|
|
|
|
Since owning the Marantz Consolette, it's now the norm for me to be listening from the extensive back catalogue (more than 1450 programmes - from 1951 to the present day) of Podcasts by BBC's Desert Island Discs when in the kitchen preparing meals...
What is Desert Island Discs ?
The format is simple – a guest is invited to choose eight discs [tracks actually], a book and a luxury to take with them as they’re castaway on a mythical desert island. They’re given the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible [or your own religious text]. During the interview they explain their choices and discuss key moments in their lives, people and events that have influenced and inspired them and brought them to where they are today.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs
Well, since music (or simply 'recordings') is important to us, let's share our own choices ? Won't you agree that each persons' 8 choices will be most revealing (in itself even without accompanying explanations) ?
My personal overall selection (that includes perhaps only 1 SA-CD) would be :
1.
Anna Karina
Jamais Je Ne T'Ai Dit Que Je T'Aimerai Toujours (from Pierrot Le Fou soundtrack)
2.
Teresa Teng
Wishing We Last Forever (perhaps has been remastered in SA-CD)
3.
Noam Chomsky
Introduction (from Hegemony or Survival audiobook)
4.
Johann Sebastian Bach
Contrapunctus XIV (from The Art of Fugue) [is my 'Favourite Track' if I can save, or have, only 1]
Performer : Glenn Gould
5.
PJ Harvey
You Come Through (live from The Peel Sessions 1991–2004)
6.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Speaking to James Mossman (in Montreux, 9/8/69)
7.
Antonio Carlos Jobim
Fotografia (from Ken Ishiwata's 30th Anniversary [SA-CD] Recording)
Performer : Katelijne Van Otterloo
8.
Leonard Cohen
Dance Me to the End of Love (live version from The Essential Leonard Cohen)
Book :
Ada by Nabokov
Luxury Item :
A complete music system (including loudspeakers) that's been customized by Ken
And perhaps you (and I too) will list 8 tracks that are exclusively SA-CDs...
|
|
|
|
|
|
Wilhelm—Xu Zhong-Rui said:
[...]
8.
Leonard Cohen
Dance Me to the End of Love (live version from The Essential Leonard Cohen)
[...]
And perhaps you (and I too) will list 8 tracks that are exclusively SA-CDs...
... this song being drawn from "Cohen Live: Leonard Cohen in Concert" to be precise. A fabulous one, I agree.
I guess my desert island discs would be all of them. I just love music too much. Selecting a bunch from them would be sacrificing and elitism to me... dear ! I really couldn't.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Thanks Anthony (ou Bonsoir M. Loup [from where I am, anyhow, for it'd be morning where you'd be], je vous écris d'un pays lointain) :)
And pardon, there's promises I need to keep, this reply can be but brief...
'The Essential Leonard Cohen' was a 2002 compilation said to be "Mastered by Bob Ludwig at Gateway Mastering & DVD, Portland, ME"
What's more, Pico Iyer's liner notes said :
'When I called Cohen to ask him about this new collection, he said it was "crammed with stuff" (chosen by him, and, you will notice, flowing like one steady stream—a dark river seen by moonlight—through nearly every one of his ten albums, equally distributed between the riddled ballads of the searching young man and the composed verses of the monk of 67).'
http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/iyer.html
I might edit this Post and say more, weave more textile and richness, if I find time...
Incidentally, my favourite music video of all-time, 'classical' too, is (maximum of 1080P) :
http://www.nfb.ca/film/ballet_adagio_fr
|
|
|
|
|
|
Well, thanks for the kind words in the language of Molière ! I guess I couldn't return the courtesy as I am already writing in New Zealand's English language.
It also seems my dear interlocutor knows a thing or two about the Old Norse language. Well, I am passionate about Scandinavian cultures (especially in history) and I consider myself as an evening wolf indeed. Daylight is not quite my domain, and neither is night. Dusk is my moment : brief, intense and mysterious, often poetic.
I must admit my Cohen experience is short, though I own all of his works. I owe this shortness to the fact my youth (took 29 years old last month) did not allow me to experience the early Cohen years. I heard a song or two in my youth but my parents never listened to his work and I threw myself in precisely when this "Essential" collection came out in 2002.
