His surname reads the same forward and backward; which is oddly appropriate for a composer whose music plenty of listeners have felt doesn’t seem to really go anywhere. But knowing what I do of Max Reger, I’m sure he couldn’t have cared less about other people’s opinions.

Perhaps the craziest exemplar of crazy German contrapuntalism, Reger could write music of such density that the individual voices could get lost in a tangle, deep inside a knot, somewhere in an impenetrable thicket.

He was mostly a composer of “abstract” music – mainly a lot of fugues and sets of variations – seeing himself as the heir of Beethoven and Brahms. But it is the Baroque masters Reger most closely resembles, in his own gargantuan, overcooked way, especially in his organ works, of which he composed many.

Aside from his sporadically delightful (though occasionally borderline) “Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart” and a handful of organ works, most of his prolific output is known mainly by specialists. For some reason or another, Rudolf Serkin remained a high-profile torchbearer. Serkin recorded Reger’s Piano Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra and, later in life, the “Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Bach.”

To me, Reger comes closest to being palatable – and even charming – when restricted to a single, non-keyboard instrument, as in his sonatas for solo violin and suites for solo cello.

Also, it sounds like he may have actually had some fun composing his “Four Tone Poems after Arnold Böcklin.” Böcklin, you may recall, was the Swiss artist who painted “The Isle of the Dead,” which inspired the third of these. Surprisingly, the tone poems are late works. Did anyone see them coming? I guess after a lifetime of getting all tangled up, Reger just wanted to walk around with loose shoelaces for a change.

Despite the fact that in most of his photos he looks like he’s got a mouth full of sauerkraut, Reger actually proved himself to have a sharp sense of humor. His most famous retort to a critic came in the form of a letter written in 1906. It reads: “I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have your review in front of me. Soon it will be behind me.”

Reger, you rascal. Why couldn’t you get more of that into your music?

On the occasion of his sesquicentenary, happy 150th, Max Reger!

“Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart”

“Fantasy and Fugue on B-A-C-H”

Rudolf Serkin plays the “Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Bach”

Serkin plays the Piano Concerto

Sonata for Unaccompanied Violin in G Major, Op. 91, No. 6

Mov’t I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW4Jk3zmbzg
Mov’t II https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKfGFwQZgeg
Mov’t III https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u_sWKiLc60
Mov’t IV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoaTz5mVuXg

Suite for Unaccompanied Cello in G Major, Op. 131c, No. 1

“Four Tone Poems after Arnold Böcklin,” with the paintings that inspired them (let the playlist run)

PHOTOS: The many moods of Max Reger (1873-1916)