I thought choosing desert island books was bad enough; trying whittle items of music - one of the other mainstays of my daily life - down to just eight items has proved to be so difficult that I thought about not taking part in this thread as it was just an impossible job. Somebody else said that musical choice depends on mood and mood depends on the individual circumstances of any day, which means that there can probably never be a definitive list, only a provisional one. In that spirit, that's what I've provided - the eight items that as a castaway on my desert island I just couldn't do without and would listen to over and over and over again. After all, that's what I already do, unfortunately not on my own island.
I've bent the rules by defining several pieces grouped together (as in a box set) as one item. If it has several CDs and they all fit into one sleeve that sits on my shelves, that's one item. That's my interpretation of the rules and I'm sticking to it - anybody with a problem with that is welcome to consult my solicitor.
1. Jean Sibelius: Complete Symphonies - Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Herbert von Karajan. There are many, many recordings of Sibelius symphonies ranging from the unbelievably dire (yes, I mean you, Mark Elder) to the good to the excellent to the superb. The Karajan recordings of all seven symphonies however are in a class apart. As a very old man Sibelius himself said that Karajan, then a young man, was the only conductor who truly understood his music. There's no higher praise from a composer than that, and the man was right. Recorded for Deutsche Gramophon over a number of years, these are that rare thing, the perfect, unimprovable-upon recordings.
2. Ralph Vaughan Williams: Complete Symphonies - Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vernon Handley. Same reason as with Sibelius: the best recordings of my other favourite symphony cycle by my equal favourite composer - even more so than the much older EMI recordings by Sir Adrian Boult (a personal friend of the composer). Boult was Tod Handley's teacher and it shows. Perfection, especially in the Third and the Fifth.
3. Dmitri Shostakovich: The Complete String Quartets. The Emerson Quartet recording is very highly regarded; mine is the older Fitzwilliam Quartet recording and my preferred personal favourite. Very likely the greatest cycle of string quartets ever written other than the late quartets of Beethoven, possibly even more so that the Bartok quartets. There's a cliche that the fifteen symphonies were the public Shostakovich whereas the quartets were the private Shostakovich. There's a lot wrong with that reading but to go into it would be of interest only to die-hard Shostakovich buffs (that's me and trent and nobody else); over all there's still something in it, given that these fifteen hefty quartets cover every nuance of feeling — from a tuneful Fourth (a good introduction to anybody interested in taking on the Shostakovich quartets) to the gruelling Thirteenth and the death-haunted Fifteenth.
4. Dmitri Shostakovich: The Complete Symphonies - WDR Orchestra conducted by Rudolf Barshai. Another symphony cycle conducted by a conductor known personally to the composer, so able to be authoritative with regard to the composer's own intentions. Shostakovich's fifteen huge symphonies are widely regarded in classical music circles as the greatest symphony cycle of the twentieth century, more so even than Mahler (who influenced Shostakovich massively).
5. The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers. Many people, Stones fans or otherwise, regard 1972's Exile on Main Street as the greatest Stones album ever recorded. Not to me it isn't; Exile is a very great album indeed but its predecessor the year before, Sticky Fingers, is to me the masterpiece. Along with #6, to me the greatest rock album ever made.
6. Derek and the Dominos - Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. Everybody knows Layla and its deathless riff; fewer know the double album on which it appears, a thinly-veiled vehicle for a publicity-shunning Eric Clapton trying to avoid superstardom and attempting to get back to being a member of a band. Very close to a concept album — a mixture of blues standards, original material and some covers (the version of the recently-deceased Jimi Hendrix’s Little Wing far outstrips the original, not something often said about Hendrix’s music) — tied together by Clapton’s obsessive infatuation with the model Pattie Boyd, at that time Mrs George Harrison … Clapton’s close friend. Recorded in Miami on a daily diet of suicidal obsession, cocaine, Johnny Walker, Clapton’s slowly growing heroin addiction and very little else, overall it’s perhaps the fiercest, most ferocious rock album ever made. The music critic Dave Marsh said of it: “… there are few moments in the repertoire of recorded rock where a singer or writer has reached so deeply into himself that the effect of hearing them is akin to witnessing a murder, or a suicide … to me, Layla is the greatest of them.”
As the list is so constrained I’m really struggling with the final two items — there’s Beethoven’s late string quartets and Dark Side of the Moon, but where does that leave Bach’s Musical Offering and The Stone Roses? If I throw in Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony and Highway 61 Revisited, where does that leave Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (or the Viola Sonata) and Abbey Road?
Then there's jazz - do I really want to, can I do without Kind of Blue (or even, far out man, roll a fat one and kick back, Bitches Brew - the monumental Spanish Key is music to get out of your tree on if ever there was, and goodness only knows I have, more times than I can remember) and Benny Goodman Live at Carnegie Hall?
