I have a new music podcast for you — a new episode of Music for a While, here. I begin with a salute to our leap baby: Rossini, born on February 29, 1792. And he’s still fresh as a daisy, musically and spiritually.

In a recent column, I noted something from the Washington Post. Thomas Ahern has written a memoir. He was the CIA station chief in Tehran and a hostage, all those years ago. Let me quote him:

My reaction was mixed when I was offered a tape of Schubert’s 5th symphony. [His captors — the hostage-takers — had offered this tape.] I almost turned it down because the piece was a favorite of my mother, and I feared that listening to it would cost me the equanimity that was still shaky after the abuses of the first months.

As I say in my podcast, we can all understand this. Music carries powerful associations — associations outside the music itself. Associations for which the music is not responsible.

Anyway, I play some of Schubert’s (marvelous) Symphony No. 5.

I might mention one more thing, before concluding this post. Earlier this month, I reviewed the Munich Philharmonic in Carnegie Hall. On the podium was Zubin Mehta — the venerable Zubin Mehta — who used a cane and walked very slowly, with difficulty. I was moved. And I thought back to something, long ago. I will quote the opening of my review:

In 1976, I got a record I wore the grooves off. It was of the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor. The pianist was Artur Rubinstein, and the conductor was Zubin Mehta, leading the Israel Philharmonic. Rubinstein was nearing the end of his long, laureled career: age eighty-nine. Mehta was forty, beginning his career as a world-conqueror.

(Trivial aside: I was twelve.)

Today, Mehta is eighty-seven. He conducted the Brahms Concerto No. 1 in Carnegie Hall on Saturday night. The orchestra was the Munich Philharmonic, of which he is the conductor laureate. His soloist was Yefim Bronfman, a great pianist, now sixty-five.

The eras come and go, obviously. And I close my podcast with some of that very record: Rubinstein at 89, Mehta a mere 40. Again, the podcast is here. Hope you like.