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Published in Japanese in 2016
Translated into English by Jay Rubin 2017
“Murakami writes with admirable discipline, producing ten pages a day, after which he runs ten kilometres, works on translations, and then reads, listens to records and cooks, and cooks. His passions colour his non-fiction output, from What I Talk About When I Talk About Running to Absolutely On Music, and they also seep into his novels and short stories, providing quotidian moments in his otherwise freewheeling flights of imaginative enquiry.” from Murakami 2020 Diary.
Absolutely On Music‘s target is classical music-lovers. Others may not be able to follow the dialogues without a familiarity with the musical pieces discussed. Some of the conversations covered are: Beethoven Third Piano Concerto, Brahms at Carnegie Hall, The Relationship of Writing to Music, Eugene Ormandy, Gustave Mahler, Shin’ichi Mori, and Opera.