From there, I became a fan. Me who is a complexity lover, incapable of appreciating simpleness even in its very best moments. But Leonard Cohen taught me so. He's the only one who could do it. After having listened to this marvelous double CD compilation almost until it eroded, I decided to buy all of the album and live albums, which I did.
I got the chance to see him in France in 2009. He played a concert in Les Arènes de Nîmes and the experience was fabulous. I crossed the whole French country upon 900 km to see him on stage -- something I congratulate myself about this, given the fact I'm too young to have experienced his career, and I was afraid I could never see him because of his age. Many of my musical heroes are getting old and the thought of never seeing them haunts me.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ah, Anthony,
I'm still very busy, but will quickly set out the following in reply to some of what you'd written until I've more time to edit...
JLG said :
« I read something by Borges where he spoke of a man who wanted to create a world. So he created houses, provinces, valleys, rivers, tools, fish, lovers, and then at the end of his life he notices that this 'patient labyrinth is none other then his own portrait.' I had quite this same feeling in the middle of Pierrot... »
Thus, for me, everything I do (and have done) online contributes to a 'personal' portrait. And rightly so ! Especially here (SA-CD.net), speaking up (primarily) in support of a friend's work in Hi-Fi design, his passion in music ; and elsewhere too (for this or any other cause).
As I've Posted on Facebook (in 1 of now only 2 Notes) :
« What I usually say is that they're not phrasing the question the right way. I mean, people should not be asking me or anyone else where to turn for an accurate picture of things : they should be asking 'themselves' that. So someone can ask me what reflects my interpretation of the way things are, and I can tell them where they can get material that looks at the world the way I think it ought to be looked at—but then 'they' have to decide whether or not that's accurate. Ultimately it's your own mind that has to be the arbiter : you've got to rely on your own common sense and intelligence, you can't rely on anyone else for the truth.
So the answer I give is, I think the smartest thing to do is to read everything you read—and that includes what I write, I would always tell people this—skeptically. And in fact, an honest writer will try to make it clear what his or her biases are and where the work is starting from, so that then readers can compensate—they can say, "This person's coming from over here, and that's the way she's looking at the world, now I can correct for what may well be her bias ; I can decide for myself whether what she's telling me is accurate, because at least she's making her premises clear." And people 'should' do that. You should start by being very skeptical about anything that comes to you from any sort of power system—and about everything else too. You should be skeptical about what I tell you—why should you believe a word of it ? I got my own ax to grind. So figure it out for yourself. There really is no other answer. »
— Noam Chomsky (who I'm studying as if to truly know my opponent, know his dissident interpretation...)
And /showthread/92775/109773#109773 is another part of me ; fitting the words, she's a passion...
More personally, I quoted equally enigmatically in French (in a Page I'd branched from my own Timeline) :
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=463341153692893
AA's attitude (and his regard for the writing of words) is nearer to mine own (than JP's) :D
Bon week-end !
http://www.nfb.ca/film/mesdames_et_messieurs_m_leonard_cohen
|
|
|
Post by deckerm November 9, 2013 (6 of 88)
|
|
I always found it interesting to read some of my 'classical heroes' favorite songs. It really surprised me to find Arthur Rubinstein such a fan of Schubert, and the one piece he could not live without was the string quintet (a piece with no piano!). These surveys are interesting but given Rubinstein was 84 at the time of the interview, I wonder what his picks would have been 20 or 50 years earlier.
For my part, its a mix of classical and progressive rock music. For every favorite Chopin work, there is an equal love for Yes, Rush, or Genesis.
|
|
|
Post by Beagle November 9, 2013 (7 of 88)
|
|
I was pleased to see Leonard Cohen listed along with Noam Chomsky and Shakespeare. In the early '70s I did grad work with Marshall McLuhan, who provocatively set Lenny beside W.B. Yeates and James Joyce as 20th century Great Poets. McLuhan based one of his books, From Cliché to Archetype, on "Susan takes you down... She shows you where to look Among the garbage and the flowers".
