My Desert Island Discs
Here are details of the 8 pieces of music that I would choose to have if that was all I was allowed. The first three are the greatest composers at their very best. The next three are recordings that I find really special. The final two pieces of music are there because I have never grown tired of listening to them.
In spite of the fact that I have written a lot about choral music, only two of the pieces I have chosen involve choirs; and of those, the Shostakovich is male voices only, while the Procol Harum voices are wordless. The only explicitly Christian piece is the Dupré, but several of the others would not feel out of place in Christian worship. In fact I have seen both the Beethoven and the Bach performed in Malmesbury Abbey, though not in a worship context.
Beethoven - Grosse Fuge
This piece was originally the final movement of a string quartet, but apparently it was too difficult and he had to replace it with a completely different movement. This was probably for the better as the replacement fits in fine, and this works very well on its own. What appeals to me about this piece is its complexity. After a slow introduction it launches into a double fugue with the first violin leaping about all over the place and a gentler theme going on in the background. Then for a quarter of an hour or so there is continuous inventiveness on those themes, sometimes quite gentle but the ingenuity is never far away. This is a recording from a concert by the David LePage Ensemble that took place in Malmesbury Abbey in February 2024 featuring music by Beethoven and David Bowie.
Bach - Chaconne from Partita No 2
Like the Beethoven, this is about 15 minutes of continuous and ever more ingenious invention. However on this occasion it is a comparatively straightforward theme that Bach finds all sorts of things to do with. Here is Jascha Heifetz performing it. If I had one chance to go back in time, it would be to see Bach himself playing it.
Sibelius - Finale from 5th Symphony
I am not the first person to choose Bach and Beethoven as my favourite composers, but Sibelius is a less obvious choice as my third. However he is continuously inventive, and all his symphonies are completely different. It was the 6th that I first grew to love, but I have chosen the 5th, in particular the final movement. I was less keen on it originally because I felt that the themes of the different movements "all sounded the same", but I realised in the end that was its strength, the way he gets so much out of simple material. In particular there is the long build up in the finale culminating in a most unusual ending - 5 loud chords wish long pauses between them before the final cadence. Here is a recording by the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Karina Canellakis, which for me gets that build-up just right.
Shostakovich - 13th Symphony Babi Yar
This symphony was written in the early 1960s, setting words by the young poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. It was at a time when the Soviet authorities had decided that Stalin was a bad man, and that it was acceptable to criticise him, up to a point. These poems focussed on issues such as the treatment of women and persecution of those who had spoken out of turn, emphasising that things have improved. However it was risky to express such sentiments, as there were still people around who had instigated the wrongdoing. The first movement, Babi Yar, is about the persecution of Jews, and ends with the statement that "there is no Jewish blood in me, but every anti-semite hates me as a Jew, which makes me a true Russian". The chorus sing the words triumphantly, but then the orchestra dampens their enthusiasm and the movement ends in a note of pessimism. Not surprisingly the authorities didn't take kindly to this sentiment, and composer and poet were invited to rephrase it.
This is a recording of probably the second performance in 1965. The Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus are conducted by Kiril Kondrashin, with Vitaly Gromadsky as the bass soloist. Kondrashin and Gromadsky were not the original intended performers, but pressure was put on others to withdraw, and it took great courage for them, not to mention members of the orchestra and chorus, to take part. In fact it would appear that Gromadsky went out of favour and was not heard of again, as far as I could tell. While there are rough edges to the performance, it is possible to detect a sense of defiance in the singers which gives this recording special significance to me.
There is one other significant aspect of this performance. The work opens and closes with a single note from a bell, which also sounds at other significant points particularly in Babi Yar and the 4th movement Fears. The tubular bell normally gives a pure sound, but at the climax of Babi Yar the sound is very harsh, possible caused by it hitting the side of the frame, or being mishandled in some way. This has not occurred in any other performance I have heard, but it is quite likely, particularly as the composer was present, that this was intentional.
