Most achingly-beautiful music

Much of Neil Young's catalog, most of Nick Drake's, some of John Coltrane's... This kind of list is so mood and situation dependent. Catch me at the right (or wrong) moment, even Meat Loaf can get to me. Since my father passed away last year, I cannot listen to Lucinda Willliams sing the title cut off "Sweet Old World" without getting choked up. It really is a sweet old world--music can show us the way. I guess that's why we're all here writing these posts, huh?

I enjoy getting ideas about new music to check out from all of you. Thanks.

Air's "10000 Hz legend".

J.S. Bach, Goldberg Variations (Glen Gould, first issue); Super Session, Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield with Steven Stills; Helter Skelter, The Beatles (not achingly-beautiful, but if you are not moving, you must be dead).

Rachmaninoff: Sonata in G-minor, Op. 19, for cello and piano, performed by Stephen Kates and Carolyn Pope Kobler, on the Bainbridge label, BCD6272, 1981, utilizing the patented "Colossus" recording system -- one of the very best early digital recordings, and heart-breakingly beautiful, especially the third movement Andante. One of the small handful of CDs I take with me to audition speakers and components. Breathtaking recording of a 1739 Montagnana cello and a magnificent Bosendorfer Konzertfluegel grand. Don't know if it's still in print.

The Adagio from Mahler's uncompleted 10th Symphony, fabulously performed by the RSO Berlin under the baton on Riccardo Chailly, London 421-182-2, 1987 (two discs; with Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht). Transcendent Mahler.