A Chromatic Fantasia

Bach

Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D Minor

Gyorgy Sandor, Piano

WALTER: ‘I found myself with the Red Army in 1934 just as they were about to start the Long March across the country during their war with the Nationalists.  I was with Zhou Enlai while he was planning the whole thing.  Stunningly parochial little men those Chinese leaders were, but Zhou was different.  I found him rather enlightened compared to the others.  He shared a cup of tea with me in his tent and we surveyed the maps together and strategised with great merriment.  To this day, I have not had anything to equal the soothing properties of that particular cup of tea.  Needless to say, I only managed a few kilometres of the walk before withdrawing the astral body.  I didn’t really have a horse in that race.  If I’d had, I would have ridden it gladly.  Another time, I danced in fountains of gold in a city of the Third Earth, a city which I have since forgotten the name of unfortunately.  There are multiple Earths available for visitation.  Mirrors of our own world.  Beautiful mirrors.  And sometimes terrible.  Most projectionists are limited in extension and can travel only within our own physical sphere and its duplicates.  But there are exceptions.  I have a patient back in Copenhagen, a sufferer of impotence and separation anxiety, who is uniquely accomplished in the command of his astral body. He once cracked the frightening clouds of the Saturn moon Titan and became friendly with the locals there.  Sadly I have yet to achieve interplanetary projection myself.’

GEISSEL: ‘I should submit now that I don’t believe a single word of it, but I hope you don’t mind if I maintain this discretionary fascination.’

WALTER: ‘As you please.’

GEISSEL: ‘How is this music for you, by the way?’

WALTER: ‘It’s fine.  But a little restless.  Would you have something a little more....bland perhaps?’

Elgar

Symphony No. 1

London Philharmonic: Sir Adrian Boult, Conductor