Can't stop the music

Having completed such stupendous recording projects as the complete keyboard works of J.S. Bach (43 albums) and Franz Liszt (51), the pianist and composer Gunnar Johansen, at 83, remains busy and ambitious more than 10 years after his retirement from the UW-Madison. "I have always worked full-force," he tells contributing writer Jess Anderson for an arts section cover profile. "I take a heart medication, and I'd love to get my arteries unclogged, so I suppose it's a matter of what medicine can do." Allowing that he may be done "with these big recording projects," Johansen recently looked at a four-cylinder Honda motorcycle and is "flirting with the idea of doing all the Chopin Waltzes, to go with the Nocturnes I did not so long ago." Johansen dies in 1991.