Hayden to Haydn Cologne, 16.06.2012 Dear Josef, This may strike you as a somewhat strange document, written over centuries by someone very distant to your times. Nevertheless I trust these words will find you well. I hail from a place not yet mapped by contemporaries of your time (a group of islands far away in the Southern oceans now called “New Zealand”) and I play an instrument not yet invented by your peers (a kind of curved metallic-bodied woodwind called a “saxophone”). It is surely comforting for you to know that your music is still performed with gusto and that your voice has spanned the centuries, outlasting the wickedest of wars and tribulations, both in worldly affairs and in our hallowed realm of sculptured sound. I was hesitant at first to approach your music, but the kind benefactors of Brühl convinced me. The music I have grown up with is improvised in its intrinsic nature. Perhaps the closest bridge between us here would be you...