Podcast Episodes

133: ¿Por qué César Vallejo?

César Vallejo (1892-1938) is one of my favorite poets. To define his style is difficult: one doesn’t understand his poems so much as one absorbs them…

5 months ago

132: The Other Bach Piece You Probably Played

It’s thrilling to look at the music of Bach’s predecessors. We see the very shape of Bach to come (I say, referencing my own album…) In several of Bu…

5 months, 1 week ago

131: Dissecting The Dragon, A Minor Book 1

Perhaps before composing the bulk of The Well-Tempered Clavier, Bach had been challenging himself to create a fugue with real technical daring. This …

5 months, 2 weeks ago

130: A Double Fugue & A Second Manuscript

Remember this image from the E-flat Major Prelude and Fugue epsiode, where Bach puts a double fugue at the half within the half?

Bach does it once mor…

5 months, 3 weeks ago

129: I Got Rid Of All My Books (11 Years Ago...)

Back to Bach next week! In the meantime, I thought you’d appreciate a story I wrote after I ‘discarded’ the majority of my possessions— mostly books…

5 months, 4 weeks ago

128: Donald Francis Tovey's Well-Tempered

I don’t blame us for preferring our rather clean, modern Bach editions to this:

But are we so confident in our own interpretations that we can throw o…

6 months, 1 week ago

Bach's Birthday is NOT March 31st.

Happy Birthday Johann. Today, March 21st, not March 31st.

Let me repeat that for those of you feeling clever or citing google without thinking:

Happy B…

6 months, 2 weeks ago

127: How I Memorize Bach (By Ear)

I was always jealous of jazz musicians, simply learning music off recordings— no sheet music necessary. Why couldn’t I do that? Why don’t classical m…

6 months, 2 weeks ago

126: What The Instrument Tells You About The Music

Analysis starts at 17 minutes. Sorry, I got carried away talking about the possible peculiar paradox of being a pianist. Just before making this epis…

6 months, 3 weeks ago

125: What Is An Ornament?

“The discontent of being between two notes; the urge to break free of a single note.”-Lionel Party (Paraphrased ca. 2005)

What an opening:

In this epis…

7 months ago