This is the bit where I am going through my classical record collection to try and draw up a ''top twenty' (or whatever). This post has been hanging around for a few weeks now, but as I'm about to work methodically through all my Mozart CDs, it's probably time I posted it. (I intend to finish this project in time for my fortieth birthday).
Badiniere from Suite No.2 in B minor - Bach, although I prefer the version by James Galway that my sister had on record when we were kids
Intermezzo (First Movement) from Karelia Suite - Sibelius
Brahms's Second Piano concerto in B flat major op. 83 has long been one of my favourite pieces. This is perfect music to make one feel very sexy, especially the dramatic opening - and, let's face it, ultimately, that's the whole point of music*. Plus I have a fetish for Deutsche Grammophon packaging - its yellow is as evocative as a Penguin paperback.
Faure's Requiem. Tranquility. Every time I hear something by Faure I keep thinking I must get more into him. but this is the only disc in my collection apart from a few snatches on compilations. Especially, Sanctus, Pie Jesu and Agnus Dei
Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor Op.64. I am currently listening to a version I taped off my Dad's record. I only have the Andante, with Yehudi Menuhin and the Philharmonia under Efrem Kurtz. You know, this exercise is demonstrating that Mendelssohn is the most underrated composer featuring insufficiently in my record collection.
And then I find a surprise in my collection, something I had totally forgotten I had, largely because I have different version on CD, and CD redundifies tape, especially a tape taped off an album from Nottingham Central Library in about 1989. Beethoven's ninth, a symphony much bigger than words can ever express, and quite possibly the one piece I would take on my desert island. And I'm having one of those tricky but fab - because I don't have to choose - dilemmas: was Beethoven, in fact, greater than Mozart?
Trumpet Voluntary by Jeremiah Clarke
* I jest
