Listening to Desert Island Discs recently got me thinking about what might be the very last recording that I’d want to listen to just before I shuffle off this mortal coil.
There’s one work of genius that I return to time and time again for it’s complexity, atmosphere, inventiveness and shere resonance. There’s several versions, audio and video, but the one I always tune in to is the BBC audio version from 1954.
What’s yours?
I’ve loved Under Milk Wood since I performed in it in my high school senior production. But this is the version I listen to. This was taped live at the 92nd St. Y on May 14, 1953. Thomas was still writing Act II up until shortly before the performance (and he continued work on it after). It became the signature event in the now 86 year history of the Y’s Poetry Center, an institution with which I have been involved for many years .
But my last recording would be Schubert’s String Quintet. Either the Casals recording from 1952 or the Alban Berg Quartet/Heinrich Schiff recording.
That’s a very tough question, but at this moment something from Joni Mitchell maybe “The sire of sorrow”
Martin
Re UMW for me only the Burton recording really brings out the bawdy nature of the text as well as the humour. There’s an Anthony Hopkins/Jonathan Pryce version that has a great supporting cast but it will always be Burton for me.
As for my last ever recording, the rebel in me wants Billy Bragg ‘New England’ because it always makes me smile, but I’ll settle for this one. 17 minutes long, starts gorgeous and then fades out into the night with seemingly random ambient squiggles. Clearly a metaphor for my existence!
Yo La Tengo “Night Falls On Hoboken”, from the album “And Then Nothing Turned itself Inside-Out”
Frederic Chopin took a copy of Bachs Wohl Temperiertes Klavier on his journey to Majorca.
I guess that Island wasn’t spoiled by tourism back in the days.
I would take the same copy of the book music with me, no recording needed.
The answer to that question, like so many other musical questions, will change daily. For today though, I’m going to suggest Into the Mystic from Van Morrison’s Moondance album.
Peter
The last record side of the Solti/Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra recording of Wagner’s Gotterdammerung would suit me. The cataclysmic fall of Valhalla and the gentle sound of the Rhine maidens claiming back the gold stolen from them in Act 1 of Das Rheingold as the music fades away would seem quite appropriate.
John Culshaw’s engineering of this album was I think a real highlight of the early days of stereo LPs and I have loved that recording and that part of that opera since I first heard it while in the lower six form at school in 1966.
There’s far too much music around for me to ever narrow it down to a single album. Re. spoken word, I’d probably go for something to lighten my mood a bit under these circumstances, so maybe John Finnemore’s Radio 4 comedy, Cabin Pressure, which in my view is the best of the many BBC radio comedy series.
The big problem with a question like this is that there are SO many things i’d like to listen to before leaving this planet. The last though (at the moment) is the the Bee Gees “Our Love (Don’t Throw It All Away) from the one night only album. The thing that really get’s me about this is as Barry and Robin turn around after watching Andy on the big screen behind them, they are both in tears. So am i when i both watch it or listen to the album. A brothers love never dies or fades over time and that clearly shows it as well as sounds like a missed love.
If it’s music then it would either be Vaughan Williams’ fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis, or Sibelius’ Finlandia. Why, the latter because it’s the first music to send a shiver down my spine; whereas, the former reminds me of my childhood.
As others have said, this is such a difficult choice. If we are talking about deathbed as opposed to a sojourn on a deserted island, one consideration is whether I would be alone, or with my family, and if the latter whether I want to leave them crying their eyes out or uplifted! Thoughts going through my head as I write this include
Pink Floyd’s Dark side of the moon, partly because it simply magical and partly because of the brilliant closing pair of tracks ending “I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon”.
A Puccini or Verdi tragic opera, but torn between La Traviata and La Boheme, (of course in its entirety), for their cathartic sadness.
Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyres for its dramatic get up and go feeling.
. . . . . . .
Three hours lateri haven’t decided, so I’ll come back maybe tomorrow!
Hard to say, but maybe the Berg’s studio recording of Beethoven String Quartet No. 16 Op. 135, the final movement resolving all the tensions in the work and producing a sense of glorious calm and joy.
Nearly a day later and I still don’t have an answer - however I am moved to wonder if there is a risk to this, a psychological jinx if you like: Having identified a piece of music you’d like pn your deathbed, is there a risk that upon deciding one day to play it, your subconscious may say “Right chaps this is it, time to go, and you drift off into the eternal sleep…?!
The Allman Brothers do a wonderful live version of that song. It’s on YouTube. Lovely song.
Hmmm. I think I would not choose an album at all but instead a well loved movie. Something familiar with a great soundtrack. We could both fade to black together.
To satisfy such a morbid scenario, it would almost certainly be the movie equivalent to comfort food rather than high art. Maybe Star Wars or Ghostbusters. I dunno, it’s really tough, but a movie for sure.
Who Knows Where the Time Goes, Sandy Denny.
When Louby-Lou became ill last year and I was told she only had weeks to live, I asked the vet for some sedatives that I could give her before I brought her in for the last time. We had a final weekend of revisiting her favourite beach and then I drove her in the jeep through the woods and onto the big 60 acre field so we could just sit together as we had done many time before to take in the view.
When Monday morning came I knew it was time, so I rang the vet to let them know and I sat in my study with Louby in her bed beside me and I gave her the sedative. The radio was on and it was Classic FM, and just as her eyes started to close on came Vaughan Williams’ Lark Ascending. A more apt piece of music I couldn’t really imagine at that time, although listening to it now it does take me back to that moment.
So, when I feel the time has come, if somebody could give me a sedative while I lay in my bed listening to the Lark Ascending, I think that might be a great way to go.
Excellent choice, great voice and great song. ‘Banks of the Nile’ featuring Sandy Denny in Fotheringay is a song I play more often, but maybe not the best for this ‘occasion’.
Taxi war dance. Count Basie with Lester Young soloing. I know it note for note.
That quite impossible picture of ‘surrounded by family and friends’ will not really apply to me so a couple of plays should see me quietly up and away. Hopefully.
I would choose the same song, but by Eva Cassidy
