just took on some of those kind of things 'cause I was 13, you know, 12, 13, 14 years old, so a couple of people mentioned in masterclasses you like when I play, you know, Choros number one, like boy this really sounds like you sound a bit like Bream or whatever. When I, when I play it or whatever. And I'm glad they mentioned it at the time. Of course. It was shocking to me to hear that right. And then my teacher, like I said, when John Holmquist at Cleveland Institute of Music, where I taught now for 27 years, he basically made, he basically suggested that I not listen to those [00:21:00] records, you know, or to his records to get away from that because it was time to start, first of all, listening to other players, even those that I might not immediately like right away. That was the key thing too. Because when you're young, you immediately judge something and you toss it or you own it, you know, like you love it and it's, there's not a lot of in-between. More like extremes that way, and then you learn to appreciate things and you start taking, bits and pieces. You're not actively working 'em into your interpretation. They're more like, they percolates slowly or they sort of steep like, like a, like tea or something like that. They kind of, they steep very slowly over time and I think those influences then become more rich, more richer. And then when you listen to Bream, you either reject that or listen with fresh ears but that was all over with by the time I was in my late twenties. That Was the direct result of touring Evan Goldfine: because you got different feedback from the audiences [00:22:00] that let you go Jason Vieaux: through. I, wasn't the feedback from the audiences. I've always been able to please audiences, but I never really cared that much about what they thought. Evan Goldfine: Oh, wonderful. Jason Vieaux: I take my pleasures now as I did then. From the fact that they didn't throw tomatoes at me and they seemed to enjoy it. They called me back for an encore or two. They, or they stood up, you know, when they stand up, that means they really liked it, you know, or what, you know, stuff like that. And that's about the furthest I ever thought about. I never I dig. I was telling students this last week at this festival in Connecticut, 'cause they asked me these same questions and I said I wanna get to, I just wanna be in a place where I am digging, like I'm a member of the audience and I'm listening to this guy play. And I go, I am digging everything that that person is doing. That's the way I want to, that guy is the way that I wanna play. But you're the one doing it. That's a great, that's a very good place to be. I know that sounds egotistical, but it's not. Because that's what [00:23:00] we're all actually trying to get to you're answering to nobody really after a while, but yourself. And that should take place if you're a proper musician. Like you should have that voice, that inner guide, that inner compass should be firing by the time you're in your late twenties, early thirties. For sure. Yeah. Evan Goldfine: Can we go back to Bream for a moment? Jason Vieaux: Sure. Yeah. Why not? Evan Goldfine: I love Julian Bream. Jason Vieaux: Oh, yeah. Evan Goldfine: For these listeners who don't know Julian Bream, go listen to a lot of Julian Bream. For me, the genius of Bream is that it feels like every note is so perfectly placed. It is just so songlike and lyrical at every moment. And I, I hear that still in your playing, that those aspects, at least Jason Vieaux: that's Evan Goldfine: so what does that work Jason Vieaux: He had a natural intention behind every note. He's not second guessing anything. There's no, that's what it sounds like. It sounds, it's the it's, it sounds like somebody who gives zero Fs. About what I think about what [00:24:00] you think and about what the audience thinks. I love it. And when I listen to that today that's what I hear. It's full one. It's like it's close to 100% intention. There's no hesitation. He says what he, he's he means what he says. He says what he means. That's the kind of people I like to listen to and I don't, you can take two guitarists and they're wildly different, but marans like that. Marcin Dylla is like one of my favorite players of all time, Zoran Dukic, you know, it can be different every time, especially with Zoran. But like, those are just two examples. Lorenzo Micheli, holy cow, that's something like, it's just all, they're inside of the music and you can tell they're not playing.... they're playing for your enjoyment. But they would play that way. Whether you and I were there or not. I love it. Evan Goldfine: And none of these guys are particularly showy players either. Do you know the Japanese guitarist? Kazuhito Yamashita. Jason Vieaux: Oh God. Unbelievable. Evan Goldfine: Yeah, like chops to, [00:25:00] from here to eternity. But I don't find his records particularly pleasing. There's too much. Going on. Jason Vieaux: He's better, he seemed more convincing Live, right? Is is, let's say that on records, right? I think I'm more convincing live than on records. So too, because the thing about making records is you gotta get, you gotta make records. They're commercial records. If you're recording for a commercial label, like there is, I'll be honest, I mean, I know a lot of people don't wanna hear this, but you can't blast away like you're on stage playing to a thousand people at Kaufman Hall in New York City. Like, you can't play that way. The mics are 10 feet, eight to 10 feet from you. They're gonna sound, it's gonna be like, eh, God, why? Why is this person screaming at me on a recording? And it's gonna sound like, like, okay, okay. It's like all caps. It's gonna sound like all caps, right? They gotta get reigned in. Someone with a big sound. I have a big sound like Zoran got a big sound Aniello Desiderio , big sound, [00:26:00] Kazuhito, like massive personality through the thing. My, knowing what I know about making commercial records, they probably had to reign and they probably had to kind of rein him in a little bit. Or else all you'd hear was all this rattling of bass strings and, and just the detritus that's coming off of that right hand. From like, he's like a John Daly. Like, yeah, John Daly was the golf, right? He's just swinging for the fences. Like there's no, there's no halfway with that guy. Right? So it's, it's kind of like, so those players sometimes don't translate on record. They may, they translate better live. And I think to a lesser extent, I, I do that as well. I try to bridge. Those two things as best I can, but honestly, when you're like, I had to really learn how to create the sound of something that's loud on an open E string or D string without actually playing loud. Because if you play loud, the thing's gonna rattle. Evan Goldfine: How do you do that? Jason Vieaux: Uh, you play thin you, you thin out your tone [00:27:00] angle. You don't play with your rich David Russell, sort of, sweet, dark, chocolatey tone, you know, angle, you know, you play straight across the string for that one note, right? And maybe a little bit more toward the bridge