Withnail and I’s Uncle Monty found it crushing to realise that he was never going to be given the part of Hamlet – ‘I shall never play the Dane!’ – for many of us, an equal disappointment is realising, sooner or later, that we’ll probably die uninvited onto Desert Island Discs. This programme has run almost unchanged since 1942 and is the nearest thing – after a knighthood or a CBE – to a nod of recognition from the Establishment, a sign you’ve finally arrived. I imagine most people in public life occasionally ponder the eight discs they’d take should the call from Radio 4 ever come, or which luxury or book (along with Shakespeare and the Bible) would go into their knapsack. At the age of 55 and in relative obscurity, I’ve given up hope, so – cue seagulls and that ‘By the Sleepy Lagoon’ music – my castaway this week is myself.
A piece of music which gives you such a sustained jolt of energy you feel there must be something demonic in it
The art of putting together a Desert Island Discs list, especially if you’re actually on the programme, is to combine classical and modern. Too many classical pieces make you seem pompous, while a surfeit of pop gives the impression you’re frivolous and never give life a thought. Balanced between these extremes is my first disc, which would have to be by the Beatles. I’m tempted by ‘Here Comes the Sun’ (obviously good for those island mornings and great for karaoke) but instead I’ve plumped for ‘A Day in the Life’ from Sergeant Pepper. There are jauntier songs by the Fab Four, and sadder songs, and catchier songs. But there are few quite so haunting, and it has two melodies in it, one by Lennon and one by McCartney, both of them at their best. The orchestra’s powerful 40-second crescendo and that final piano chord would echo out over the ocean at dawn or dusk.
I’d have to take some Bowie too. Though the first decent pop album I ever bought was Hunky Dory – with ‘Changes’, ‘Life on Mars’ and ‘Andy Warhol’ still a feast – I’ve settled on ‘Ashes to Ashes’, whose weirdness will remind me of watching Top of the Pops, and Bowie in his clown make-up, with my older sister in 1980. It was the summer holidays, I was ten years old and feeling the full excitement of a teenage life still distant but getting closer every day.
The third record would be something by Seal. He’s criminally underrated, a songwriter for the ages, and I used to sing ‘Kiss from a Rose’ to my daughter when she was a baby. In Rostov-on-Don, Russia, when she was a few years older, I’d listen to his ‘Waiting for You’ – a perfect upbeat anthem – while walking to her house before the sun rose to pick her up and take her on the tram to school. So that’s the one I’ll choose. Another memory to keep me company on my desert island.
The fourth record would be my chance to plug, on Radio 4, the Hungarian jazz singer Veronika Harcsa, almost unknown on these shores. I discovered Harcsa’s music – poignant, catchy, each track a little delight – at a tricky time in life, and finding her songs felt like the karmic swing. There are a number of classic Hungarian poems that, with her music partner Bálint Gyémánt, she’s set to jazz – ‘Kihajolni veszélyes’ and ‘Nyár’ are both knockouts – but instead I’ll take one of her English pieces, ‘You Don’t Know It’s You’ – a melancholic swoon of a piece, which makes you think of cloudy afternoons and smoke-filled cafes.
Now for the classical. First off would have to be ‘Kommt, ihr Töchter, helft mir klagen’ from Bach’s St Matthew Passion (John Gardiner version), as for me it’s the most beautiful piece of music ever written – like hearing the heavens open up and shed their light from beyond (and just when you think it’s reached its peak and can’t get more overwhelming, you realise it hasn’t even got going).
Then Shostakovich, my favourite composer of the lot. I discovered his music properly when I’d just moved to Estonia in 1996 and was lucky enough, in those pre-digital days, to find a tape of his Fifth Symphony in a Tallinn bookshop. I’d listen to the spooky strings opening as I crunched through the early morning snow to work. But these days, I probably know the Fifth a bit too well. Instead, it would be a toss-up between the Tenth Symphony – his eerie work about Stalin – or his Cello Concerto No. 1, a piece of music which gives you such a sustained jolt of energy you feel there must be something demonic in it. I must choose, mustn’t I? The Tenth, let it be.
Because if it’s energy I’m after, I can take Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata, preferably performed by Patricia Kopatchinskaja on violin. Just watch her play it – both thrilling, agitating and exhausting. This too is a devilish piece of music (as Tolstoy noticed, writing his famous novella about sexual obsession based on it), and one that never disappoints.
My last disc had better be Benjamin Britten’s Cello Symphony, Op.68. It’s a piece stuffed with melodies and moments that get you in the entrails and is – in my imagination at least – the most perfect representation of a brainstorm, how you pass through it and, finally, come out of it again. It will make me think of Suffolk – Britten and I, decades apart, attended the same school there – and many other places too.
Of course, whatever tracks I take with me, I’ll end up longing for those I haven’t. Jamiroquai, Suede, certain songs by Stephen Sondheim or the Stones have come close to making the grade here. I’ll just have to let my memory do the job.
My book now. I’ve toyed with the idea of taking Peter Nadas’s A Book of Memories – a Proustian account of Hungary after the war. But I suppose it’ll have to be War and Peace. It’s a bit of a cliché but was the most properly mind-blowing reading experience I’ve ever had. I didn’t get the chance to read it slowly enough first time round (who does?) and snowy 19th-century Moscow, Pierre Bezukhov and the Battle of Borodino will carry me away from my desert island like no other novel could.
And finally my luxury? Easy – Johnson’s Baby Lotion (chapped lips, dry skin). I’m not allowed to say brand names on the BBC? Better just call it ‘liquid moisturiser’ then. Thank you, Robin, for being my castaway today. I wonder – have others fantasised about their own track list – or is it just me, on a peculiar desert island of my own?
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