Jeffrey Tate

Speaker 40:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 40:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty nine.

Speaker 40:11

And the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:28

My Castaway this week is a British conductor of international renown. He began his professional life as a doctor, and it wasn't until the age of twenty seven that he gave up medicine for music. After only a year's formal training he began work at Covent Garden, from where he has developed into one of the most admired and wanted conductors of the day.

Presenter0:48

These are impressive achievements, made more so in his case by the fact that he has been crippled from childhood with a paralysed left leg and severe curvature of the spine. He is Geoffrey

Presenter1:00

Geoffrey, only a a year's formal training. Does that mean that you were you are an intuitive musician?

Jeffrey Tate1:07

I suppose it does. I mean, I began playing the piano when I was about five.

Jeffrey Tate1:12

and had lessons for about five years, and then stopped because my parents wanted me to concentrate on more important things, so they thought. Um and I just went on playing the piano. That was instinctive, I suppose, and I used to go to my local library and get out books of operas

Jeffrey Tate1:28

And I sang a lot.

Jeffrey Tate1:30

And

Jeffrey Tate1:31

in a way therefore taught myself to perform.

Presenter1:34

Was there any history of it in the family at all? Or or were you a one off?

Jeffrey Tate1:34

Uh

Jeffrey Tate1:39

Not really a one-off. My mother played rather well, actually. I mean, she stopped playing when we were growing up, but I remember her playing some Mendelssohn when I was very small. Uh my grandfather, that's her father, was Welsh and loved opera, and there were masses of uh uh opera selections in his piano music stool and I used to go and sit while my father went to the football match with him. I used to sit in their room and look through the piano stool. And my mother's cousin actually played the violin quite well. So I'm not absolutely without predecessors.

Presenter2:09

Now, um, you're not going to mind the isolation of the desert island. I think you quite like being alone, don't you?

Jeffrey Tate2:15

I spent an awful lot of time alone, particularly in my twenties in fact, after I came down from Cambridge and came to London, and got very much used to thinking and being by myself. I mean, I don't say I liked it. I didn't like it particularly, but I got very used to making my own world up for myself. I also as a child, I think because of my disability, was often isolated from the other children by their own reactions to me.

Presenter2:39

And has music always then been a kind of um consolation to you?

Jeffrey Tate2:44

Yes, I would retreat to a piano, often with a book. My great great childhood thing was to take a book that I was reading, put it on the piano, and literally improvise as I was reading the book. It was a very sort of curious state of affairs. And I would do that for hours, my mother said.

Presenter2:57

What to create the mood of the book, of what you're reading.

Jeffrey Tate2:59

Yes, sometimes. I mean, just let my fingers stroll over the keys, you know, and I would sit for hours playing. I was perfectly happy then, and would would not miss anybody. I saw music I mean, the notes were my friends, rather than the children.

Presenter3:12

How have you chosen your eight records?

Jeffrey Tate3:15

I've chosen them.

Jeffrey Tate3:17

For nostalgic reasons, for reasons if I'm going to be in isolation of reminding me of places.

Jeffrey Tate3:23

people and sometimes simply to sort of simply because I love the music itself. But basically I think it's an attempt to create an environment around me so I won't be too lonely.

Jeffrey Tate3:33

What's the First

Presenter3:34

One.

Jeffrey Tate3:34

The first one is Noel Coward, actually, singing Poor Little Rich Girl. My mother had also a music stool and it was full of wonderful sheet music and th the album that I loved the best in fact was was an album of Noel Coward. One of my curious achievements is to be able to actually sit down at the piano and imitate the man. But I love the whole atmosphere. I think if I'd been reborn I'd like to have been reborn in the thirties as a as a cabaret pianist and this will bring back the feeling of a sort of Mayfair night in London in about nineteen thirty two.

Speaker 44:04

Poor little rich girl, you're a bewitched girl, better take hand.

Speaker 44:12

Laughing at danger, virtuous danger, better beware.

