Preface
The year of my life in which I learned the most music was my first at Oxford. I was eighteen. Most of my schoolfriends had gone to Cambridge, and I had not yet acquired many university friends, so I had plenty of time to myself. I had a room of my own, a comfortable chair, and a stereo system that I would have been unable to afford but for the winning of a generous school prize the previous year. This was the period when I first got to know the Ring cycle, the Bach Passions, the Mahler symphonies, and the Mozart piano concertos. I had already heard the last concerto, K595, at home, and been taken by my parents to hear Alfred Brendel play it. The rest I discovered for myself with the help of a set of Geza Anda LPs. Cuthbert Girdlestone’s book on the concertos, which I quote in the essay, was a tactful and tasteful companion. It was thanks to Mozart’s music more than anyone else’s that I chased away the remnants of adolescent anguish. The finale of the Jupiter symphony, repeatedly and loudly played in the middle of the night to keep the spirits up, brought aggrieved but essentially mild rebukes from surrounding bachelor dons, who readily conceded that, in terms of content if not volume, the disturbances to their nights’ rest could have been much worse.