Max Reger’s birthday celebration 🥳

Max Reger has a birthday. Hooray!
Reger was one of the greatest composers of all time! Only people who know only a fraction of Reger's enormous output would say otherwise.
The deeply German Reger was neither charming nor fascinating. Those around him saw him as downright unsympathetic. But so are said to have been the three big B's: Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. Hugo Riemann said to the young Reger: "If you want, you can become another Bach! At least another Brahms."
Reger and Bach could have been born on the same date, but Reger was in a hurry and was born two days "premature" 19th March 1873. He was busy all his life, as if he knew he would die at the age of 43.
Reger's Bach Variations op. 81 is considered by many to be his finest piano work, and fully on a par with Bach's Goldberg Variations, Beethoven's Diabelli Variations and Brahms' Handel Variations. The Bach theme is an oboe melody from Cantata 128 "Auf Christi Himmelfahrt allein". The theme is varied 14 times, finally reaching its apotheosis in a colossal four-part double fugue.
Here you get the theme and variations 1 and 12.
Reger himself said that "The pig and the artist have in common that they are only appreciated after their death". In his case it’s only partly true. So do yourself and Reger the favour of listening to (or playing) more of his all-too-unfamiliar but wonderful music.