than you want to play. You gotta do these little tricks like that to keep Oh yeah. Evan Goldfine: That kind of keeps the tone inside a little bit. Jason Vieaux: Keep it, to keep it clean. You gotta make a clean recording for radio because the record company's trying to get that stuff on the radio. Evan Goldfine: The loudest record. I'm thinking about Your repertoire might be the Metheny album. Um, not Images of Metheny, the one of his. Oh. He wrote for you to play right, that has some really big guitar. Sounds an absolutely amazing achievement of an album. I'd love for you to talk about that a little bit. Jason Vieaux: that's not my producer, obviously. That's Pat producing. Evan Goldfine: Right? Jason Vieaux: So he, I Evan Goldfine: He wanted that big, big sound. Jason Vieaux: You want I by, if we're gonna make a comparison, he, the classical way of the, the more traditional classical thing of, of recording a guitar [00:28:00] is like I'd said like our, our guys, you know, like Alan does something between, I'm gonna give a really rough estimate, but like seven to 10 feet from the thing, and then he may put a couple mics in the back of the space to pick up ambiance so you get spatial depth. So it sounds like I'm playing in a nice, nice small concert hall. We have a wonderful space now to record it. Not that church that Play in everything before was, that was overly reverberate. I never loved that place. I liked it, but I always thought that those were overly reverberate. The space that we have now that you hear on volume two and the next record coming up this fall. That's coming out is in this newer space and also the Escher String Quartet record is done in the new space. It's in Indiana. Anything from 16 after that, Pat's approach of course is a bit different, right? It's a little bit more closer to the way he records things in general. I don't mean to speak for Pat because he know, I mean, I'm, I probably know just a [00:29:00] sliver of what he knows about recording a guitar or production or anything like that. But it's closer. It's like you're more like inside the guitar. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Jason Vieaux: So there are classical guitar recordings like that, but I like that kind of little bit of space between the mics and the guitar to get the sense that it's kind of nice to hear a guitar, like you're sitting in the fifth row of like of like a small, like a good concert hall that holds like the one that's good for guitar, one that holds like 300 seats type of, yeah. Yeah, but it's like with terrific acoustics that's the kind of thing we've got now. It's amazing Evan Goldfine: when you first play start that Pat album, the Four Paths of Light, it feels like, it's like that, it blows your head back, like in the very first string, uh, for the first moments. It's so exciting. And also very different from a lot of the other, uh, Jason Vieaux: and that's exactly what he wanted. He had me playing with strokes with my right hand. I was playing them with my arm, so I was going, like, I was, I was basically using elbow joint and stuff, like it [00:30:00] was never loud enough for him. He's like, can you, can you even me more? He is like, he said, he goes at one point, he's like. All right. That's good. That's good. But like, don't, he said Don't be afraid. I know. I get it. You guys like, you guys being classical guitars, like these guys, you guys are very careful about overplaying the string, right? And, and rallying. He's like rattle away. He's like, I want you to get in touch with your inner Pantera is nice. It's fun on the first movement, right? Evan Goldfine: On the first, right? No, it's huge. It's huge. Very cool. You've recorded some of these works of Bach for guitar. Not, not all of them. The biggest, most famous one is the D minor violin sonata the famous Chaconne. Jason Vieaux: Oh, yeah, yeah. Evan Goldfine: What are your feelings about that piece as it's arranged for guitar? Is that something that is on your mountaintop? Are you waiting to do that one? What do you feel? Jason Vieaux: Yeah, it's not so much of a mountaintop thing, I guess. I mean, in some ways I've always, I, I play, I played, I learned the Chaconne in high school. I've been basically [00:31:00] working on it with students for, I don't know, 32 years really, or, or 30 years or something like that. I mean, I've been at CIM for 27, 28, Curtis for 13, 14, 14 now. And so, especially, particularly at Curtis, I'm working on Chaconne like every year with someone all through the whole school year, so. There's so many different transcriptions of it. And at this point I would almost rather if I had an AI type of brain, like I could process it in my brain. I'd rather have AI just cherry pick what my proclivities would decide are the best, you know, kind of ways of doing it rather than have to do the work myself. But eventually I'm gonna have to do the work myself if I do it. And that is a future recording that I like to do. Yeah. In the way that volume two completed. D Lute works by doing the fourth Lute suite, which is even, we call it a violin works cd. Of course it's the third partita, right? Evan Goldfine: Mm-hmm. Jason Vieaux: By eventually [00:32:00] completing The Sonatas by doing the second sonata, that would make a record right there. Second Sonata and second partita done. 60 minutes. Evan Goldfine: Well, I'm glad we've decided together. Jason Vieaux: Yeah. Eventually I'd like to. I'd like to get to that. Uh, my playing is really getting pretty strong right now. I mean, it's in a really good place. Evan Goldfine: Does it feel like you're like climbing another step? Jason Vieaux: I'm actually kind of making another, well, the pandemic is really kind, I have to say, it really kind of took a chunk outta me. It took the wind outta my sails. 'cause I was, I, I was such an trained animal by my profession that when I didn't have. You know, initially anything to really prepare for. And then even then, like when people were starting to piece things together through virtual concerts, like the virtual experience, for me personally, just didn't really Yeah. Do Evan Goldfine: many of us. Jason Vieaux: Yeah. Because that's what we all learned, right? As humans. That there's something about [00:33:00] the all of us in a room, in a space together. And there's an energy there. And that's a thing. That's a real thing. I think that's what we really discovered. So like a lot of these more tech-minded people at the time that were writing articles, a million things came out on your media outlets or whatever came out on your phone. Oh, and this, you know, people are gonna, this is gonna change things forever. 