Summer soundtracks

Presenters of classical concerts may be worrying about a dwindling audience. The classical recording industry may be in a slump. But somebody is listening.

Indeed, when Britain’s BBC Radio 3 made free downloads of the first five Beethoven symphonies available earlier this month, after it had aired performances by the BBC Philharmonic, 700,000 listeners took up the offer. Moreover, what with iPods and increasingly sophisticated car stereos, more and more people are creating soundtracks for their day-to-day lives -- and their vacations.

With that in mind, we asked a random sampling of Angelenos and others what classical selections they were looking forward to hearing this summer.

Here are their answers:

Deborah Borda

President, Los Angeles Philharmonic Assn.

What I’ve been listening to a lot -- I’m addicted to it at this point -- is Esa-Pekka Salonen’s recording of “Wing on Wing,” which is just fabulous. It encapsulates the whole magical year at Disney Hall and the year leading up to it. Also, the recording of “Die Walkure,” with Jessye Norman, James Morris and Christa Ludwig, conducted by James Levine. It’s a real desert island piece for me. Two other CDs are Deborah Voigt’s “Obsessions” and Susan Graham’s “Poemes de l’Amour.”

The piece I have on my iPod is “Die Walkure.” The rest I actually listen to in the car. Esa-Pekka and I were recently flying back from the orchestra’s tour to New York and I realized I didn’t know how to turn the iPod on and work it! Esa-Pekka was a master. He taught me.

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Douglas Dutton

Owner of Dutton’s Brentwood and Beverly Hills bookstores

I’m reading a new book titled “Evening in the Palace of Reason” by James Gaines that uses as its starting point the legendary meeting of Bach and Frederick the Great in 1747, the meeting that resulted in the “Musical Offering.” I’m particularly interested in listening to period instrument versions, and specifically that of Jordi Savall and Le Concert des Nations.

Earlier this year, I finished Maynard Solomon’s latest book, “Late Beethoven: Music, Thought, Imagination.” The first piece he focuses on is the “Diabelli Variations,” something that I confess I’ve never really warmed to. I’m going to try to absorb a few versions, but in particular the Piotr Anderszewski account, as he’ll be playing a recital this season at Disney and seems to me to be an interesting, thinking pianist.

Two modern composers: I heard the Janeki Trio (the Colburn Conservatory group that won the Coleman Chamber Ensemble Competition) play the Penderecki String Trio, and loved the piece (and the performance), so I’m searching out all the Penderecki chamber music I can get my hands on. Also, I’m intrigued by Thomas Ades, who will be in town next season as pianist, composer and conductor. I’ve lined up several Ades CDs and am most interested in “Asyla” and some of the “Life Story” and “Arcadiana.”

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Zev Yaroslavsky

Los Angeles County supervisor

I’m listening to a lot of Aaron Copland. I love his music, and I have this fantasy of one day performing narrating “A Lincoln Portrait.” Schumann’s Piano Concerto is one of our all-time favorites. So I always have it in my car. Beethoven’s Triple Concerto and Brahms’ Double Concerto -- those two I listen to pretty regularly.

I’m a little old-fashioned, but Shostakovich has been growing on me. I have a couple of his symphonies that I’m listening to with more of an open mind and open ear than I did in the past. He’s such an interesting individual. To have a whole personal history translated into the music makes it a lot more interesting. That’s been on my to-do list: Get to know Shostakovich’s symphonies better.

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Placido Domingo

Tenor and general director of Los Angeles Opera and Washington National Opera

Although I listen to recorded classical music throughout the year, I shall pay special attention this summer to the shorter symphonies of Mozart -- in particular his youthful compositions -- because for my upcoming conducting engagements with symphony orchestras I find that these works are as good openers of a program as the ubiquitous overtures from Mozart, Beethoven, Rossini, Weber and Verdi operas. They will be especially appropriate because in 2006 we will celebrate the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth.

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Michael Edelstein

An executive producer of “Desperate Housewives”

Here is a short list of what I plan to listen to and why. Oddly enough, the one thing they all have in common is that they were written at the very end of the composers’ lives.

Richard Strauss’ “Vier letzte Lieder” (Four Last Songs) with Jessye Norman and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. I have been listening to this recording for 20 years. I don’t think anyone does it better than Jessye. It’s like he wrote this with her in mind.

In general, the late Beethoven string quartets. Some of them are so ahead of their time they sound like they were written in the mid-20th century. Specifically: Beethoven’s Quartet No. 15, Opus 132, the Quatuor Vegh 1986 recording. To me, this piece sums up what it is to be human -- the struggle, the gratitude, the joy.

Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto with Anne-Sophie Mutter and the Chicago Symphony. Berg has always been one of my favorite early 20th century composers. Written in the mid-1930s, the Violin Concerto seems to straddle two musical eras; at times it’s evocative of late Romanticism, despite the fact that it was written using the modern intellectual conceits developed by Schoenberg, Webern and Berg. You can hear buried in the cacophony of sounds and tonalities the simple folk music of Berg’s roots, made new by this underappreciated genius.

As for things I haven’t listened to yet, I have just purchased a stack of recordings by the Russian-born Alfred Schnittke, who did more than 60 film scores in addition to his other compositions. Those should be fun.

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Osvaldo Golijov

Composer

What I’ve been listening to a lot these days is Esa-Pekka Salonen’s “Wing on Wing” -- the promise of so many decades of “new music” finally fulfilled. It’s truly a new paradigm for beauty.

Also, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson’s Bach Cantatas and Handel aria discs -- a Rembrandt-made sound. She (and Bach and Handel) can reach deeper in my soul than any other voice alive today.

What else is unbelievable is Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro” conducted by Rene Jacobs -- the way I think Mozart would do it if he were alive today.

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Dean Corey

Executive director, the Philharmonic Society of Orange County

The two things I’m going to spend time with are Maria Callas -- I’m going to dig out everything -- and early Jose Carreras. Especially early on, there’s a lyrical drama to their voices that you don’t often get today, when it’s all technique, volume and sensation. If you go back, especially among sopranos, Callas wasn’t the best voice of all time by any means, but the heart and soul are in it.

Carreras is the same. Singing Bellini, he’s singing right to you. It’s good to be reminded of that kind of sound.

In the symphony world, there’s a wonderful set of the complete Beethoven piano concertos by Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Nikolaus Harnoncourt. It’s a different take. There’s also the young Chinese pianist Yundi Li. His Liszt recordings are pretty amazing. He’s the next hotshot.

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Beverly Sills

Soprano and former chairwoman of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City

Despite my having sung more than 70 operas, there was only one occasion when I appeared in a Wagner opera, and that was at the San Francisco Opera at the beginning of my career. They shoved me on, as a last-minute replacement for an ailing colleague, as one of those eight Valkyries who warble “Hoyotoho, hoyotoho.” Everything went fine until my helmet, which hadn’t been measured to my head, went clattering to the floor. Instead of leaving it there, I ran after it, to the great amusement of the public. It was a lesson well learned: Never bend over in full view of the audience.

I’ve neglected Wagner ever since and have promised myself to devote this summer to becoming more acquainted with him -- especially all 20 hours or so of the “Ring” cycle. Anyone who might raise an eyebrow at my lowbrow neglect of Wagner should remember that he never composed for the coloratura voice.

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David Harrington

First violinist of the Kronos Quartet

Ravi Shankar, “Live at Monterey -- 1967.” A friend has been telling me about this for years. It is incredible, as though this performance introduced an entire culture to an unknown treasure of music. The performances by Ravi Shankar on sitar and Alla Rakha on tabla raise the bar of what can be accomplished in a concert. A “must listen” and a “must re-listen.”

Valentin Silvestrov, “Silent Songs.” The experience of first hearing “Silent Songs” (for baritone and piano) was so overpowering, I want to hear it again and again.

“The Music of Islam, Vol. 7: Al-Andalus Andalusian Music.” In attempting to know more about Islam and its music, a great source is the 17-volume set on Celestial Harmonies, “The Music of Islam.” I am very interested to hear the connections with flamenco or other European forms in this North African music. The notes to the series are among the best I’ve read.

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Steven Lavine

California Institute of the Arts president

The first CD I’ll be listening to is a new recording by Marc-Andre Hamelin of Albeniz’s “Iberia.” At this point, I listen to everything Hamelin does -- extraordinary poetry and technically a complete pianist. Listening to this for the beauty of the playing, especially the parts where the hands are so close together, you wonder why his fingers aren’t locking up.

My most recurrent listening is Bach. But I’m not listening to Bach directly. I’m listening to Angela Hewitt playing the Chopin Nocturnes. She is a wonderful player of Bach. Chopin loved Bach. I’m finding the Bach in Chopin.

This is an old recording: Tatiana Nikolaeva playing Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes and Fugues, which he wrote for her. My interest was driven by William T. Vollmann’s novel “Europe Central.” At the heart of it is a long, partially historically accurate portrait of Shostakovich. In the midst of that portrait, there is this story of Shostakovich being asked to judge this competition in which Nikolaeva is asked to play one of the Bach preludes and fugues. Shostakovich listens to her playing Bach and finds a kind of freedom amidst the oppression he lives under. I’m listening for the freedom he finds in Bach.

The next is the Brahms “A German Requiem,” John Eliot Gardiner’s recording with the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique. What I’m loving about this is how after Wagner you have a kind of spiritual music which is not nationalistic. Even though it’s called “A German Requiem,” the feeling is of the pathos of being human.

