I was just thinking about this. There is a handful of recordings I listen to all the time because I associate and match them with certain activities, often in the background. Otherwise, I just listen once to whatever I have purchased most recently, catalog it, and put it away for another day...I could pull it down again in a month or in several years, it just depends.
Here are some of my "standbys" for the events of life -
- Antal Dorati's recording of Respighi's Ancient Dances and Airs (background music for nice dinners)
- Glenn Gould's recording of the Bach D Minor Concerto (music for intense concentration/high productivity work sessions)
- One of the recent vinyl pressings of Kind of Blue with the corrected pitch (testing changes in my vinyl setup)
- Brubeck, Time Out (party music)
- Various recordings of the Brandenburg Concertos (the soundtrack of life!)
- This YouTube Video of a Mozart Serenade (studying my Bible)
- Diana Krall, The Look of Love (making a laid-back American style dinner at home!)
- The Lark Ascending (I think the recording with Boult?) I put on every weekend when we have a family dinner at my parent's house...
I also tend to listen to the appropriate "ethnic" music for the kind of dinner I am having...Italian music for pasta, Irish or Scotch music for fish and chips, Ravi Shankar for Indian, you get my drift...