An exceptional individual finds himself alone in the universe, partly because he is struggling to articulate his understanding, which is inseparable from his suffering. Heinrich Schütz, whose long life extended through the most destructive war of the seventeenth century, set the story of Jesus’s last hours with unparalleled economy and intensity in his St. John Passion, one of the treasures of German music from before Bach. From our own time comes the image of Stephen Hawking in Rolf Riehm’s powerful work for piano and bass drum set against a starscape of other instruments. Different ages, different resources, but the same high level of expressive force.