Speaker 44:19

The life you lead sets all your nerves agenda

Speaker 44:23

Your love affairs are in a hopeless tangle. Oh, you're a child, dear. Your life's a wild toy fool.

Presenter4:30

Lives are wild.

Presenter4:34

Noel Card singing Poor Little Rich Girl with Norman Hackforth at the piano. Can you impersonate him even without the piano, I wonder, Geoffrey?

Jeffrey Tate4:42

Poor little rich girl, you're a bewitched girl, you see, it's I'm afraid I can

Presenter4:46

It's lovely. It's pure genius, you were saying while that was playing.

Jeffrey Tate4:49

Oh, I mean, to hear the way the voice that does that wonderful portamento in the middle, I mean, and the the the little hesitations before setting up the words. I mean, only I think someone of total genius could do that. And there was an enormous influence on me because I heard these records when I was young, seventy eight, and that timing and that wit

Jeffrey Tate5:06

And that sadness underneath all that meant an awful lot to me.

Presenter5:08

And

Presenter5:10

Not

Presenter5:11

Let's talk about how you conduct, because of course, unlike other conductors, you can't stand in front of an orchestra for a long time. Yo your disability means that you have to perch on a on a high stool. Does that get very uncomfortable?

Jeffrey Tate5:23

I've got dollar used to it. I suppose it did at the beginning, but I now can do it without thinking about it. I remember Christophe von Noggani, the conductor, saying, you know, you'll find it actually a help in a way. You have more control if you don't jump around. And it is perhaps true that it helps to focus what I do sitting down. It's not that disadvantage. And occasionally I stand up, and that is an advantage, because if you do stand up occasionally, you can produce an effect.

Presenter5:46

So you don't find your disability l limiting or frustrating.

Jeffrey Tate5:49

I really don't actually. What I used to think would happen was that I'd get tired and physically tired of holding my hands up in the air and doing it over great spans of time. On my fortieth birthday, I treated myself. I conducted Parseval for the first time, which, as you know, lasts jolly nearly six hours. And when I finished it, I could actually have conducted bits of it again. So after that, I thought, well, you know, I really c there is actually, in the last resort, no limit to my own physical energy if I really know what I'm doing and want to be doing it. So I then gave up any of the worry about it being too exhausting for me.

Presenter6:21

You also of course have to get to the podium in the first place. Is that a self-conscious business, walking in in front of the audience?

Jeffrey Tate6:27

Yes, always. I always feel a bit sort of odd walking in front of all those people. I I try and do it slowly because I used to rush on, I suppose out of fear, and once in fact fell down. My very first appearance in Cologne Opera House conducting, I rushed onto the podium. Well, I was going to rush onto the podium and in fact slipped on the on the on the front on the first step and fell into the arms of the viola player. And of course it took me about half an hour to recover from that. Oh, and I had to conduct. And I learnt a a savage lesson from that, that I really had to, despite feeling nervous and very self-conscious, walk very, very slowly. And I force myself to do that now.

Presenter7:01

Shall we have your second record?

Jeffrey Tate7:02

This is in fact a part of Britain's Les Illuminations called Ville, it's a setting of Rambeau, sung by Peter Peirce, conducted by Britain. Britain and Peirce appeared at my school when I was eleven when we did a performance of St. Nicholas cantata which he'd just written. This was in 1954. And from that moment onwards I think I was hooked on the music of Britain, whom I regard as

Jeffrey Tate7:29

For me, one of the great influences musically on my life from that moment onwards. And also, I want to hear something in French, and this is in French.

Speaker 47:42

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Speaker 47:51

Let's have me. Let's have me.

Speaker 47:53

Go back in a swab line. Go back in a swab line.

Speaker 48:07

If I literally be the baby I see you

Speaker 48:11

Of a turmeric day.

Speaker 48:15

You supplement

Speaker 48:23

On the fire.

Speaker 48:30

You can't be so baby's war.

Presenter8:35

The march in E major V from Benjamin Britton's Les Illuminations sung by Peter Peirce with the English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Benjamin Britton.

