The Greatest Cadenza I Ever Heard

I knew John Sauer when we were both Antioch students in the early '70s. He was -- and still is -- a brilliant pianist who never took his extraordinary talent seriously unless he had to for concerts and private audition recordings for others that I was tasked to tape. Before the "proper" recordings for those auditions, John would play joke pieces he'd make up on the spot, parodying snarky television ads and silly childrens tunes, playing them straight until he entered a dark zone, and the tunes would suddenly turn into something far more sinister. All spontaneous, all effortless and, as I said, all brilliant. Because of the student strike that shut the campus down for most of the Spring '73 quarter, music faculty members David Stock and John Ronsheim organized a concert at Wittenberg University, located a few miles north in Springfield, on May 24. David would be conducting his student orchestra (and his wife who was part of the 1st Violin section), and John would be directing his student chorus. The highlights began after the intermission when John's chorus sang Dufay's M. Ave Regina Caelorum -- this was partly in preparation for the chorus's European tour a month later -- and David conducted Bach's Fifth Brandenburg Concerto. I recorded both the Dufay and Bach that night. The Bach concerto featured a stunningly difficult cadenza -- an extended keyboard solo near the end of the first movement where the tempo would hold steady in 4th gear but then shift to an unthinkable 10th, then slowing back down to 4th until the orchestra returned. And John Sauer was going to play it. Everyone who knew John didn't know what to expect. Was he adequately prepared? Would he mess up? Was this going to work? We were all at the edge of our seats with every note he played, watching to see what would happen, especially when we had a suspicion that he was sight-reading the score. Keep in mind: We're not looking at perfection here; we're looking at survival. I'm not sure if that tension can be sensed by those who weren't there and listening to it now over half a century later. But for me, it's still felt, this high-wire act without a net and then coming out whole again on the other side. For me, it still remains a wonder. The cadenza begins here soon after the 7-minute mark. Excuse the crude video; there was very little with which to work.