Shostakovich and Bartok tempo accelerando

'Phil Hill, on the other hand, was just as happy to retire to his hotel room after dinner and soothe his nerves with Bártok's string quartets or Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony played on a Concertone reel-to-reel stereo that he travelled with.'
Those are 1961 Formula One world champion Phil Hill's tastes in music described in Michael Cannell's newly published The Limit. A fascinating glimpse of a celebrity's pre-iPod playlist - or is it? New Yorker contributor Michael Cannell candidly acknowledges his book's debt to what is known in publishing as "novelistic nonfiction", a genre famously pioneered by Norman Lebrecht. Which means Cannell sometimes plays fast and loose with his motor racing facts, if not with his celebrity playlists. Header image is Phil Hill in a Ferrari Dino 246 at Monaco in 1959. Footer photo shows a car that I saw Phil Hill racing against a few years later, Jim Clark's Lotus 25. And no prizes for identifying who is wondering where the wheels have gone.


Astronaut Neil Armstrong's lunar playlist is here.

Header image credit f1-facts.com. Lower image is (c) On An Overgrown Path 2011. The Limit was borrowed from Norwich library. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk Also on Facebook and Twitter.

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