Presenter8:44

You have, Geoffrey, a as we've said, curvature of the spine, but it wasn't something that was spotted at first when you were born, was it?

Jeffrey Tate8:51

No, my parents thought I had fat feet. I mean, I walked peculiarly.

Jeffrey Tate8:54

And then it was obvious that it was more than that. I mean, I went on walking peculiarly, and they took me to an orthopaedic surgeon in Guildford.

Jeffrey Tate9:00

And

Jeffrey Tate9:01

They will

Jeffrey Tate9:02

Not absolutely certain. They had me in hospital for about a week and observed me, and then they found and discovered that, in fact, I had this complex set of diseases, glyphosoliosis, which is this double curvature of the spine, and something called spina bifida, which is a deformation of the spinal column, which affects the spinal cord and therefore affects the nerves, which run from the spinal cord into the lower limbs, and this affected my left leg.

Presenter9:27

It meant that you spent your childhood in in and out of hospital, presumably.

Jeffrey Tate9:31

I spent six months when I was eight.

Jeffrey Tate9:34

for one one big operation, and about another s two months when I was twelve, and you know, perpetual check ups and terrible visits to places which had to measure surgical shoes for me and all this sort of thing. I mean, I got fed up with it. It was just very boring.

Presenter9:46

Hm, and leg irons and

Jeffrey Tate9:48

Yeah, I had a leg iron for a while. It didn't really help, um, and they abandoned that. I mean, in in fact, um, it's amazing. I finally abandoned everything one day. They gave me a plastic brace which I wore very religiously from the age of twelve to the age of

Jeffrey Tate10:01

How old was I? I was thirty odd.

Jeffrey Tate10:04

It was a horrible thing to have to wear, but it had sort of holes in it, it was plastic, and it started just below my arms and went to my groin. And one day, seventy-five, in a very, very hot summer in France, I decided, No more, this is enough, even if I fall down. And I took the damn thing off and didn't need it, and went back to my surgeon and said, Look, and he said, Well, I suppose it would have been all right, but anyway, he that's not entirely fair on him. And from that moment onwards, I haven't worn it, and uh they then discovered a wonderful thing which enables me to wear normal shoes. I have something called an O'Connor extension, which I put on. It's a leather device, which puts my foot like a ballerina on tiptoe. And I can on the bottom of that I put a normal shoe. So, in fact, I do quite well, really.

Presenter10:36

Hmm.

Presenter10:41

And you said earlier that it meant meant that you were quite a a lonely child or spent a lot of time by yourself. You couldn't presumably take part in games or anything like that. So that it it it affected your childhood in many ways.

Jeffrey Tate10:52

When I went into hospital for the first time, I felt profoundly lonely and worried because I didn't like being in hospital. And it's funny how an atmosphere of children all on their own isn't a particularly happy one. I mean, The Lord of the Flies is not an unreasonable book in that sense. Children are very nasty to each other, particularly in isolation, and particularly under stress. And I learnt to lie and do all sorts of terrible things that I hadn't really done before. And then afterwards, as the disability got worse, I began to look different and couldn't obviously take part in activities. And I did feel isolated. On the other hand, I mean, I did realise that my brain, thank God, wasn't affected and that I found a lot of companionship in people of like intelligence and was lucky enough to go to a school which was immensely sympathetic in all respects to that. I mean, we had wonderful other facilities, a great music master with lots of music, a very, very fine playreading society, and in fact, I mean, in the last resort, I stopped worrying about it.

Presenter11:44

This was Farnham Grammar School, yes.

Jeffrey Tate11:45

This is how grammar school, yes.

Presenter11:47

You became head boy, didn't you?

Jeffrey Tate11:49

Unbelievably, yes. And that was a tremendous gesture on the part of the headmaster, who dared a lot, I must say.

Presenter11:54

Do did you ever worry do you ever worry in those kinds of situations, um, when you receive those kinds of accolades that it uh you might in a sense be getting a sympathy vote? Or do you feel that you have always earned everything you get?