'cause then when, when the pandemic's over, people are gonna continue to do this at home. And I was like, that doesn't that doesn't sound right at all. You're really gonna go. You know, see Metallica or Coldplay or whatever, or, or whatever pick Yeah. Evan Goldfine: On your screen. Jason Vieaux: Yeah. Oasis or whatever. You're really gonna go see Oasis on your screen if you have the money and time, to go see him at a stadium, please. Evan Goldfine: Jason, you had a pandemic at a concert with a cellist named Clancy Newman from Philadelphia. Jason Vieaux: That's a good one. Evan Goldfine: That concert is amazing, including the. Cello and Guitar Sonata by [00:34:00] Radames Gnattali. Jason Vieaux: Oh yeah. I love that piece. I play that a lot. Evan Goldfine: Such a cool, that's the first time I heard it when I heard that streamed, and it is just a gem of a piece. It's my and I went down the rabbit hole listening to other recordings, and that live recording is, I think, the finest recording of that piece. Jason Vieaux: Oh, thanks. Yeah, that was a good, that was a good, I was starting to get a little bit more used to the thing, the thing, 'cause it felt like you had to learn how to perform in a way all over again when you're when it's virtual. But then that they allowed by that point. They had allowed, uh, 30 people that were distanced in the hall. Evan Goldfine: Mm-hmm. Jason Vieaux: So that was nothing. Evan Goldfine: At least there were some people there. Right. They probably changed it. That was it. You got the energy. Jason Vieaux: Oh, yeah. If there was five people that would've changed it for me. That was, that's the whole thing. I mean, it's like, if there's one person in front of me and they're there. I mean, my dad told me that when I was a kid. You gotta play to that person. Like you're playing to a thousand people. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Jason Vieaux: Yeah. Right. Well, Evan Goldfine: thank you so much for taking the time to chat today. There's one, question I wanna end with, so I wanna [00:35:00] switch to gears about another band that we both love. In the immediate aftermath of the death of Steely Dan's Walter Becker, you posted, attributed to him a video arranging a bunch of Steely Dan tunes. It sounded thrown together, but what I am requesting is Steely Dan cover album in the same way that you did the Metheny cover album. And what do you think about that? Jason Vieaux: I do. I do think that, and my producer, uh, also, has, that's a possible record that's on the table, like the works of, Fagen and Becker and stuff like that. That would be a very easy record to, honestly, like I've, I've arranged so much pop music and jazz material for the guitar by this point. A lot of it off the cuff on request. Yeah. You know, like I've done it at festivals with, for a friend or something like that, you know, like a Stone Temple Pilots song or whatever. Right. But for my boss at CIM I did an arrangement of Limelight, by rush or whatever. Just because, just because they, it was, that was like the request. That was meant as a medley and that happened like the, I think I put that up the day after. [00:36:00] Or something? Evan Goldfine: Something and it in the immediate aftermath.. Jason Vieaux: I remember having to practice it at home and I actually asked my wife and my kids were really quite small then I was like, could, if could you put them to bed? And then I, because I'm gonna need a couple hours to kind of run it down. And then I took several takes and that was the cleanest one. And it was like 2:00 AM and I'm like, all right, that's going out. That have to be it. But I listened to that back again. I was like, that's a lot. I mean, that's, that's a lot to do. In one afternoon, Evan Goldfine: i, I think you have a lot of people listening to that one. I, I'd love to hear more of your pop covers. It's not easy to do, and I think I, I'll close by saying that your sensibility with pop and jazz informs the composed stuff that you're interpreting that kind of, uh, ear for different styles of rhythm and um, and integration of harmony and dance helps everything. Jason Vieaux: And it does. Evan Goldfine: You really hear in the music. Jason Vieaux: It does. In the nineties and stuff when, you know, sort of the coming in age years, some, some [00:37:00] people, musicians in a given community would say, well, don't you feel that might prohibit, your experience or learning with, of like say Bach 'cause you also play a lot of Bach and whatever. Do you feel like this kind of works its way into this or the other thing? It's never felt like one encroached on the other, that one suspended the other or anything like that. Like I've never, and also when it comes to say this idea of crossover, I think you've probably noticed, 'cause you seem to know my catalog really well and li and live performances and stuff on, on YouTube from radio stations and whatnot. I've never had a desire to cross hybridize to say Rock up Bach? No. Or Bach up? No, no. Or Bach up Rock? No. Like, always sounded, it's always cheesy. Sounded cheesy to me. And it, it was never really convincing. If I now. It's different if I do. What a wonderful world that has like a dash of Joni Mitchell and a pinch of like [00:38:00] Brazilian That's what pop music is really good at doing is you can, I. You can sort of, you can spin the thing into another thing, but a piece by, but something like by Bach or whatever, or like, I just can't, it's just like it doesn't need anything else to me. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. There have been some people in my listening over the course of the year, people have said, you should listen to this. I've listened to Jacques Loussier Trio who did like these jazzed up versions of the classics. Oh, not great. Yeah, not great. And then, I'm trying to remember, there were a couple others. The s Swingle sisters or the Oh, the Jason Vieaux: Swingle singers. My dad had Evan Goldfine: singer. Yeah. Yeah. Jason Vieaux: Do bottom, it's like, yeah. Okay. I mean, they look. Evan Goldfine: If it gets people into it, fine. Right. Like if it gets people interested, but that's not, uh, those are more novelty acts and that's not what we're going for here. All right, Jason, well thank you again. What's your third album? What's volume three looking like for the fall? Jason Vieaux: Well, volume three would be after the one that's coming up in the fall. It's actually all [00:39:00] my compositions, all my, Evan Goldfine: oh, wow. Jason Vieaux: All like, um, mostly like, uh, intermediate, etude kind of things for students, but then some sort of con pieces you can play in concert. They're, they're perfectly harmless. They're mostly kind of like Americana sort of influence type of things. But I've been playing, I played one this last, these last two cities the new one called Tidal Pools for the first time. And it's gotten great response from it. And Home is a tremolo piece and there's a couple really great guitarists that are playing 'em now. Colin Davin and Bo Kyung Byun. She's a GFA winner. So people are already starting to play that, which is wild. So Evan Goldfine: yeah, who knows? Just Jason Vieaux: the Evan Goldfine: world. Alright, well Jason, thank you again. Uh, I'll put some links in the description to get everybody to click on all this wonderful music you've, uh, made and shared with us today. Thank you again. Jason Vieaux: Thanks, Evan. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yearofbach.substack.com (https://yearofbach.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

13. 

