When I talked about which song you’d like to hear on your deathbed, I was of course referring to the spirit of the initial poll, which asked Brits which popular song they’d like to hear as they shuffled off this mortal coil.
No mention of classical music, of course, which didn’t stop several of you from listing your classical choice.
But in the spirit of that, here are my Top 5 Choices for Classical Deathbed Music — the music I’d want to hear in my last conscious awareness — and there are five only because I don’t want to list fifty (which I could), and in any event, I find it absolutely impossible to pick only one. Any one of the following would be just fine by me, and all I can say is that I’d sorely miss hearing the other four.
Faure’s Requiem (appropriately enough)
Beethoven’s 7th Symphony, 2nd Movement
Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody On A Theme Of Paganini
Strauss’s Die Fledermaus Overture (just a short piece, in case it’s all I’d be able to have, and Zubin Mehta conducting the Vienna Phil? Worth every moment.)