Jeffrey Tate12:06

Oh no, I often feel I'm getting a sympathy vote. I think you're absolutely right. I even feel that now. It's very strange. I mean, I have to be convinced that what I'm doing is.

Jeffrey Tate12:15

because I'm it's wor because I'm worth it and not because people are saying, well, you know, it's rather amazing that he's doing it. I still suffer from that. I don't think I shall ever lose that sense. So I it's sort of something that's built into having a disability and it's there.

Presenter12:30

Your third record, please.

Jeffrey Tate12:32

My third record well, it's a piece of terrible nostalgia, but I think on a desert island one will need that. I mean it's going to be perpetually sunny, and I want to remember Christmas, which I love, and I Christmas for me is King's College, Cambridge, it is for hundreds of people, and I happen to love um the dark version of In the Big Mid Winter.

Speaker 413:02

Follows the wind made roar.

Speaker 413:08

All so tonous.

Speaker 413:15

What a life of storm

Speaker 413:21

Snow had fallen snow snow snow and snow

Presenter13:52

The dark version of In the Bleak Mid Winter, sung by the choir of King's College, Cambridge, directed by Stephen Clebery. And it um obviously makes you weep a bit, Geoffrey.

Jeffrey Tate14:01

I'm very glad.

Presenter14:04

Well, now, in fact, you went to Cambridge to study medicine. Why did you choose medicine as a career?

Jeffrey Tate14:12

Because I'd spent a lot of time in hospital and therefore had a great sense of debt. I felt seriously that I'd become ambulant because of what medicine had done for me. And secondly, because my parents really didn't believe that I ought to go in for the arts. They knew that I was interested, but they didn't trust me enough, I think, probably quite rightly at that stage. They knew that I had an intelligence, that I could win scholarships and those things. And they wanted me to go in for a profession that would be a stable one for me, given that I was disabled, etc., etc., etc. Well, of course, medicine is a rather hard one, but even so, I mean, it was the one that if I was going to not do the arts, it was the one that I chose to do. So I went to Cambridge and read medicine.

Presenter14:49

You in fact qualified as a doctor, but then at at a certain point you decided you'd done entirely the wrong thing.

Jeffrey Tate14:55

Well, yes. The certain point was when I failed my exams, if you want to know. Oh, really? You you learn that I'd done rather too much. You see, what I'd done was come down from Cambridge.

Presenter14:59

Yeah.

Speaker 314:59

Yeah.

Jeffrey Tate15:04

And when I came to St Thomas's, I got entangled in a rather wonderful opera workshop run by a woman called Elsa Marlisman and spent much more time coaching Rhine maidens, or learning how to coach Rhine maidens, than ever walking the wards, or at least not enough walking the wards, so I failed part of my finals. And that was a great shock to me because I never failed an exam in my life. And that made me really reassess, because then it looked as though I had made a bad choice. And I happened to have made friends with a man called John Kentish, who was at that time Director of Studies at the London Opera Centre, and he and his wife Lee both thought that I was making an error. They

Jeffrey Tate15:38

In that interim period between wait and take exams, again, pushed me towards doing an audition at the London Opera Centre, which I did.

Jeffrey Tate15:45

Got, was offered a place, and then of course I got my exams. I mean, this was the way about it, and I did my house jobs as well, and they rang me up.

Jeffrey Tate15:54

The opposite is saying, Are you going to take up your place? They'd kept it open for two years.

Jeffrey Tate15:58

And

Jeffrey Tate16:00

I decided that I had to give it a whirl. I had to discover whether this was the way of my the world or not. And I spoke to my consultant, who was very good, and said

Jeffrey Tate16:08

Yes, if you do a year of opera, no one's going to say no if you come back to medicine. So I did that year on the assumption that if I hadn't found my feet somehow at the end of that year I'd go back to medicine, having tried, and then I couldn't say at forty I never did it.

Presenter16:24

So you certainly did find your feature. You became a repetiteur. Can you explain what that is?