The final recording is “Lost Objects” by Bang on a Can. This is really particularly interesting because there’s music by Michael Gordon. We’ve commissioned a new opera from Richard Foreman and Michael Gordon, “What to Wear,” which will be premiering at REDCAT on Sept. 21.

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Garry Marshall

Film and television director, who will direct Offenbach’s “Grand Duchess of Gerolstein” for Los Angeles Opera in September

I’m going to listen to “The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein” again and again. We’re calling it just “The Grand Duchess.” There’s a recording by Emmanuel Villaume, who’s conducting it for us.

Usually when I do a picture, I start listening to different things. Now that I’m focused on “Grand Duchess,” I want to listen to more Offenbach, like “The Tales of Hoffmann.” There’s a recording that Placido Domingo did, so when I talk to him I can refer to an aria he’s sung. That’s fun. Then I have never heard Offenbach’s “Orpheus in the Underworld.” That’s one I have to find because I want to use the cancan. I never heard how he got that in. I’m going to look at that.

Then I’m going to do a lot of study of what Frederica von Stade did. She’s singing the title role in “Duchess.” I’ll listen to her arias and the opera “Dead Man Walking.”

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Kent Twitchell

Muralist

The beauty of classical music is that there’s something for every mood and every need. I listen to Chopin’s Nocturnes over and over and then, depending how I feel, I might listen to Mahler. I also listen to Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto all the time. I’ve listened to it so often I can almost direct it, you know? Right now I’m also listening to Franck’s Symphony in D, Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony and, of course, Beethoven. My favorites are the Sixth, Seventh and Ninth symphonies. I love Kathleen Battle’s voice, and I listen to her a lot as well.

I really do have a scattered collection. It sort of gives my work a context. It makes it seem as though I’m working in harmony with the effort of greatness. It gives me a feeling that there’s a need for what I’m doing.

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Jim Svejda

Host of KUSC’s “The Record Shelf”

As much as I may cordially dislike the great outdoors -- except for the Huntington Gardens, of course, and the outdoors around Sierra Madre, where I live -- in my mind the great summer music is outdoor music: those wind serenades of Haydn, Mozart, Krommer and Dvorak that were designed to be played outside.

There’s also a wonderful outdoor, summery quality in virtually all of the music that that all-purpose Australian wild man Percy Grainger ever wrote. He was the only important pianist in living memory who hiked from one concert to the next, often sleeping in the woods on the way. Listening to any of Grainger’s irresistible miniatures, I’m always reminded of an old proverb from the Ibo tribe of Nigeria: “They make even a crippled man hungry for a walk.”

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Dawn Upshaw

Soprano

I take around a lot of CDs on the road, of course (I don’t yet have an iPod!), so it was kind of difficult to narrow things down. But here we go:

Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Bach Cantatas. I heard-saw Lorraine sing these in Peter Sellars’ staging recently. It was a shattering emotional experience. I just bought the CD (finally) and look forward to the solace coming my way through these extraordinary works of Bach combined with the most personal, powerful and beautiful singing imaginable.

John Adams, Violin Concerto, Gidon Kremer and Kent Nagano. It’s no surprise that I am a huge John Adams fan (both as listener and performer), but I’ve never gotten to know his Violin Concerto, written back in 1993, recorded in 1996. I look forward to finally familiarizing myself with this piece this summer.

Richard Goode, Mozart. This is Richard’s latest gem. I always need some Richard Goode with me. Always.

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Nicholas Meyer

Screenwriter and novelist

It’s hard for me to say what music I plan on listening to as I listen to the stuff all the time and have a large collection. Off the top of my head, I plan to listen to Brahms and Schumann. I wish I could hear live performances, preferably of the Brahms First Serenade (infinitely more fun than the Second) and the “German Requiem.” Likewise, I’d give a lot to hear a live performance of Schumann’s Third Symphony (the “Rhenish”). I can’t explain why this material appeals to me at the moment, but I suspect whenever I think about it, I would always go, “Oh, yeah, gimme some of that.”

I do know there are certain pieces I’d like to acquire and listen to. There’s a Symphony in D by someone named Jan Vorisek that I heard on KUSC. I was also fascinated to hear a “Carmen” adaptation I don’t own -- Edward Strauss’ “Carmen Quadrille,” which I must track down. And there’s the “Light in the Piazza” CD, about which I’ve heard great things.

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John Adams

Composer

This may sound arch, but it’s the truth: The only classical CDs I’ve been listening to in the past couple of months are the Emerson Quartet’s recording of the Bartok quartets. All the rest has been in other genres, and in fact I haven’t been listening to much beyond Oakland Athletics games (tale of woe) and the occasional Mexican news program (to keep my Hispanic credentials).