I am coincidentally doing a version of Desert Island for the last year: moving from a large farm-house to a small cottage on a lake on an island. Yes, I have all my ~350 SACDs, but I brought only one-third of my library and I am re-reading with pleasure only a few dozen books. Currently this slim and crumbling issue of Arthur Waley, Poems from the Chinese: https://archive.org/stream/arthurwaleypoems00walerich#page/22/mode/2up.
Less is more,
Steppenbeagle
|
|
|
|
|
|
Happy Sunday Mark, Steppenbeagle, readers,
from "less is more" I'd like to keep this short ; saying thanks, sharing this amusing music video (which you [and, or, someone you know] would surely appreciate the humour, the pathos) :
http://vimeo.com/33329117
And, being Chinese, Waley's poems sent my thought to my ancestral homeland, for I was born in Guangzhou, China, immigrated to New Zealand just before I turned 8 (and began learning English). This, audio (I'd muted it in favour of my own soundtrack) visual depiction of a 'culture of food' evokes memories, wonder :
http://vimeo.com/53600193
I promise to write out a reply to all your kind words in the new week.
Many thanks,
Will
|
|
|
Post by akiralx November 14, 2013 (9 of 88)
|
|
deckerm said:
I always found it interesting to read some of my 'classical heroes' favorite songs. It really surprised me to find Arthur Rubinstein such a fan of Schubert, and the one piece he could not live without was the string quintet (a piece with no piano!). These surveys are interesting but given Rubinstein was 84 at the time of the interview, I wonder what his picks would have been 20 or 50 years earlier.
The Schubert String Quintet D956 is a favourite choice of classical musicians on the programme, e.g. by Claudio Abbado and many others.
Elizabeth Schwarzkopf chose only her own recordings (or maybe she misunderstood the point of the programme).
The dreamy theme music is 'By The Sleepy Lagoon' by Eric Coates - a composer of much light music and film scores, including The Dambusters March, a favourite encore of Sir Adrian Boult.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
akiralx said:
Elizabeth Schwarzkopf chose only her own recordings (or maybe she misunderstood the point of the programme).
deckerm said :
These surveys are interesting but given Rubinstein was 84 at the time of the interview, I wonder what his picks would have been 20 or 50 years earlier.
"I quote others only the better to express myself."
— Michel de Montaigne
"Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life :
the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind."
— Bertrand Russell
For me, it's good to be able to reference others... And words, predominately, the human voice is what moves me the most, followed by solo instruments... And I'd approximated an accurate portrait of myself in my 8 Desert Island Disc selections, where I'd distilled all 'classical music' to Bach's Contrapunctus XIV (from The Art of Fugue) as performed by Gould (and indeed, for me, [on a desert island] all recorded sound, across all genres, can be distilled down to that one track).
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf's DIDs are :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/castaway/51ed3e16#p009y865
But the interview isn't provided, and I've not the time to researched into why she chose 7 recordings which featured her own singing. Perhaps like Rubinstein's choices http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/castaway/6a601630#p009ncm0 (where I did listen into) it's for sentimental reasons...
I'd looked at and listened to James Mason's choices (for he was the only guest who chose a Nabokov book [although he, at that stage, hadn't read Ada and wished to appreciate it ; whereas I've read Ada long ago and wish to "re-read" it]) :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/castaway/eaab16f5#p009mtqp tables both Mason's 1981 and 1961 appearances for DID.
Yet, for David Attenborough :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/castaway/2343cdda#b01b8yy0 lists his 4 appearances from 2012, 1998, 1979, and 1957 (is the sole interview not provided).
To "re-read" is because (and from) :
https://www.facebook.com/notes/squire-of-strong-opinions-vladimir-nabokov/good-readers-and-good-writers/291774314198346
"SA-CD has reached 5,500 titles" (and the other words in the graphic) was said in 2008 by Ken ; of course SA-CDs number much more now. And if my choices are exclusively from SA-CDs, my second track would be the Adagio, performed by Hilary Hahn, from Bach's Concerto for Violin, Strings and Continuo in E major, BWV 1042
|
|