Jeffrey Tate16:28

Yes, it's bashing notes into singers. I mean, crudely, crudely put, that makes singers sound very stupid. They're not. But in fact, what you do is you sit and work with opera singers on interpretation as well, on language, on what the piece is about, and you also play rehearsals. You can't afford to have an orchestra, so you have a pianist to do that. And then when the orchestra comes, you need people to listen to balance, you need people to play bells offstage. It's the dog's body of an opera house. And great fun.

Presenter16:53

And soon some of the uh the great singers in the land, or in Europe, were to be arguing over which of them should uh be coached by you, I gather.

Jeffrey Tate17:01

Well, that's putting it very flatteringly, but I mean, I did actually make contact with quite a few people. I mean, Kiri DeCanna's one of them, Jesse Normans, and other people like that.

Presenter17:09

I was

Jeffrey Tate17:12

I was she asked for um a good repetiteur, and John Thule came and said, I've got something terribly difficult for you to do, you're to go and work for Maria Callis, because this was a year before she died, and she had been in isolation for a long time.

Jeffrey Tate17:26

And she was very suspicious of me at first as I was of her. But after the month was up I think we had become really very close friends. Whether I could actually coach her is another matter. I mean, I could occasionally, if she was in the right sort of mood. It was difficult, but wonderful, because she was an extraordinary person to be with frightening on one level.

Presenter17:45

So that's the sort of job that you did, really, at the Royal Opera House between the years of seventy and seventy six, more or less?

Jeffrey Tate17:51

Yes, I and I had thought I was going to go on doing that. I mean, I had certainly no no feeling that I was going to do anything else but that. At one stage the chorus master job became free, and they were thinking of offering it to me, and I went and talked to Jimmie Gibson, who was the head of the music staff there.

Jeffrey Tate18:05

and said, Should I do it? and he said, You want to conduct? I said, I'm not absolutely certain.

Jeffrey Tate18:10

I said and he said, Well, wouldn't it be rather wonderful to be just the best coach rather than and I said, Yes, and I felt that very strongly. I felt rather be the best coach than you know, one of many second rate conductors. I mean, there's no point.

Presenter18:24

Right, let's leave just for a moment the best coach, just to see he is there for a moment, and and and have another record.

Jeffrey Tate18:30

I think we are due for some more nostalgia. I hate to tell you that. You see, on this wretched desert island I shall miss all that sort of running water and green English lushness. And so what I'd like to hear, in fact, are the Banks of Green Willow by George Butterworth.

Presenter19:46

George Butterworth's The Banks of Green Willow, played by the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by none other than Geoffrey Tate.

Jeffrey Tate19:53

It seems rather awful to actually put oneself on one's own programme, but I have so many friends in that orchestra now, so you'll forgive me for having put myself into it.

Presenter20:01

Totally and utterly forgiven. How did, in fact, the best coach become a c a conductor of that calibre?

Jeffrey Tate20:07

Purely by accident, really purely by accident. I was in Bayreuth assisting Pierre Boulez on the ring, and Pierre.

Jeffrey Tate20:15

Senth obviously something in me that I didn't even know about. He put me in charge of conducting all the piano rehearsals. And maybe that began to make me think that I could do that sort of thing.

Jeffrey Tate20:23

And also singers who I worked with began to realize that. And as a result of which, a conversation between two singers, one of whom had turned out to be the uh person who ran the Gothenburg Opera, Ragnar Alfung, and the other was Donald McIntyre, who was Votan in the famous ring. They were discussing with me in Cologne one night after a ring rehearsal who should conduct a second series of Carmens in Gothenburg. And I was racking my brains to think of someone who ought to do that. And Donald McIntyre said, Well, why don't you conduct it? and I said, Don't be stupid, Donald.

Jeffrey Tate20:52

And Ragnar thought that was a very good idea, and the next day he went off to the Cologne Opera, obtained permission for me to leave leave for the lesser amount of time, without even asking me, and I was presented with the Faita Complier, and so I ended up by conducting a series of, I think, fifteen carmens at the Gothenburg Opera, and it sort of snowballed slightly from there, with the reluctant Geoffrey sort of tagging on behind slightly.

