In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column I talk about Desert Island Discs, the BBC’s longest-running radio program. Here’s an excerpt.
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The BBC aired the three thousandth episode of “Desert Island Discs,” its longest-running radio series, last week. The anniversary attracted no attention on this side of the Atlantic, however, because the perennially popular “Desert Island Discs,” whose guests are invited to select and discuss the eight records they’d take with them were they to be shipwrecked on a distant isle, has never been heard in the U.S. save by fanatical Anglophiles with shortwave radios….
Fortunately, the “Desert Island Discs” page on the BBC’s website contains a fully searchable database that allows users to listen to any of the 1,500-odd surviving episodes. In addition, you can use the database to find out which records were picked by everyone who has appeared on “Desert Island Discs” since it first went on the air in 1942.
Not only is the “Desert Island Discs” database a largely unquarried diamond mine for scholars, but it’s dangerously easy to blow an evening looking up guest after guest on your laptop. The genius of the show, which was created by Roy Plomley, is that it invites not just musicians but celebrities of all sorts to talk about the records they love. Among the people who have appeared on “Desert Island Discs” are, just for starters, Louis Armstrong, Lauren Bacall, Isaiah Berlin, Eric Clapton, Cyril Connolly, Aaron Copland, Elvis Costello, Noël Coward, Margot Fonteyn, John Gielgud, Stephen Hawking, Alfred Hitchcock, David Hockney, Philip Larkin, Liberace, J.K. Rowling, Jimmy Stewart and Desmond Tutu….
The first thing you notice are the surprises. Who on earth would have expected for Margaret Thatcher to choose Bob Newhart’s “Introducing Tobacco to Civilization” to cart off to her desert island along with Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto?…
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Read the whole thing here.
Anybody who writes about Desert Island Discs can scarcely avoid wanting to play along, so here goes. The program invites you to choose eight records. These are mine:
• Bach’s Goldberg Variations, recorded in 1955 by Glenn Gould
• Mozart’s G Minor Symphony, performed by Benjamin Britten and the English Chamber Orchestra
• Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, performed by Copland and the Columbia Chamber Ensemble
• Louis Armstrong’s 1928 recording of “West End Blues”
• Nancy LaMott’s recording of “Skylark,” written by Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer
• The complete performance of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot recorded in 1956 by Bert Lahr, E.G. Marshall, Kurt Kasznar, and Alvin Epstein, the cast of the first Broadway premiere
If my “record player” will also play videos, I’d like to bring along
• New York City Ballet’s 1977 PBS performance of George Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments, whose score is by Paul Hindemith
• Jean Renoir’s La règle du jeu, the greatest movie ever made
If not, I’d opt for
• Beethoven’s G Major Piano Concerto, recorded in 1942 by Artur Schnabel, Frederick Stock, and the Chicago Symphony
• Steely Dan’s Aja
You are always asked to pick one favorite record on Desert Island Discs, and mine is the Goldberg Variations.
In addition, you’re also asked to pack a book and a “luxury item.” It’s stipulated that the island already contains copies of the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible (though that may change). In that case, my book would be Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time and my luxury item would be my favorite painting, Paul Cézanne’s “The Garden at Les Lauves.” To be sure, the latter item is one of the Phillips Collection’s most celebrated and treasured possessions…but I want it anyway. (I promise to give it back to the Phillips if rescued!)