Mussorgsky - Pictures at an Exhibition
I first got to know this piece through Ravel's vivid orchestration, so I imagined that when played as originally written as a solo piano piece, it would be less interesting. How wrong I was! I turned on the radio one Sunday morning and heard a recording by Vladimir Horowitz and couldn't believe what I was hearing. I went out and bought the record, and was convinced that if Ravel had ever heard it played like this he would not have felt the need to orchestrate the piece.
His playing grabs you from the very opening notes and he describes the pictures as if you could see them in front of you. One movement entitled "Bydlo" is sometimes translated as "Cattle", but is in fact a painting of a large oxcart. You can feel it coming towards you, passing you and then moving off into the distance. And in Baba Yagar's Hut on Legs, he achieves such momentum in a way that I imagine would be almost impossible with a large orchestra. Here is his recording of the whole work. "Bydlo" comes after about 10 minutes and "Baba Yagar's Hut" on 22 minutes.
Dupré - Resurrection from Symphonie Passion
I heard Trevor Doar playing this at an organ recital at the Milton Abbey Music Festival in 1985. It is one of the most memorable events I have ever attended. Trevor's playing was different to any other organist I have heard. To me it was as if he was composing the music as he went along. He started the recital with a prelude and fugue by Bach which began with a passage of solo semi-quavers in the left hand. He took twice as long over the first semi-quaver as the rest of the passage, which sounds amateurish the way I describe it, but was Trevor easing himself into the music. The Symphonie Passione, which was new to me, was the final work in the recital, and the last movement seemed to take me to a whole new plane of experience. Some of us spoke to Trevor afterwards and asked why it was not well-known. He explained that it was rather a difficult piece to play (we could work that one out), and even in Dupré's own recording he had "played a wrong note"!
From what little I had heard of the composer's music before, I felt he was underrated. This piece originated from a recital he gave during a tour of Canada. He had been asked to improvise on four hymn tunes, and he obviously thought he had done a good job, because when he got home he wrote them down. This is astonishing in itself. The four movements are entitled "The world awaits the coming of the Saviour", "Nativity", "Crucifixion" and "Resurrection". Two of the tunes he improvised around are new to me, while Resurrection is based around a plainsong hymn I have only ever sung when I was in Leicester Cathedral choir. The only familar one is Adeste Fideles in the second movement. I was so enthralled by the music that I went and bought a score, just so that I could see what it looked like and play the occasional bar!
The final movement starts off very quietly, as if the news of the Resurrection is being whispered around in disbelief, but a tune eventually emerges, which builds up into a massive climax with the main tune thundering out from the pedals. The final few bars are an astonishing succession of chords which lead to a wordless "Alleluia".
Villa-Lobos - Bachianas Brasileiras No 2
The most famous of the four movements of this piece is the final one entitled The Little Train of the Caipira - one of the reasons I bought a recording of the work in the first place. It graphically depicts a train journey including the steam hissing, the engine whistle, the traversing of points and the application of the brakes at the end, using just the instruments of a standard orchestra. However once I got to know the whole piece, all the movements had their own special character, with their bold rhythms and vivid atmospheric effects that I never grow tired of, which helps it to find its way into this list.
Here is a recording by a Brazilian orchestra - UFRJ Symphony Orchestra conducted by Roberto Tibiriça.
Procol Harum - In Held Twas In I
This comes from the album Shine on Brightly. I found it in a shop in Liberia that sold all sorts of things. I was searching through the LPs not really expecting to find anything I wanted and was surprised to discover this. I bought it not expecting the sound quality to be good particularly as the internal paper sleeve was missing. But it was in good condition and there were hardly any scratches.
The group came to prominence in the late 60s with two hits - Whiter Shade of Pale and Homberg - which to my mind were more ambitious in their choice of harmonies and chord progressions than your average group. This album is in the same style, and while the rest of the songs are three to five minutes long, this one lasts for over 20 minutes.
The title is simply the first words of each of the five verses. I originally thought it was about the singer's unsuccessful attempts to break a drug habit, but apparently it is about the stages of obtaining nirvana, which at least makes sense of the final section. But what stand out for me are the tight structure, the virtuosic guitar playing and the sheer originality of the harmonic progressions. The group had their squabbles and eventually split up acrimoniously but here they worked together to produce something really special.
Here is a recording the band made in 2013 with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra.
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