Music matters. I believe this always, but especially when choosing the soundtrack for a walk. Today’s choice was Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos. 

I started with Number Two, remembering the story my long-ago piano teacher told me about the physical rigors of playing the trumpet solos of that piece. Her husband played the trumpet, she said, and the second Brandenburg was so difficult, even when played on the smaller piccolo trumpet, that one could pop a blood vessel with the effort.

Apparently, she did not make this up. A quick bit of research today tells me that the second Bach Brandenburg Concerto is “a trumpet player’s Everest.”

For a walker, though, it’s an energetic beauty of a piece. It revs one up and keeps one going. And this morning, it kept me bouncing along. 

(One of my favorite music-themed photos, shot May 2010 in Vienna’s Musikverein.)