Travels with Bach
To a child growing up in a traditional family in a small town in India in the seventies the world was as yet without Bach, Beethoven or Mozart. Musical sounds that met his ears were the sounds of popular film music, so the child thought that he did not care for music. The child turned a young man and went away to Delhi to study where a friend, for reasons now lost to time, lent him a cassette tape containing the Mozart Clarinet Concerto and Bach Double Concerto and a Walkman. The young man put on the flimsy earphones and commenced on a journey which has not yet ended, whose wondrous sights are not yet exhausted, which reveals yet another marvel the moment he begins to think he might seen it all or at least the most moving. That he was born after Bach had written his Cello Suites and Beethoven his Quartets and was fortunate enough to find them - the thought grips him from time to time with a force that leaves him breathless with amazement at what life can bring.
© 2010 Deutsche Grammophon
