Hear 2.5 Hours of the Classical Music in Haruki Murakami’s Novels: Liszt, Beethoven, Janáček, and More

Haru­ki Murakami’s hit nov­el 1Q84 fea­tures a mem­o­rable scene in a taxi­cab on a grid­locked free­way whose radio is play­ing Leoš Janáček’s Sin­foni­et­ta. “It is, as the book sug­gests, tru­ly the worst pos­si­ble music for a traf­fic jam,” writes Sam Ander­son in a New York Times Mag­a­zine pro­file of the nov­el­ist: “busy, upbeat, dra­mat­ic — like five nor­mal songs fight­ing for suprema­cy inside an emp­ty paint can.” Muraka­mi tells Ander­son that he “chose the Sin­foni­et­ta because that is not a pop­u­lar music at all. But after I pub­lished this book, the music became pop­u­lar in this coun­try… Mr. Sei­ji Oza­wa thanked me. His record has sold well.”

In addi­tion to being a world-famous con­duc­tor, the late Oza­wa was also, as it hap­pens, a per­son­al friend of Murakami’s; the two even pub­lished a book, Absolute­ly on Music, that tran­scribes a series of their con­ver­sa­tions about the for­mer’s voca­tion and the lat­ter’s avo­ca­tion, a dis­tinc­tion with an unclear bound­ary in Murakami’s case.

“I have lots of friends who love music, but Haru­ki takes it way beyond the bounds of san­i­ty,” writes Oza­wa, and indeed, Muraka­mi has always made music a part of his work, both in his process of cre­at­ing it and in its very con­tent. His books offer numer­ous ref­er­ences to West­ern pop (espe­cial­ly of the nine­teen-six­ties), jazz, and also clas­si­cal record­ings — fif­teen of which you can hear in the video from NTS radio above.

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured NTS, the Lon­don-based online radio sta­tion known for its deep dives on themes from spir­i­tu­al jazz to Hunter S. Thomp­son, for its “Haru­ki Muraka­mi Day” broad­cast of music from his nov­els. Open­ing with Le mal du pays from Franz Liszt’s Années de pèleri­nage, the NTS Guide to Clas­si­cal Music from Muraka­mi Nov­els con­tin­ues on to “Vogel als Prophet” from Robert Schu­man­n’s Wald­szenen, and there­after includes  Beethoven’s Sym­pho­ny No. 7 In A Major, Mendelssohn’s Cleve­land Quar­tet, Wag­n­er’s Der Fliegende Hol­län­der, and much else besides. You may not be able to recall where you’ve seen all of these pieces men­tioned in Murakami’s work right away, but you’ll sure­ly rec­og­nize the Sin­foni­et­ta the moment it comes along.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

A 96-Song Playlist of Music in Haru­ki Murakami’s Nov­els: Miles Davis, Glenn Gould, the Beach Boys & More

A 3,350-Song Playlist of Music from Haru­ki Murakami’s Per­son­al Record Col­lec­tion

A 26-Hour Playlist Fea­tur­ing Music from Haru­ki Murakami’s Lat­est Nov­el, Killing Com­menda­tore

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Day: Stream Sev­en Hours of Mix­es Col­lect­ing All the Jazz, Clas­si­cal & Clas­sic Amer­i­can Pop Music from His Nov­els

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.