Presenter21:13

Was it then that you knew you had at last found what you really wanted to do?

Jeffrey Tate21:18

Now that sounds very romantic, Sue. It wasn't at all. I still am not certain. I mean, I if you really ask me although I conduct and and and have conducted in uh I still don't know really what what I'm ought to be doing in my life. I don't think I'll ever really know. I'm that sort of person. I still have my grave doubts about it. Maybe because uh conducting a music i was a second thing in my life. Maybe maybe I I I've got the sort of Zigoina wanderlust inside me and that I will that I perhaps will never absolutely feel that I was I'm at home in in any one thing.

Presenter21:47

Interestingly, of course, you you didn't always like opera, did you, or much of it?

Jeffrey Tate21:52

No, no, I loathed it for a long time. I mean, I used to go to Covent Garden and wonder why the singers were never with the beat, always sang out of tune, and why the productions looked so horrible, and I would much rather go to the Royal Shakespeare Company. And there are times when I still feel that I mean, you know, inevitably. And yet, when it works, it is the most wonderful thing in the world.

Presenter22:09

Let's have another record.

Jeffrey Tate22:11

Well having said that, I will now in fact choose some opera, um an opera that I'm doing at the moment in fact at Coffin Garden, the opera that I perhaps love more than any other, by the composer I love more than every other. This is a wonderful moment from Cosifantuti by Mozart. It's the moment in which the false young lovers are falsely saying goodbye to their believing girlfriends, thinking that they're going to the wars, sobbing with misery and emotion, and the cynical old philosopher is laughing underneath. I mean the way both the tragedy of the situation and the comedy of the situation is conveyed by Mozart, I I think this is one of the most extraordinary things I know.

Speaker 423:32

Son of Man.

Speaker 423:36

But say you could

Jeffrey Tate23:39

Uh

Speaker 423:40

O Se La Bri Do S Da Bree Do S.

Presenter23:49

The quintet di scrivermi onigiono from Mozart's Cosifan Tute, with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Karl Berm. The soloist was of course Elizabeth Schwarzkoppy.

Presenter24:01

We were talking earlier about um how you conduct, but we were talking purely physically.

Presenter24:06

But when you conduct, is it an entirely emotional business or is it a a partly scientific? Can you describe how you do it?

Jeffrey Tate24:16

It's certainly scientific. I mean, obviously, one has to make s all sorts of considerations. I mean, I'm sometimes criticised by some of the critics for uh conducting classical music, for instance, more slowly than they used to or think it's whereas I in fact believe that the music needs the time for all the details that are there to be made apparent and to be heard. I'm I'm a great believer in that, and this is an intellectual process whereby I work out a tempo that will enable the the details to speak in the way they think they ought to speak. I'm very keen that one should hear as many strands of the orchestra as possible. Therefore I have to work that out, how to balance the orchestra. This is all very technical. And in but of course in the last resort the music says something emotionally.

Presenter24:54

But how then do you coax out of your performers, your musicians, and your singers, that interpretation, your interpretation? How do you make them do what you think you ought to hear them doing?

Jeffrey Tate25:05

I try and well, sometimes I don't succeed, but I try and do it by obviously orchestral musicians, I mean, you have to talk technically about, you know, lengths of notes, um, how loud you're playing, whether you play something short or long, I mean, you know, all these sorts of things. Um and that's a very technical process. Obviously but your hands have to show that as well, and that's the difficult part. I mean, making your hands show all that enough. With singers it's a matter more of talking, I think, or I always talk to singers about emotion, about meaning, because it all comes from the word in the last resort. I mean, even the notes themselves, the way you sing them, will depend on the meaning of what you're singing. So I try and talk about meaning. But for all both orchestral and singers, I try and do it

Jeffrey Tate25:46

via love, that is, trying to do it positively. If I criticize, it's never to criticise in a negative way, it's always to try and say, shall we try it this way? in order to m bring something positive out of it. I can never do anything by shouting at anybody. I mean, I I really can't. I have to make them want to do it. I have to seduce them into wanting to do it my way.