    2 Jun 2025

    The Expectation of Astonishment: Henry Oliver on Bach and the Hunger for Seriousness

    Episode 1 of the Year of Bach Podcast features Henry Oliver, author of the Substack The Common Reader, and the excellent book Second Act, a study of late bloomers in business and the arts. Our open-ended conversation touches on Bach, Shakespeare, late blooming, and the pleasures and problems of Glenn Gould. Henry describes the “expectation of astonishment” in music and literature, and names his favorite recordings. Links & references * Henry’s Substack – The Common Reader (https://www.commonreader.co.uk/) * Henry’s post on his favorite Bach pieces (https://substack.com/home/post/p-161830079). * The Second Act (https://www.amazon.com/Second-Act-Bloomers-Success-Reinventing/dp/1399813315) (Amazon) * Selected recordings, with YouTube links: * Henry’s favorite: Gould playing the Sinfonias live in Moscow (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb28oCiHpX8) * My cantata gateway album: Lorraine Hunt Lieberson singing “Ich Habe Genug” (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLg5zp3WOHn0sE3iqGLYYCzmwLFJ_8XmpY) * My ‘dark horse’ record: Peter Schreier (tenor) and Karl Richter (organ) perform BWV 487 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnNLOXzEnV0) - “Mein Jesu, was für Seelenweh” Support & subscribe * Get the full transcript and future episodes straight to your inbox: * Please share the show and rate it! Intro music: Adagio of BWV 974, performed by your host on his home piano. Transcript: The Expectation of Astonishment: Henry Oliver on Bach and the Hunger for Seriousness Evan Goldfine: Welcome everyone to the premiere episode of the Year of Bach podcast. This series features a set of conversations with artists and writers who have a deep and personal connection to the music of J.S. Bach and how this music inspires and moves them throughout their lifetimes. Today my guest is Henry Oliver. I. Author of the recent bestseller, the Second Act, a Study of Late Bloomers in Business and the Arts. He also writes the excellent Substack, the Common Reader, where he advocates for people to read the great classics of literature with a special emphasis on the works of Shakespeare and Jane Austen. He's also a great fan of Bach and a supporter of my substack from its earliest days, and I'm glad to have a readership that overlaps so strongly with his. So, Henry, thank you for being my first guest, and I'm excited to talk to you about Bach today. Henry Oliver: Oh, I'm delighted. This is, this is gonna be one of my favorite podcasts. Evan Goldfine: You're setting me up. Okay. So Henry, why do you keep returning to Bach [00:01:00] throughout your lifetime? Henry Oliver: Oh, because the best, the human, the human spirit loves what is best. We love beauty, we love excellence. We love virtue. Bach embodies all of these things. You can hum him. You can have raptures about him. He can be fun, he can be serious. He’s the Shakespeare of music, right. Evan Goldfine: Clearly. Do you, do you find it to be a more intellectual or emotional experience or both? Henry Oliver: , more emotional. I think maybe that's because I don't understand music to, to a great degree, but I feel that Bach is able to find deep expressions of human feeling. I prefer the word feeling than emotion, deep expressions of human feeling and very subtle expressions of those things. So I think one reason why the cello suites are so, so universally popular is because they give [00:02:00] voice to a set of moods that have not really been expressed quite in that level of finery before or maybe since. Evan Goldfine: Is there something there also about it being solo pieces along with the violin sonatas also That particularly triggers that emotional core for you. Henry Oliver: I suppose so. I love the cello. I think that's probably the heart of it. And I think, again, they are some of his best works and, we respond, we do respond to excellence. I believe that very strongly. Evan Goldfine: Do you like the cello and piano sonatas? Henry Oliver: I don't love them as much. I must confess. Martha Argerich is good at those, right? Evan Goldfine: I, I have that album. That's the one I know. You just pick her over everybody. That's easy. She's threatening to come to New York in a couple years, but we'll see. Henry Oliver: Every time I listen to it, I'm not left feeling I want to go back. Evan Goldfine: Wow. Yeah. Henry Oliver: Yeah. That's the, Evan Goldfine: [00:03:00] yeah, that's, it's disappointing because you want it to be also the best, but we can't have the best of everything. Henry Oliver: No. Evan Goldfine: Bach is clearly enriching your life and, and you've spent your career talking about literature mostly. So in what ways does music enrich your life? That, that literature cannot. Henry Oliver: I've had a very strong response to music since I was young. And I have just had always a great hunger to listen to a lot of music. I listen to much less than I used to because I prefer now to read in silence, and usually to write in silence as well. But what I said about Bach, giving an expression of feeling, I feel music can do that in a way that language can't. And people often talk about the limits of language. The struggle to make words mean what you really want them to mean. The fact that when you are conceiving of something [00:04:00] to write, it has this big feeling inside you of what you're doing, and then when you get it onto the page, it always just seems a bit reduced and not quite what you were trying to capture. Music, I think, gets you a lot closer to the thing you were trying to capture or express, but at the cost of language really means something that you and I can agree what it means. Music is a much less precise form of communicative exchange, I guess. So I think those are the trade offs, but I come back to it because nothing else can express, his range of moods and feelings. if you want to know, this is a, this is a great question. At the moment, I'm reading this book by Lamorna Ash. "Don't forget, we're here forever." And it's all about how people are turning back to religion. And she interviewed 60 young people who became Christians. And what she's interested in is how does that happen? How does it come about that someone else becomes a [00:05:00] Christian? And this is a very difficult thing to get your head around if you're not a Christian. Right? Not just, what are all, what's all this theological talk? What are all these denominations? You believe this, someone else believes that. Just what does that feel ? I just need to get into the vibes of this whole thing. Well, put some Bach on and you will very quickly be given the feelings of what it is to be devout, what it is to, to love God, what it is to feel the glory of God. Something that in your ordinary life may be incomprehensible to you, Bach can deliver up in a way that language, I think would struggle to break through those barriers. Evan Goldfine: I often thought when I was listening to this music for my project, especially with the Passions and the Mass and B minor, the idea about sitting several centuries ago in a big cathedral or even a small church, and this was probably also the [00:06:00] loudest thing you ever heard. Henry Oliver: Yeah. Evan Goldfine: And the power of the voices and the orchestra together reverberating in the halls. You're also in community with the people who are around you listening to this, I can't imagine the power of something that in a, in a great performance and, and to think about. Bach there. Also, I, I don't know if he was considered this, this great among, he was just the guy in town who was the composer who happened to have been pretty superlative relative to his peers. But that was your local guy. And I should say that also that there's no evidence that Bach ever heard the Mass and B minor perform in his