Just checking - do you know the BBC Radio programme of the same name?
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Originally Posted by BBC_Website Desert Island Discs is one of Radio 4's most popular and enduring programmes. Created by Roy Plomley in 1942, the format is simple: each week a guest is invited by Sue Lawley to choose the eight records they would take with them to a desert island. |
They also choose one book (excluding the Bible and the works of Shakespeare which are already deemed present on the island) and one luxury item which must be inanimate and have no practical use.
Are we allowed whole albums, or are you looking for specific pieces on albums?
Assuming just singular items, let's take a stab (whether I can reach 8 is another matter):
Beethoven - Symphony No.5 - VPO with Sir Simon Rattle (everything about it is just perfect - the music, the interpretation, the playing - it had me in tears when I first heard it)
Philip Sparke - Year of the Dragon - Black Dyke
Louis Armstrong - We Have All the Time in the World
Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells
Douglas Adams - The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - Original Radio Series (if pushed - just episode one, but I would hope that the whole series would count)
Mussourgsky - Pictures at an Exhibition - exact recording yet to be deicded (current top is Royal Liverpool Philharmonic - can't remember who is waggling).
Bernstein - Symphonic Dances
West Side Story - recording yet to be decided
Haydn - Trumpet Concerto - performed by David Hickman - this would be a reminder of why I am on the desert island - I would have given up the trumpet world. This piece will probably be the piece that pushes me over the edge - how can this piece possibly be regarded as the finest piece in our repertoire????? The reason for the Hickman recording - having heard him perform it at ITG this year he is the only person I have heard perform this piece in a way that I thought it could be considered a good piece of music - but it was his performance, not the piece. He could have played a C major scale and it would have had the same effect.
(monthly Haydn rant over)
If I had to choose just one, Beethoven would come out at the top - I find it simply the most life-affirming piece I have ever heard. The moment at the end of the third movement where you can hear the tonality change from minor to major, ready for the most joyous experience as the fourth movement starts, is just magical - even writing about it is sending a shiver down my spine.
If I am going by the BBC rules - one book - Hitchhikers Guide - the complete trilogy in five parts.
one luxury - my juggling equipment. If I was alone on a desert island, my trumpet would just frustrate me (the idea of music making, for me, is to enjoy the experience of making music with others), whilst my juggling is always in need of work - but it is a fun sort of work, even when undertaken alone. I have this long term wish to one day work out the 5 ball Mills Mess (a pattern that only other jugglers will appreciate the difficulty of - think Berio
Sequenza - then make it harder, being played on five instruments at once!), alone on a desert island I might just manage it.
I reserve the right to change the above, but these are today's Desert Island Discs.
There are many that were nearly in the list, but to list them would spoil the game