Presenter26:05

Should we have another record?

Jeffrey Tate26:07

Yes, it's another one of mine. Awful to say that. But the reason I choose it uh is again to hear the orchestra, the English Chamber Orchestra playing the music which they're absolutely marvellous playing, the great classical music of the end of the eighteenth century. And because this piece will remind me of London, which I love. I I spend quite a lot of my life in London. And I love this piece because although it's written by an Austrian, it's about London. It's the London Symphony by Haydn.

Presenter27:26

Part of the first movement of Haydn's one hundred and fourth Symphony, the London Symphony, played by the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Geoffrey Tate. Now, Geoffrey, the island, um the isolation, you said, won't worry you too much. Um you have your music on the gramophone. What about food?

Jeffrey Tate27:42

Well, I love eating and I love cooking.

Jeffrey Tate27:45

And I love all sorts of cooking, and I'm particularly fascinated by sort of tropical and other sorts of cooking. So maybe I shall get round to developing my own sort of desert island cuisine. Turtle sashimi?

Presenter27:56

You sound, on the whole, a very self sufficient kind of person, and fairly f fearless.

Jeffrey Tate28:01

I have a lot of interior fear, um genuinely so. I mean, you know, before concerts is the obvious and banal case, but I do have a lot of interior fear that I have to work out. But I normally have enough strength in me to sort of overcome that and do it despite myself, do you know what I'm saying? And that could be my disability. I have to do things occasionally despite my own lack of willingness to do it. But I suffer beforehand, I mean, you know, uh go through sort of, you know, sleepless nights and that sort of thing. But I can I yeah, okay. I I'm I'm fairly resourceful.

Presenter28:30

And you're not at all bitter.

Jeffrey Tate28:33

About

Presenter28:33

About your disability.

Jeffrey Tate28:35

Um that's always a very tricky question. Of course I'm bitter. I'd be stupid not to be bitter. There are times when, of course, I would love to be, you know, perfectly straight and perfectly normal. I mean there are many occasions in my life in which it would have helped a great deal.

Jeffrey Tate28:48

others in which it wouldn't. No. I mean but the the bitterness is part of a great sort of panoply. I mean, it's a useful thing to know about bitterness, you know? I don't think it's bad to know what bitterness means. I mean, I'm not basically bitter, but it does perhaps represent seven to eight percent of my life. Why not?

Presenter29:06

Let's have your seventh record.

Jeffrey Tate29:08

This is actually, talking about bitterness, this is a man singing Hans Sachs from Meistersinger by Wagner, who does display suddenly, having been nice for the whole opera, an incredible amount of bitterness suddenly, when the girl that he's obviously in love with but can never marry because he's much older and she's not in love with him, suddenly tells him how much she loves the young man, and having been nice for the whole opera, suddenly bursts out in a great fit of rage. And I comple in a way I completely understand that. It's happened to me and I know what it's about. But in fact I haven't chosen that moment. I've chosen the moment where Hans Sachs sits and sings about the lilac smelling in Middle Europe. And I love Middle Europe. I love all those onion spires and those wonderful green Alps. And this music

Jeffrey Tate29:52

Apart from the fact that Wagner is after Mozart my great love, it seems to be redolent of a another part of the world that I shan't see again if I'm on this island.

Speaker 430:10

Sort, so stamp.

Speaker 430:15

Won't fall.

Speaker 430:23

Feel restaurant.

Speaker 430:38

As it was more.

Presenter30:59

The Fliede Monologue from Wagner's Die Meistersinger, sung by Norman Bailey, with the Fienna Philharmonic conducted by Sir George Schulte.

Presenter31:07

What of the future, Geoffrey, presuming that you don't change career again? Um what ambitions do you have musically?

Jeffrey Tate31:16

I'd like eventually to have my own symphony orchestra maybe, so that I can really program and do what I want. That would be lovely.

