An incidental recording roundup: Inadvertent listening tips from an ill-prepared traveler
Dear friends of PPI
If you’ve traveled by car, bus, train or plane recently (and given that 72 million Americans traveled over the past 4th of July weekend, I’m assuming a few of you were among them), I’m guessing that, as far as your approach to transit soundtracks is concerned, you fall into one of three categories:
The impeccably prepared audiophile traveler (expensive noise-cancelling headphones carried in a special case; curated playlists by mood and destination downloaded well in advance to block out everything from ambient noise to nagging family members)
The happy-go-lucky, whatever’s-on-the-radio-or-provided-as-in-flight-entertainment-suits-me-just-fine traveler (never carry or don’t own headphones, secretly revels in overhearing other travelers’ conversations and catching snippets of other families’ drama, preferably in a foreign tongue)
The woefully underprepared self-confessed music snob with only three albums downloaded on their device, refusing to capitulate to the “Classical for sleeping” selection on offer from Delta, yet unable to relax without some soothing tunes.
Ok, this third category is just me. I was the somewhat self-congratulatory mom on the overnight flight who, once the kids were settled and quietly minding their own business, discovered that although everything from swimming goggles to anti-nausea medication had been packed, I quite literally only had three downloaded albums on my phone. Horror of horrors! Ten hours stretching before me and no way to listen to the long list of piano recordings I was planning on spending my undivided attention on!
Disgruntled with myself and enviously looking at my be-headphoned husband (closed off in his soundproof Bose bubble), I surveyed my options and decided that, in fact, fate or chance bestowed me with a special gift. (Also, given the frequency with which my kids use my phone to stream everything from Katy Perry to Katseye, it could have been significantly worse). Yes, I would have to relisten to familiar sounds – but what better way is there to re-evaluate nuance and subtlety than to be dangling in the dreamy no-man’s land somewhere high above the Atlantic, feeling removed from space and time? So I listened to old favorites with brand-new attention and appreciation, and by the time our flight touched down, I was happily humming Schumann and Schubert, thinking of how I’d accidentally stumbled on my very own version of an almost perfect desert island disk!
Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake – Perspectives (2006)
(Listen to the album on Spotify or iTunes)
Although this whole album is as dear to me as the black winter coat I bought in the same year it was recorded, it took being miles above the ground, thinking about modern international travel, to really hear Schumann’s “Mein Wagen rollet langsam” (My carriage rolls slowly). How different life must have been when a slowly rolling carriage was the fastest mode of travel! And yet: How little has really changed! Don’t we still use our travel-time to reflect, to dream, and to discover that, wherever we go, there we still are? (This song deserves its own newsletter. I’ll come back to it sometime, I promise!)
Filippo Gorini – Sonata for 7 Cities: Live in Vienna (2026)
(Listen to the album on Spotify or iTunes)
No surprise why this one is among the sprinkling of downloads! While preparing for Filippo’s March residency in Portland, I listened to as many of his recordings as I could lay my hands on – including this beautiful album by the same recording team who accompanied him in Lincoln Hall. Everything Filippo plays is imbued with clarity and intention, but what I really adore about his interpretation of Schubert’s unfinished Sonata 15 in C Major (D. 840) is how he embraces the work’s inherent fragmentation. The last movement (Rondo. Allegro) simply … ends. Right where Schubert set down his pen. Like so many human experiences, including vacations: Unduly interrupted. Unintentionally altered. Inevitably unfinished.
Helen Charlston and Sholto Kynoch – A Poet’s Love (2026)
(Listen to the album on Spotify or iTunes)
Although not a completely novel idea (women have been recording traditionally “male” repertory for more than half a century), I’ve never quite heard such a vervy, gut-punch of an “Ich grolle nicht” to balance out the dreamlike trance of “Im wunderschönen Monat Mai”. Is there any such thing as listening to “Dichterliebe” too many times? British mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston here not only proves herself a phenomenally gifted singer, but also a storyteller of note. Her blending of the new commissioned work Knight’s dream (some fabulously theatrical piano accompaniment there, to boot!) with Schumann’s masterpiece is absolutely brilliant, and exactly the kind of programming the world (and a desert island disk …!) needs.
What are you listening to while traveling this summer? Let’s compare notes!
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