bassoon

“Arundo Donax Me Why (it’s a reed pun): a bunch of music, almost entirely featuring reed instruments, that’s stuck with me as a country boy who ended up playing about the most arcane, un-country instrument in the orchestra, bookended by two ripper concertos for it.”

“…the conceit of the piece takes the form of Beethoven himself being subjected to a present-day audiology test. [The composer famously wrote about his diminishing hearing in the Heiligenstadt Testament (1802).] In his head, the blips and blurts of the test compete with a melody that strains to emerge, but never quite manages to do so, no matter how hard Beethoven pushes to the limits of the bassoon’s uppermost register.”