lifetime, which is crazy. Henry Oliver: Absolutely crazy. People talk about Beethoven composing deaf, which obviously is, is fascinating, but I find this more fascinating how, how he managed to do that and, and leave it in such a state of completion and never hear it. I mean, the power of the inner life must have [00:07:00] been much, much stronger than we are currently aware of. I think. Evan Goldfine: Do you think we can have a good sense of Bach inner life? I mean, there's very limited extant writings of his that are not about pursuing a job here or there or writing and to try to placate a nobleman. But that what can we know of, of Bach in ways that would be easier to understand some of the other greats internal lives, or maybe there's just that Romantic movement that is between us today and Bach's time. Henry Oliver: I'm cautious about this. Someone Kingsley Amis once said, , you don't need to write a biography of a novelist. He's told you everything about himself, and he's put it into a series of books called novels, but other novelists would deny that and say that it's just an exercise in the use of language. Now we don't believe them and we find all sorts of resonances between their actual lives and their [00:08:00] fictional lives. I am very cautious of this, and I don't, I don't feel I have a good sense of Bach’s inner life. It's hard to believe that you can write the St. Matthew Passion and not have a very, very intense inner life. But I also know that he was busy. He had a job. He had kids, he was churning out music at a phenomenal rate. And I don't know, I, I always just wonder, how much time did he have for inner life? Was there some way in which the way he was operating on the manuscript page was a substitute for the inner life and it happened, the inner and the outer were just happening together for him. I really don't know. Evan Goldfine: A pure sublimation Henry Oliver: Something. Yeah. It's startling when when you look into how much time he actually had to do everything that he did, it becomes more of a mystery really. Evan Goldfine: It must have just in the physical writing of the music. [00:09:00] Just before, not composing, but the physical writing is, is years and years of, of, of time limited by paper and ink. Henry Oliver: Really. And, and all the other huge demands on his time. Right, right. So, I don't know, you could look at that and say, he must have had an extraordinary inner life and it must have just come pouring out of him. Or you might look in that and say, well, he, how, how could he have had time for an inner life? It must have, he must, his inner life must have lived in his pen. Yeah. So, I don't know. But he was clearly, something was happening inside that is very alien to the rest of us. Evan Goldfine: It's unapproachable in a way. And as we get deeper into the music, he feels in some ways further away. For me at least, I just get deeper and deeper into it, and I, I just don't have a feeling of the person. Whereas I think if you read Jane Austen. Despite what Kingley Amis says, you might have a better sense of what she [00:10:00] might have been to, to sit down with. Do you have that? Henry Oliver: No, I think Jane Austen remains a great mystery to us. Partly because we don't have enough of her letters, and partly because the letters that we do have in some ways show a bit of a gap with the novels. And there's a lot of debate about what person she was and she's been, or what she believed, and she's been claimed by, , every ideology, every, every group going. , a bit with Bach, the question about Jane Austen is how did a young woman from a rectory in the countryside become a, a genius of world literature. She wasn't surrounded by authors, she wasn't going to London, she wasn't given a fancy education. She was raised in quite a liberal manner. She had the run of the library. There were lots of novels. Her father was one of those, , one of those men who kept up and read all, everything that was being [00:11:00] published. And, and so there was lots of intellectual life in the house, and she wasn't treated , oh, you're a girl, so you can't read. -. But I don't think that really goes any anyway, to explaining how she became Jane Austen. , and Bach is a similar thing, right? He's, he's a a provincial guy, and it turns out that he was the greatest composer ever, just, just sitting there. And I, to me, that enhances the mystery. I, I don't think we can hope to explain it. Evan Goldfine: So, I'd to also talk a little bit about Shakespeare. Another one of your, passions. Similarly, Shakespeare's achievements Austen and and Bach are staggering, the breadth and the depth of the work and how they speak to us, through the centuries. You've spent a lot of time with both of these giant figures. How do you think about them in relation to one another? Henry Oliver: They're very different. Shakespeare seems to be able to write everything and anything. He seems to have a, a universal [00:12:00] or a panoramic view of human life. Samuel Johnson said that. Shakespeare gives us a, a mingled picture of things. So at the same time that one man is being carried to his funeral, another man is running off to the tavern. , and this is, this is the bustle of life. Jane Austen isn't that. She works within one strand of social life and she depicts people she's familiar with and she gave advice to her niece. She said. “you must only write about the things you really know and understand.” And in this story, your characters have gone to Ireland, but you don't know anything about Ireland, and that's pretty painfully obvious. So you should, we should stay at home so that you can write about that. Whereas Shakespeare's happy to just do everything and he, he's not worried about those, those sorts of issues. And he still makes it compelling and fascinating. And he's a great philosopher. He's a great poet. He's a great observer of [00:13:00] human nature. He's a great dramatist. I mean, he's prolific across these multiple dimensions. What they share is a genius literary technique. I think Shakespeare is very inventive in his depiction of character, in his dramaturgy in the way that he can drive a story through an individual. And Jane Austen is very inventive in her narrative techniques and in the way that she positions the narrative from the perspective of one character or another. Very, very inventive in that. So those are the sorts of things that they have in common. Samuel Johnson said something, “the essence of poetry is invention.” And they both sum that up. Bach sums that up as well. Right? Huge, inventive capacity. Evan Goldfine: Unlimited, it feels like. He had all of these melodies in him and there's this phenomenon I feel, especially when listening to some of the fugues where he sets [00:14:00] something up, maybe a short melody line, and then it's like he's flicking a pinball and, and it just is naturally going follow the path that it's going to go. And he sets up another line behind it that's gonna follow the same path, in the sand, and if they just move together and he had it all in his head. And, I think that I. The depth that you saw psychologically with Bach is, is akin to the depth that you see in Shakespeare, although he's creating them in characters, whereas Bach is creating them with melody and harmony and structure and rhythm that is speaking to something that moves us in, in similar ways. I mean, it hits you in your heart and it hits you in your head depending on how it's performed. Henry Oliver: Absolutely. I think to me, Bach's work it, they feel works of nature. I don't, there's, there's nothing artificial about his best work. There's nothing where you can say, oh, I can see exactly what he's doing, even [00:15:00] when you can see what he's doing. You don't quite know how that has equaled the, the music you've just experienced, and I think that is something a bit with Shakespeare. He, he takes us beyond what we thought were the capacities of musical language. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. There are moments where you, I hear when Bach is about to take a melody that he had perhaps in a major key, and that he's going to pivot it into something in the minor key and , it's this anticipatory, oh my God, I can't believe this is about to happen. And that it does. And because it's inevitable feeling. And you can get that in some of the plays, I think as well. Or even great novels, what the plot is that is about to happen and then it comes, and if it's executed beautifully, it can really, really hit, because you have a flavor of what's coming. Henry Oliver: Yes. It hits even harder. I call this the expectation of astonishment. So I, if, if you say to someone, have the power to forecast the [00:16:00] future, and you see him over there walking down the street,when he gets underneath building number 30, a pane of glass will fall out of the top window and kill him. And then two minutes later this happens. You wouldn't say, oh, that was not shocking to me because you had I you had given away what was going to happen. It would be worse, it would be more horrifying, right? And there's something about literature where, as you say, very often, explicitly or implicitly, we are told what's going to happen. And it doesn't make it boring. It doesn't make it less awful or less hilarious or whatever. It, it increases the whole thing. And Bach has this, as I say, I think on another level. And that's why you can listen to Bach again and again and again throughout your life and get more out of it. That's why so many, there's so much potential for new performers with Bach, right? Because [00:17:00] they can, they can exploit what you are expecting it, and I'm gonna do it, but I'm gonna slightly do it in a new way, and I'm gonna show you, wow, there's even more in here than you realized, and I think that's what makes him very exciting. Evan Goldfine: On that note, what do you think makes a great performance of Bach or Shakespeare? I mean, these are both things that live on the page and have to come to us embodied by whoever is living with us right now, or I guess in the, in the case of recordings now, we have a little bit of reference, but what, what makes these performances great? Henry Oliver: Great. I struggle to articulate this. I'm not a good music critic, but I don't think it's, I, I think it's to do with more than technical perfection. I think you can hear a very exact performance that is not really the best performance. I saw Mitsuko Uchida recently. She wasn't playing Bach, she was playing Schubert and Mozart. Oh, and it was insane. [00:18:00] It was one of the best, I went twice. It was two of the best nights at the concert hall I've had. She is able to use very, very precise and careful technique in the service of strong feeling. And I think Bach lends himself very much to that. I think that's why everyone enjoyed, was it Olafssohn, the new Goldberg recording that came out? I saw that live. Evan Goldfine: Yeah, I saw that live. Henry Oliver: Insane. Evan Goldfine: Right? One of the best con I've been to thousands probably of concerts in my top 10. Henry Oliver: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And he has that same thing. Incredible control. Of all different aspects of performance, but he's doing it in the service of strong expression of feeling. And I think Bach because of the religiosity, because of the intensity of what he's trying to do. You have to get some Mozart, I feel you don't have to have the strength of feeling the, the music will do it for you. [00:19:00] But with Bach, and, and this is I think why Glenn Gould, was a genius of Bach and was really nothing for Mozart, right. 'cause he — Evan Goldfine: Well I have some pretty strong feelings about his, I think that he expressed a contempt for Mozart and his Mozart playing, which shaded my feelings about Gould on the whole, after hearing some of those records, after hearing his piano sonatas, I went back to say, well what, what is he doing here? Why did he do that? And I love some Gould on Bach. He's very particular, but I also don't connect with some of it now. It's, it's unusual that someone's so quirky and eccentric became the standard bearer of how, for example, the Well Tempered Clavier is, is played. But that was my first recording where I would listen over and over again and I found, found the richness in it, but I was able to also listen to others afterwards. And I aw, wow, that is a very particular recording. It exemplifies Gould's own genius for sure. But I'm glad he's not the only performer we have of those pieces. Do still connect with Gould? You sent email about this. So tell me about how Gould still moves you over the years and have you ever had any complicated feelings about him? Henry Oliver: I'm a big Glen Gould obsessive. I have never loved his Well-Tempered Clavier. Don't it at all. Can't listen to it. It's, it's weird. I hate his Mozart recordings. I was offended. I have to turn them off. It's just, it's dreadful. And I think he has, because he was obviously, I don't know if troubled is the right word, but he was an intense person. He was a person of solitude and interiority. [00:21:00] Maybe he was troubled, he was taking anxiety medication and other things. This is what eventually killed him. And I think, there is, that's very Bachan, right? Whereas Mozart is a composer of the world. He's a composer of social life. , people say the great waste of his talents when he was, when he had patrons and they made him write mints and little dances and some stupid little things, and this guy could be writing you the best operas the world's ever seen, and you are getting little party music. What the hell are you doing? But it's remarkable how good these, silly little pieces are that he's forced to write. And I think that's because he's naturally comic, he's naturally joyous. There's a certain happiness that only exists when you're listening to Mozart. He's an extrovert, right? He's, his music is, is part and parcel of, of the commerce of life. Gould's not that at all. Henry Oliver: When you watch those documentaries on [00:22:00] YouTube, which are fabulous, everyone should watch them. You see him in the recording studio at the piano shop in the cafe with the taxi driver, and he's doing great and he's interacting, I'm not saying anything, but it's not his milieu. It's not his natural state. And when he's back home, by the lake, or in his house, he, he visibly becomes much more at ease and much more attuned to his surroundings. And I think that really is a temperamental affinity with Bach. And so that's why his, , the p the piano music, the solo piano music, the partitas and stuff, that's why it's so fantastic. Henry Oliver: Because, okay, he's not a Lutheran or whatever, but he is psychologically a bit of one of those, right? And it, it just, it aligns him with Bach so well, and so he has that huge inner feeling that maybe he can't [00:23:00] express any other way than through his playing. And sometimes a great act of interpretation is a form of composition, and I think that's, that's what's happening with Bach. That's obviously how you get new works of philosophy that someone interprets someone else to a degree of just creating a new philosophy on the back of their interpretation. And that's why Gould attracts all this pro and against and all these, and you can love him at one time and hate him at another because he's created some hybrid of Gould and Bach and it's, it is whatever it is. And it's, he's got so much inside him to express just as Bach did. So I think that's what makes him the best. Evan Goldfine: It feels him, it feels very, very personal. Everything that he's doing. What do you care for more? The early or late Goldbergs of Glenn Gould? Henry Oliver: When I was