'Surprise is essential'

Louis Andriessen, the 70-year-old Dutch master of countercultural art-music, loves Bach, Stravinsky, Charlie Parker and Cecil Taylor; praises and practices improvisation; wonders why Mahler symphonies are "so boring;" and roundly disses the 19th-century style of "sentimental, precious, hear-me-beautiful playing," in an interview with Elissa Poole in The Globe and Mail of Toronto:

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