Desert Island Discs

[Peter]

OK this is a hard one as you have to be cruel in omitting loads of great music but you're only allowed 10 choices to take to your castaway island.

Here's my choice:

Gabriel appeared / Chernegov-Nomerov Egor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzK5YEVMHn4

Gustav Mahler - "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen" (Rückert) - Fischer-Dieskau
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTqbTP5qy7k

Bach - B minor Mass / Eliot-Gardiner

Beethoven - Symphony no.9 - Ferenc Fricsay

Richard strauss 4 last songs - Jessye Norman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaAorqR0ICk&t=847s

Bruckner - Symphony no.8 / karajan

Puccini - Chi il bel sogno di Doretta / Leontyne Price
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJLO89EOAoY

Dvorak - 'Cello Concerto in B minor / Rostropovich

Victoria - Requiem Mass

Handel - L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato: As Steals The Morn Upon The Night
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUQAG4r5nrM

[Michael]

In the BBC series, you have to pick one as a final choice.
Which one of these ten would you pick, Peter?
No pressure.

[Peter]

In the BBC series, you have to pick one as a final choice.
Which one of these ten would you pick, Peter?
No pressure.

Well that would have to be the Bach B minor Mass. I think you also are allowed a book and a luxury item - that would be Dostoyevsky 'The Brothers Karamazov' and an mp3 player so I could actually listen to the music. It seems to me on the BBC series they'd arrive on the Island with their discs with no means of playing them!
I'm looking forward to reading other members' choices - no pressure!

[Humoresque]

Agree about the Bach B Minor Mass: my number 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZXMqaRkGqQ

And the runners-up are:

Bach: "Mache dich mein Herze, rein" aus "Matthäus-Passion"/Quasthoff
Beethoven: "Hammerklavier" Piano Sonata, Brendel or Kovacevich
Beethoven: Piano Sonata Op. 109
Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 "Eroica" Haitink
Brahms: Symphony No. 4 - Carlos Kleiber
Schubert: Four Impromptus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1rCDLGcVhs

Wagner: Liebestod aus "Tristan und Isolde"
Strauss: "Vier Letzte Lieder" Tennstedt/Popp
Ravel: Piano Trio in A

[Peter]

Nice choices Humoresque and "Mache dich mein Herze, rein" and the Liebstod were also on my original list, but you have to be ruthless! You've only chosen 4 Schubert Impromptus but you could go for a disc with all 8 plus the Moments Musicaux! Any thoughts on what you'd take to read?

[Humoresque]

Nice choices Humoresque and "Mache dich mein Herze, rein" and the Liebstod were also on my original list, but you have to be ruthless! You've only chosen 4 Schubert Impromptus but you could go for a disc with all 8 plus the Moments Musicaux! Any thoughts on what you'd take to read?

The Complete Poems of John Keats
Shakespeare's "Othello"
Tolstoy "Anna Karenina"
Dickens "Great Expectations"
Solomon's "Beethoven"
Swafford's "Brahms"
Any biography of George Gershwin
Joseph McBride, "John Ford"
Richard Ellman "Oscar Wilde"
and anything by Christopher Hitchens

[Peter]

The Complete Poems of John Keats
Shakespeare's "Othello"
Tolstoy "Anna Karenina"
Dickens "Great Expectations"
Solomon's "Beethoven"
Swafford's "Brahms"
Any biography of George Gershwin
Joseph McBride, "John Ford"
Richard Ellman "Oscar Wilde"
and anything by Christopher Hitchens

Ah but you're only allowed one book so you need to chuck 9 overboard!

[hal9000]

If there was one and only one Beethoven piece that I was allowed, I think I'd choose the Missa Solemnis.

[Humoresque]

Ah but you're only allowed one book so you need to chuck 9 overboard!

Like choosing which one of your children! Not possible.

[Michael]

Well, this is my list for today. By tomorrow it could change substantially.
My musical interests are mainly symphonic and centred on one particular composer, but I’ve endeavoured to prune him back a bit and give others a chance.

