Cantus Firmus

A private notebook of recordings worth returning to.

This is where I keep notes on the records I keep coming back to. I am not a musicologist; I am someone who plays a piece, then plays it again the next morning, and then writes a few lines about why the second listen was different from the first.

The shelves here are organised by impulse rather than by canon. There is a corner for late Bach, a corner for Brahms in November, a corner for whatever Hilary Hahn did most recently. Some entries are a paragraph long; some are a single sentence I wrote at midnight and never edited.

If you arrived here from a search engine, the most useful page is probably the music index. If you would like to know who is keeping these notes, the about page tells you as much as I am willing to tell you.


Currently on the desk

JSB LATE WORKS 2023

Late Bach: Counterpoint and Contemplation

Various artists · curated 2023

The compilation I made for myself the winter I finally sat down with the Art of Fugue.

Brahms INTERMEZZI · OP. 117 at half-light

Intermezzi at Half-Light

Brahms · Op. 116–119

Three quiet pianists, one set of pieces, an excuse to compare phrasings on a Sunday morning.

F.S. WANDERER NOTEBOOKS Lieder & Impromptus

The Wanderer Notebooks

Schubert · selected Lieder & D.899

Made for the train ride between Hamburg and Lübeck, but it works at the kitchen table too.


Recent notes

Two Doors

Why Debussy and Ravel keep getting programmed together, and why I am beginning to see it.


Starting with Op. 131

Beethoven's late quartets, in the order I came to them rather than the order they were written.


Twelve Nights with Chopin

An experiment from the December I tried to fall asleep without a screen.


Late Bach: Counterpoint and Contemplation

A nine-track sequence pulled from the last decade of Bach's life — Goldberg, the Art of Fugue, the B-minor Mass.

See all classical notes →