Jeffrey Tate31:22

I have a terrible burning ambition, which I've said often enough on in enough places might actually happen, and that is to conduct the ring at Bayreuth, which is an awfully arrogant ambition, but um maybe it might happen one day. My secondary ambition would be to conduct somewhere Meister Sing, which I haven't yet done, and that might happen.

Presenter31:40

You'd also quite like to run the Royal Opera House, I gather.

Jeffrey Tate31:44

Oh

Jeffrey Tate31:46

That's a l that's a bit under the belt. I mean, uh it's being extremely well run at the moment by by Bernard Harding and Jeremy Isaacs. If one day Bernard decided to leave um and they wanted me to do it, yes, I would perhaps love to do it. I might even be interested actually in administration, because that does interest me, I mean, uh uh surprisingly enough. But um the only thing I fear with all those problems is I actually also like a little bit of freedom and I watch what happens to people in those positions and maybe maybe in the last resort my freedom is also important. I don't know. It's one of those complex decisions you have to make about whether it's not better to be just a little bit off centre so that you can escape.

Presenter32:25

Let's have the last record.

Jeffrey Tate32:27

And the last record.

Presenter32:28

Hmm.

Jeffrey Tate32:29

Yeah, that's nostalgia. That's wistful thinking. It's I I put it on when I'm feeling particularly sad and it makes me feel even sadder. And yet in fact it's it's also full of of hope.

Jeffrey Tate32:42

It reminds me of America, which I love. It reminds me of all sorts of things. It's Billy Holiday singing.

Jeffrey Tate32:49

I'll be seeing you.

Speaker 332:54

Be seeing you.

Speaker 332:59

In all the old, familiar places

Speaker 433:06

Yeah.

Speaker 333:07

That this heart of mine embraces.

Speaker 333:15

All day through.

Presenter33:19

Billy Holiday, I'll be seeing you. There's an awful lot of nostalgia in you, Geoffrey. Awful lot of love as well. You love Central Europe, you love your food, you love England.

Jeffrey Tate33:29

It makes me sound rather extravagant. Yes, I do. I'd love all those things. Yes.

Presenter33:33

And which of the records do you love more than any of the others there? Because it's a difficult choice, eh?

Jeffrey Tate33:33

And which of the records?

Jeffrey Tate33:37

Because it's

Jeffrey Tate33:39

I oh, it's an awful choice.

Jeffrey Tate33:43

I really do have to take just one of them, right?

Presenter33:45

Well, we'd just like to know which of them is more important to you than any of the others.

Jeffrey Tate33:50

Oh god. Just to be difficult. Just to be really horribly difficult. Um.

Presenter33:50

Just

Jeffrey Tate33:56

I suppose I take Billy Holiday.

Jeffrey Tate34:00

Because I'd be leaving some one behind.

Presenter34:04

And what about your book? I'm sure you know that there is the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare there. What else would you?

Jeffrey Tate34:08

Shakespeare

Presenter34:11

Like to have.

Jeffrey Tate34:11

I'm going to be greedy. I want all the works of Jane Austen.

Presenter34:15

It's not really allowed.

Jeffrey Tate34:16

Yeah, but they're all in one volume. They're only come on, come on, come on, come on, come on. They're all nice and short in one volume. And that would cheer me up after Billy Holiday. You must allow me that.

Presenter34:23

They're fairly slim. All right, you can have them, but don't tell anybody.

Jeffrey Tate34:26

Yeah.

Presenter34:27

And your luxury.

Jeffrey Tate34:28

Well, I'd thought of a piece of early mice and a cup and saucer, but then I suddenly realized that was against all your rules, because you expect me to do that of palm leaves and fronds and things. So I want something terrible, terrible, you have to steal it for me. I want Pierre La Francesca's nativity from the from the National Gallery, so I can look at that, because that's full of people singing and being wonderful.

Presenter34:49

Oh, we can get hold of that. That's simple. You shall have it.

Jeffrey Tate34:49

Total that's

Jeffrey Tate34:51

Thank you.

Presenter34:52

Geoffrey Tate, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Speaker 435:03

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.

Speaker 435:53

Uh