Perfectly fine location for this thread, Northland1.  Welcome to NarniaWeb!  We're glad to have you here.

Unfortunately, I don't even know of this recording, as thirty-five years ago I was just getting close to my 3rd month of life on this planet. . .

But Aslan being executed to Moonlight Sonata does sound incredibly haunting and moving. . . I fell in love with the music through the focus on the family radio theater dramatizations, and can't imagine how frustrating it would be to have those recordings without the music that shapes them so well.  

Perhaps @coracle will be able to help? She's quite knowledgeable on these matters.

I remember that Holst’s The Planets was used as background music in the Focus on the Family’s Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I thought it added something unique to the soundscape of the audio drama. In fact I don’t know which orchestra performed the piece of music.  It certainly does much to improve the listening experience.

@digorykirke

I'm afraid that my earliest Narnia audios were FotF in the late 90s. 

@Narnian78 my knowledge of classical music is quite limited, and I didn't have any access to English audio recordings. I hope we can find out. 

@coracle 

There are many recordings of The Planets. This is the one that I own on CD:

I don’t think anyone has to be an expert on the music to love it and appreciate it. That is true of most classical music. 🙂

@Northland1, apologies if you've already discounted these (I know very little about the readings/dramas you've mentioned above and if there's overlap), but I've done a little digging online and wanted to see if either of these were possibilities:

1) You mentioned Michael York reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe above, but it looks like there was an audio reading that appears to have been released in 1982 in which he read The Last Battle and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was read by Ian Richardson. I found a photo of the box/cassette set here and a listing for a (now sold) LP record set of the series here (which provided the helpful date!).

2) The BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was apparently released in 1988 (I don't know if this is the original cover but it does look to be an older one). I know I've heard their dramatisation of Prince Caspian at least, but I don't remember anything about the music, I'm afraid.

I hope you're able to find the version you're looking for. And welcome to NarniaWeb!

@northland1 Just to add to what others have said, I fairly recently listened to the BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of LWW, and that definitely isn't the one you're looking for — it didn't use the Moonlight Sonata (or any other recognisable piece of music) over Aslan's death. I know a lot of classical music and I definitely would remember if they'd included that piece, as I love it too.

Also, Michael York's recording is an audiobook version — just the one person reading the entire book word for word, not a dramatisation with multiple voice actors and music and sound effects. Unless he also participated in a different version that I'm not aware of. I had that audiobook on CD at one stage, but didn't like the way York, instead of thinking up convincing kinds of voices for the different characters, simply went for stereotypical accents that one might learn in drama school. That is, he gave Mr Tumnus an Irish accent, Maugrim a Scottish accent, and the Beavers Yorkshire accents — all of which just sounded completely silly, I reckoned. (He wasn't very good at doing female voices either, so his rendition of the White Witch sounded more comical than scary. )

Sorry I can't be more help, but I hope you do manage to track down the recordings you're looking for! 

@narnian78 thank you. I think I once heard this live in a concert, about 50 years ago!

Thank you all for your welcomes and efforts trying to solve this puzzle!

I played a hunch this afternoon and solved it! The audiobook publisher for the particular Michael Horden set I was listening to made an error.

I compared LWW in the supposed Horden version, to the York version and found them to be the same - same voice and no music. I was confused because the other audio books in my Horden set are indeed Horden, as evidenced by the original music from his collaboration with Robles.

After trying several other audiobook sources, I finally found another Horden Narnia audiobook set, and this one had the correct, Horden reading, of LWW.

I listened to it, and memories of Horden’s excellent reading voice (I agree much better than York’s) came flooding back. So did Robles’ beautiful and haunting music.

But of course this was all original composition - something discogs also suggests…until we reached Aslan’s execution on the stone table, and my childhood old memory was correct: it was Beethoven’s moonlight sonata (or some very similar rearrangement)!

I also have vague memory there is some classical pieces used in the Voyage of The Dawn Treader.

Anyway, happily listening to them with my son now. I hope he’ll also appreciate the magical atmosphere they add to these excellent books.

Thank you all again!

@courtenay Agreed on York and thank you!

@valiantarcher Thank you for your help!

@narnian78 it’s a great piece!

@digorykirke sounds like I need to listen to the Focus on the Family recording too!

@coracle 

The Planets was given in concert only about a year ago at a college in my area along with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.  I really enjoyed the performances.  🙂

@Northland1, hurrah! I'm glad you were able to solve this one and that you can now share all of the audiobooks you were remembering with your son. And I've learned something now about all the different audiobooks that I didn't know before.

Posted by: @northland1

@digorykirke sounds like I need to listen to the Focus on the Family recording too!

Indeed!  They are available for purchase through the iTunes store if you're an IOS user.  I think it's like 75 dollars (US) for all seven, but these are audio dramas, and not just audio books.  Each one is about three hours long, and they're widely considered by fans to be the best audio productions that have been done.  I'd love to hear what you think of them.

And I'm really glad to hear that you found the recording you were looking for!  I know how frustrating that can be 🙂

@valiantarcher 

The set of LP’s that I have are hour long readings from the first four books (publication order) by Ian Richardson, Claire Bloom, and Anthony Quayle. The recordings do not have music but just the voices of the actors.  I am not even sure if they are still available since they are from the 1970’s or 1980’s. They are abridged versions of the stories. The voice acting is very good.  I wish they were longer, but I guess it was necessary to shorten the stories to have them on vinyl LP records. I do like music and sound effects on audio versions of stories and I wish they would have included them as well. The Focus on the Family dramas offer more realistic soundscapes and longer versions of the stories.