With apologies, I’m going to be rather mordant today.
This is my “Bucket Listen” list. It’s quite different from a “bucket list.” Here’s how I came to it.
For years I have been convinced that if my life ends in a long, slow illness – you know what I mean – that I will spend a lot of that dwindling time listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. Like most of his symphonies, it’s about life and death, but it is much more about death and dying. The music expresses for me much of the rage at death and acceptance that, I’m sure, will occupy me then. And the music is deep, deep and full of mystery. I love to listen to that Ninth now, but as the end of my life lies before me, it will speak to me that much more.
One day I asked myself, why just the Mahler Ninth? Maybe it’s the bestest music for that time of my life, but there are other choices, other pieces that evoke the great mystery of life. Which pieces of classical music speak just so, to me? And so I started to put together a list.
I made some arbitrary decisions. With the exception of short songs, I want just one piece per composer, and I want to keep the list short. Here’s my first cut at my Bucket Listen List. It’s too long, but I expect to add as well as subtract before I’m done. You may be horrified at all the great, wonderful music I’m leaving out, but remember, I’m trying to be brief, and the chosen music must speak to me of the greatest mysteries. There are some dramatically different ways I could build such a list. I might listen to only J.S. Bach, or only Schubert, or only the Haydn string quartets. Well, here we go, in alphabetical order:
- John Adams: Harmonielehre.
- J.S Bach: Concerto for Two Violins.
- Ludwig von Beethoven: The late bagatelles, Op. 126.
- Alban Berg: Violin Concerto to the Memory of an Angel.
- Anton Bruckner: Ninth symphony, maybe just the third movement.
- Claude Debussy: The Violin Sonata.
- Henri Duparc: songs: La vague et la cloche, La vie anterieure, Sérénade florentine, L’Invitation au voyage, Extase, Le manoir de Rosemonde.
- Antonin Dvorak: the Cello Concerto.
- Vasily Kalinikov: The First symphony.
- Franz Liszt: Vallee d’Obermann.
- Gustav Mahler: The Ninth symphony.
- Wolfgang Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola.
- Carl Nielsen: The Fourth Symphony, the ‘Inextinguishable’.
- Sergei Rachmaninoff: Isle of the Dead.
- Ravel: Gaspard de la Nuit.
- Domenico Scarlatti: early sonata in b minor, K. 27 (L. 449). {As Gilels does it, not Michelangeli-style.}
- Arnold Schoenberg: The six tiny piano pieces, op. 19
- Franz Schubert: [] oh, gee…. The unfinished symphony, the Trout, The 4-hands fantasy…
- Robert Schumann: the six canons for pedal piano, arranged by Debussy for two pianos.
- Antonio Soler: Fandango (harpsichord)
Too much music for the very end. I’ll want to focus. What can I do without? I intend to work my way through this list in my upcoming programs at WPRB. These are all great stuff.