young, I found it just in unconscionable that anyone would not prefer the early [00:24:00] Goldbergs from Gould. I, I just, when you're so young and you see older people saying things and you're , I just dunno what it must be to be one of these. “What, what is this?” Whereas now I love listening to them both. Henry Oliver: And I've really come to appreciate the later one. And, I listen in general much more to slower recordings or more classic recordings. When I listen to Gould, I'll do both. Evan Goldfine: I find the later one to be too slow. I can't do it. I still can't do it. Henry Oliver: I have come to enjoy slow Bach quite a lot, and I'm just gonna check it on my Apple Music. But my, my current favorite St. Matthew Passion is certainly at the beginning quite slow. It's Karl Richter from 1980, and he just, he just opens it up and, and slows it down in a way that takes you to the height [00:25:00] of what it must have felt to have these very, very deep and and unified religious feelings. And I think that's what Gould is getting at in the in the late. Goldbergs and I now love them very much. Evan Goldfine: I had the pleasure of listening to a lot of Karl Richter's recordings in my listening project. I was not particularly familiar with the Cantatas, but that, and that's probably half of the music at least, that Bach composed, in terms of time. And Richter , didn't record all of them altogether, but the ones that he did were slow. They're very influenced, I feel by,he's definitely listened to a lot of Chopin, and the Romantics and that's informing his Bach interpretations. He also had the best singers. His singers on those recordings are fantastic. Schreier, Dietrich Fischer Dieskau, some of the real heavy hitters of the 20th century recorded with Richter, so, [00:26:00] I'd recommend his cantatas, if you like the St. Matthew's Passion of his as well, also particularly slower than some of the others. Henry Oliver: I struggle with the cantatas the most, occasionally find recordings I like. But I, I'm gonna try that 'cause I'm really, I've been working at it for a few years and it, it isn't happening for me yet. Evan Goldfine: I will pick out some favorites for you. Henry Oliver: That would be great. Evan Goldfine: Sure when we were talking about Gould and Bach, and we talked a little bit about Mozart being lighter, but Bach and Gould, they're very serious. I guess Beethoven is also probably just about as serious as, as Bach, but probably the most serious. I mean, when I listen to Beethoven, it's he's trying to shake the world or something, but, but Bach has a deep seriousness about him. Do you find you connect with the seriousness? Can you listen to it? Even when he is being light? It feels very important and not flippant at [00:27:00] all, which is not how I think our culture is well suited towards right now. What do you think about that? Henry Oliver: I think there is a lot of hunger for seriousness in our culture, and I think people are increasingly persuaded of the need to be serious. And maybe it was the pandemic, maybe it's the fact that there's more war in the world. Maybe it's the volatility of modern politics. But I think we've lived through a period when people have been in total denial about death and its implications and about the shortness of life and the need, therefore to do what you must do while you can, and to experience the best while you have the time. And people are now coming back to that and people are now realizing that wow, being serious is the whole point of being alive, so maybe we'll have a revival of Bach 'cause of that. I don't know. Evan Goldfine: I love your ethos of, [00:28:00] we have all these great books. You can read them, you should be reading these great books. They're here for us. Henry Oliver: Of course, and I get it that Netflix is great and I watch Netflix and whatever, but they're not great in the same way. Everyone knows what it feels to stand on top of a mountain and be amazed, right. To experience true wonder at the state of the world. Everyone knows what it is to listen to music that does that to you. But everyone, and I include myself in this, we get trapped in the limits of our own knowledge, the limits of our own experience. We become habituated to what we think excellence is. And listening to someone Bach is a constant reminder that you have no idea this man was creating a heaven on earth in music. You have no idea. Please pay more attention to him and stop assuming what excellence is. And that's why I, and that's why I say it because they push the horizons [00:29:00] of your understanding. The great books do the same thing. They push the horizons of your understanding in ways that you can't anticipate. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Your, your book, I've been thinking about tells the stories of late bloomers and, and you frame them as inspiring figures for the for the rest of us. The people who we've been talking about today are early bloomers, Shakespeare, Austen, Bach. These are not late bloomers. George Harrison was 26 when the Beatles were over. How do we normals deal with these outliers, even if we're hoping for our own second acts? Henry Oliver: Was Bach really, was he not a late bloomer and an early bloomer? I mean, Art of Fugue right. Late. Right. The late work in Bach is, is truly extraordinary. I don't think he shows any signs of slowing down. Evan Goldfine: Oh, that's interesting. So he a late bloomer, even though he's starting off early. His early bloom lets his late bloom go even higher than we could have imagined. Henry Oliver: I, I [00:30:00] don't, I don't listen to the Art of Fugue and think, well, he's been at it for a few years and this is what I expect. I listen to the Art of Fugue and think, where did that come from? And I think there are a lot of composers that. The Beethoven string quartets, right? You can have the highest possible view of Beethoven's early work and still listen to those string quartets and want to know where did they come from. Henry Oliver: Mozart is the same actually. I have Mozart as a very late bloomer in the sense that if you take the view that, not 10,000 hours necessarily, but it takes a certain amount of dedicated practice to become really excellent at something. The story with Mozart is that he starts that dedicated practice much earlier than the rest of us. Despite that the music that we record and listen to from Mozart and that we put on in the concert hall is all the second half of his career, So it's K. 330 and onwards. [00:31:00] Obviously there are a few things earlier and, and whatever. But all this, if I asked you to name, just give me five pieces of Mozart. Tell me the Mozart, you the Mozart, we put in car adverts, the most performed in the console. It's all later on in his career. And what we think of as Mozart's innovations, piano, concertos, the operas, some of the other work, it's all in the last 10 years, right? So I even think Mozart, it sounds crazy 'cause he's the most famous child prodigy. I even think of him as a late bloomer. And I think in some ways this is inherent in music. Because the great composers are very experimental. They're always making discoveries, and they're always incorporating their discoveries in their next thing, their next work. Someone like Bruckner doesn't even start doing symphonies until he is halfway through his career. Evan: Yeah. Henry Oliver: Now, his early choral music is phenomenal. I mean, really, truly beautiful music, but it turns out you [00:32:00] can pivot to symphonies quite late on and do great work. Schubert, the last big piano Sonata writes before he dies. Where was he going next? Could we, could we not kill him, please? So I think it's, I think you can take some, if you want to take a hopeful lesson from these people, which maybe you shouldn't, but if you want to, the lesson is that if you keep doing the work and