Rediscovering lost loves and finding them fresh and new is always a wonderful feeling. This last year my life became engulfed in singing and I stopped listening to a lot of purely instrumental works. This set of albums is the best of both worlds, since you can hear the pianist humming along with the fugue.

Glenn Gould’s Well-Tempered Clavier is astonishing — it makes me want to lie down on my back in a sunny field, go skipping through the library, tiptoe through a dark cave, fight super-villains, and prove this goddamn theorem. Mr. Gould, you created an inspiration, an instigation, and hopefully what will be an incipient instantiation of some real progress. I salute you.