Mahler: 4th Symphony
Schubert: 5th Symphony
Mozart: 40th Symphony
Haydn: 101st Symphony (London)
Sibelius: 2nd Symphony
Bach: Orchestral Suite No. 1 in C major
Dvorak: String Quartet No. 12 (American)
Beethoven: 3rd Symphony (Eroica)
Beethoven: Waldstein Piano Sonata
Beethoven: First Razumovsky Quartet

If I had to pick just one, it would be the last-mentioned work.

For my book, I’m struggling between “David Copperfield” and “War and Peace” but I may ultimately have to settle for a biography of Beethoven.
Thayer’s is much too big so I think I’ll settle for Jan Swafford’s “Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph”.

For my one luxury item, I’m not too choosy. A simple 70 inch Oled Smart Television (run on a solar-powered battery) with a built-in blu-ray player which will also play CDs. Wi-Fi would be handy but I think that’s pushing things a bit for a desert island.

[Chris]

What really counts as a disc? One physical disc? One release? One piece?

Does a complete set of Beethoven symphonies count as 1, 9, or as many discs as there are in the set?

[Michael]

That's a tricky one.
The series first went out in 1942 - long before vinyl - when everything commercially available was on 78rpm shellac discs which could only run for three or four minutes a side. Long playing records didn't come out (I think) until about six or seven years later.

So back in 1942, if somebody picked Beethoven's Fifth, for example, it could take up to four shellac discs. But, of course, all you would hear on the airwaves would be portion of the opening movement.

In all its history, the piece most often chosen has been Beethoven's Ninth - but what most of the castaways meant was the "Ode to Joy" theme - not the whole shebang.

I think each choice should be a single work - regardless of length - and this could be the St Matthew Passion or the Minute Waltz. I think if somebody picked, say, the Brandenburg Concertos or the Ring Cycle, they wouldn't make it past the customs.




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[Michael]

If there was one and only one Beethoven piece that I was allowed, I think I'd choose the Missa Solemnis.

Any particular recording? It's one tough piece of work but my favourite is the Klemperer from the 60s.

[Humoresque]

Nice choices Humoresque and "Mache dich mein Herze, rein" and the Liebstod were also on my original list, but you have to be ruthless! You've only chosen 4 Schubert Impromptus but you could go for a disc with all 8 plus the Moments Musicaux! Any thoughts on what you'd take to read?

The Schubert Impromptus I was talking about are superior to the earlier ones, IMO. And I should have put on my list Schubert's String Quintet in C. My recording from the Emerson SQ and Rostropovich is magnificent.

Michael, I've been told by a friend that Swafford's Beethoven is an exceptional biography. I'm about to start reading it within weeks and very much look forward to that. I like the Solomon (2nd ed.) because of the psychological insights the author brings to the life of Beethoven (though many suggest the scholarship is now dated). Some people don't like that but I do because I prefer to think in three dimensional terms about the people I admire. And it's magnificently written.

[Michael]

Michael, I've been told by a friend that Swafford's Beethoven is an exceptional biography. I'm about to start reading it within weeks and very much look forward to that. I like the Solomon (2nd ed.) because of the psychological insights the author brings to the life of Beethoven (though many suggest the scholarship is now dated). Some people don't like that but I do because I prefer to think in three dimensional terms about the people I admire. And it's magnificently written.

I haven't read Solomon's biography but I do have his "Beethoven Essays" which I enjoyed but some of his psychological theories are a little off-the-wall for me. One of them is entitled: "The Posthumous Life of Ludwig Maria van Beethoven" which refers to the death of the first Ludwig, born a year before Beethoven, and the effect it supposedly had on the composer. Other than the fact that it may have compounded his confusion about the date of his own birth, I find it hard to believe that it affected him in any way.

However, a sizeable chunk of this book is devoted to Beethoven's Tagebuch - a kind of a diary in which he made occasional entries - and I found this to be much more interesting.

I can heartily recommend Swafford's biography. The opening is a little fanciful as he describes (or imagines) Beethoven's baptism in the church of St. Remigius in Bonn (which I visited over a year ago) but it soon settles down to fairly solid facts. Like Solomon, Swafford does have his own theories but he deals with the music in a way that is totally comprehensible - even to someone like me who can't read a note! It's only a thousand pages long but I've read it twice!






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