you keep being inventive, you can be a late bloomer, even if you were an early bloomer. Evan Goldfine: It's a nice thing to ruminate on. Now. Just pivoting to, to one other thing I wanted to ask you before we talk about some specific pieces. For a literature fan, you're a little bit more open to artificial intelligence than some of your peers. Will we get great artificial intelligence, composed literature or music in our lifetimes? Henry Oliver: I don't know enough about, I'm, I'm not a technical [00:33:00] enough person to be able to say timelines. My impression from what I see among the AI experts is, is yes, in principle. My view is that scaling has solved a lot and it seems to have solved things that. Was up for debate whether it would solve those things. And the trajectory of the progress is incredible. If you go back and look at the things people were complaining about two years ago, those now seem extraordinary, finished. And so I'm on the side of we need to keep an eye on this and, and surely it will. The current output is quite bad. It's much worse at writing poetry than it is at medicine now. I think that should be inherently puzzling. That's not the case for humans once humans are [00:34:00] advanced enough, in terms of evolution, in terms of human culture, in terms of tools and technology. Once they can do medicine. They've already been brilliant poets. We got Paradise Lost before we got penicillin. So I want to know why it is, why the, to me, the progress seems very slow on poetry compared to other areas, but I think that just means it'll come later. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. Henry Oliver: The big objection will be that AI is not in the world and that the creation of art really depends on physicality, smell, and touch and, and sound and so forth. And that the, the inner life that we've been talking about is an offshoot of the outer life of sensuality. And that may be what's limiting AI right now, but I really don't know. And I think we start to reach a speculative zone very fast. The other option is AI will have its [00:35:00] own taste in literature. That won't be human taste. So someone set up a, an AI poetry assessment tool, and it's just some guy setting up a tool so we shouldn't take it super seriously. And I tested it by giving it famous poems and it was, oh, incredible, 9.5 out of 10, so inventive, I can't believe the things it's doing with language. And I was like, great. And it, it knew, who's a nine, who's a seven? It was pretty good at not overrating certain people and whatever. And then I gave it some AI poetry expecting it to say, “Really, you're giving me this after Emily Dickinson? No, this is not good.” And it was saying, Ooh, this is so clever, this is so inventive. And I was like, what? But the more I did it, the more I thought, well, I think AI will just appreciate poetry differently. And, I've heard this from a couple of my friends who had it write a sci-fi novel. He didn't love what it [00:36:00] wrote, but the machine loved what it wrote. Evan Goldfine: We all love our own reflection. Henry Oliver: Well, maybe I just wonder if there will be something inherently different about AI art. And that that will perpetuate the gulf we feel between us and the AI’s right now. But I still think that it will be possible now or in the near future for you to read something, to think it's really good and to not be confident. Maybe you'll say, I'm confident it's not AI, but you can't reasonably be confident of that anymore. And I think that reality is it's either with us or it's very close. Evan Goldfine: Yeah. I have not been impressed by any of the music that's been composed yet. Henry Oliver: God, no. Evan Goldfine: God no. I hope there's a gulf. I hope there continues to be a gulf, but I'm, I'm not sure Henry Oliver: What, but why if someone, if, if, if someone gave you some music to listen to and it's Bach level. Brilliant. Do you care? [00:37:00] Evan Goldfine: I want it. Well, what do we mean by Bach level? Brilliant. Is it is Bach was inventive in what he was creating. I mean you, I could see that the AI would be able to create a reasonable simulacrum of another prelude and fugue from the Well-Tempered Clavier. Henry Oliver: No, I'm just saying assume it produces something original and new and you listen to it and you are wow, this is insane. This is as good as Bach and Mozart and Beethoven and Schumann, whatever. And then someone says, oh, this is AI. I don't think you'll care. I think to begin with you might be a bit whatever, but this goes back to what we were saying about the inner life. Assume someone finds some letter somewhere. Oh, it's been kept in a cookery book. In an archive and we didn't know it was here, and it's JS Bach saying. “My friend said, I must have an extraordinary inner life. What does he know? I'm empty on the inside, man. I just, I just throw notes on the page. It's all, it's all a technical game to me.” I wouldn't fall out of love with his music. No way. [00:38:00] Whatever. So if the, if the AI can do it and it is good and you just hear, you go to the concert hall and someone plays on a piano and then they're like, AI composed it, fine, I think that'll be fine. I think people will have a, a strong reaction against it, but it'll be more ideological than anything else. They'll be freaked out by the fact that AI has made such an impression upon them. They won't be denying the impression. Evan Goldfine: Maybe the gulf feels so wide now because I can't imagine what that would actually be, but we'll have to wait to see. We'll have to wait to see what it is. Henry Oliver: Exactly. So, and that's why a one good analogy is modernism. Whether or not it's true that people threw, threw chairs at the Stravinsky performance or whatever, right? they weren't denying that it was art in their, when they did that, they were trying to say, this is not, but everything about their reaction was saying, boy, this is some art. It's just not the art you expected or could have expected. Evan Goldfine: Let's [00:39:00] talk about a couple of your favorite recordings before we wind up. What should everybody listen to from your personal canon? Henry Oliver: The Three Part Inventions played by Glenn Gould live in Moscow is my favorite Bach album. And I go back to it again and again. It was not for a long time, I didn't know it, but once I found it, it became the best thing. It's a niche pick. I can't claim that it's Bach's best music or, or anything that, but it really, It's really brilliant for me and that that's what I would, that's what I would suggest. I want to know, I want to know what's your dark horse pick for a Bach piece? Evan Goldfine: Ah, there are some songs that I heard with Richter and Peter Schreier, the great tenor from the 20th century, playing just these, these organ and voice, just the two of them together. Very, very delicate. Some really extraordinary music. And [00:40:00] I will drop the links to, to those in the notes to the show as well. But yeah, I was really taken by a lot of the singing during my listening tour of this music in ways that I was not expecting to. When I to listen to classical singing, I tend to go to Schubert and Schumann in particular. The great songs from their great song cycles I've always been really connected to. But earlier than that, or even the, the more religious music, I, I was never able to. But some of, some of the stuff that I heard this year, I keep returning to. Henry Oliver: That's great. I'm gonna listen to that. Evan Goldfine: Henry, this has been so great. Thank you for talking Bach and Shakespeare and the expectations of astonishment and I'll be thinking about that as I read my next big thick novels. Henry Oliver: Good. Well, thank you for having me. I enjoyed it very much. Evan Goldfine: Alright, take care. This is a public episode. 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