Having someone give you their recommendation for a favorite piece of music is like being given the recipe you will cook every Thursday night. Usually it’s only close friends we trust for these heartfelt judgements, but in the BBC Radio 4 “Soul Music” series it’s strangers who give their compelling reasons for having taken a piece of music into their lives.

And this week’s program (available on the BBC i-player until Saturday 10 October) focussed on Strauss’s Vier Letzte Lieder, or Four Last Songs: a selection which Clare Medwin has already highlighted for Classical TV as a persuasive demonstration of the naked emotional force of this searingly lovely music.

For the sheer power of personal experience it’s impossible to ignore the accounts of these four interviewees who have forged very intimate connections with these lieder. The young man who experienced them at a concert on the night which turned out to have been when his dearly-loved mother died. The woman who saw a frail Pina Bausch perform to them: a moving progress with Zimmer frame across an empty stage.

As I heard their testimonies, I was already reminding myself to watch this video again – listening more loudly this time. We always have space for another significant piece of music in our lives. And a good recommendation is always worth passing on.

Piccolo