Done good with Kristen today, playing the Aria ("Air for the G-string") from the Bach orchestral suite (one of two, I think) in D Major, to start with: We had seven minutes before she had to take something out of the oven. Then, after minor kitchen chores and an excellent pot of coffee, we tackled the 'Linz,' getting the ictus right, getting the notes right. Then we broke for a while, had a smoke and a chat, and resumed with one of our favourite late Haydn symphonies in E Flat, finding, as always, ever greater depths in it. I wish there were a way to put all that on my tombstone.

It's not so much that I disapprove of or dislike music that isn't Bach, Mozart or Haydn, it's just that my first, sincerest impulse is to deny that it exists. Oh well, sure, Beethoven and Schubert, and sometimes Wagner (We're beginning to glide almost faultlessly through the mazy enharmonics of the Siegfried Idyll), but otherwise...nada...Why bother?