Harold Fielding

Speaker 10:00

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 10:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My castaway this week is an impresario. Over the past thirty years he's risked hundreds of millions of his own money and other people's too, entertaining family audiences with glittering musicals. His successes are legendary half a sixpence, Charlie Girl, Sweet Charity and Barnum to name but a few. His list of stars is dazzling. He even got Frank Sinatra to play Blackpool.

Presenter0:52

Like the best theatrical grandees, his failures have been on a large scale too. His production of Siegfeld crashed two years ago at a loss of more than two million pounds, and this year his new musical with Petula Clarke closed early. Nevertheless, he remains optimistic. My shows are the purpose of my life, he says, and always have been. He is HAROLD FIEELDING.

Presenter1:13

So how did you persuade Sinatra to come to Blackpool Harold? With difficulty? Well, with difficulty, but

Harold Fielding1:18

But he was marvellous, and he gave me something, apart from the marvellous performance I'd never done before, the pleasure of dashing down the whole promenade at Blackpool in a police car with all the sirens blaring. And I I thought that was that made my day. It's how I always remember Sinatra.

Presenter1:34

But that's the only way he'd go to the the show.

Harold Fielding1:35

The show was. Oh, yes, yes, yes. A demand. A demand. A little demand. On the contract. Nicely put. Nicely put. I mean, Marlena Jietrich, who I was another of the great stars that I introduced to Blackpool, because I did concerts there for thirty-three years. She was remarkable because we took her up in a very small plane, which we used most Sundays in those days. And I said it's only forty-five minutes from where we took her. And she said, Harold, that doesn't matter. I shall still change on the plane. Tiny, I said, it's very difficult she said. Leave that to me. I will change on the plane because when I get out, there's not one single crease. And I thought that was the sheer professionalism.

Presenter1:37

A demand. Only for demand. On the contract.

Presenter1:41

I'm not sure.

Presenter2:12

So it's really been a a lifetime devoted to the stars. Some people would would call that masochism.

Harold Fielding2:18

Well, it certainly ain't easy, if I may put it that way. But once you've made up your mind, you see, stars are very valuable, and you pay them an awful lot of money. It's absurd money for their performance. You pay them, to put in my very common language, bums on seats. If they have little peculiarities of their own, put up with them.

Presenter2:40

So when you pay someone like Ginger Rogers, as you did in in nineteen sixty nine, I think in Maine, you paid her five thousand pounds a week, I think.

Harold Fielding2:45

I think in Maine. You played her

Harold Fielding2:48

Probably the last one.

Presenter2:49

How much of that was salary for what Ginger did on the stage, and how much was it for bums on seats?

Harold Fielding2:54

Well, I always put it that you say thirty or forty percent is is salary for performance and the rest is for for that. I mean she was a remarkable woman, again one of the most professional people, absolutely adorable off the stage and an absolute hell to deal with once she'd gone through the stage door. It's the only show I've ever had in my life where she had to be escorted from her dressing room, and you know I built that marvellous dressing room all done in silk at Drury Lane for her. Each entrance she came on stage to play her part, she had to be taken by the hand and put on and expected a stage manager to be standing where she made her exit to take her back to the dressing room. But all that sort of thing I've learned to live with. I've enjoyed it.

Presenter3:38

Well, more more to come on the temperament of the stars, but let's find out more about your temperament first of all. What kind of music will preserve your sanity on the desert island?

Harold Fielding3:48

Serious music. I you see, I started as a as a violinist.

Harold Fielding3:53

If you'd said to me when I was ten, eleven, cut your right arm off, you'll play better, I'd have cut the right arm off. I was that dedicated. I'm a very bad sleeper. I get up very often in the middle of the night and go into another room and play beautiful music. As for example the piece of music you're going to play first, because that is one of the most soothing pieces of music I've ever heard. And it's the Schumann piano concerto. Played by the great pianist Solomon. And Solomon has a special memory for me because my very first professionally promoted concert was a recital by Solomon in all places the Hippodrome at Aldershot, which was a variety theatre and totally unsuitable really. But Solomon then became a great friend, did hundreds of concerts for me. And he, to my mind, has that wonderful smooth quality. And the few bars I think you're going to play from the Schumann concerto

Harold Fielding4:50

Just show that perfectly.

Presenter5:52

The opening of Schumann's piano concerto in A minor, op. fifty four, played by Solomon, with the Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Herbert Menges.

Presenter6:01

So tell me, Harold Fielding, about you and this violin as a boy. How did it all happen? Well, it all happened because.

Harold Fielding6:07

When I was six, seven, and was shut in the room to practise the piano, I hated it. In fact, I got very severely told off by my parents.

Harold Fielding6:17

They said we'll give you a violin later. I said no, now please, please. And it wasn't till I was ten that Daddy said one morning, Take you to London and go to buy you a violin. Bought it on the store for a pound in Warder Street, wrapped up in newspaper.

Harold Fielding6:32

He took it back to Woking, where I lived, and the family home.

Harold Fielding6:36

took it out on the scrubbed kitchen table that you used to have in those days, and I could play. Now that convinced me absolutely that there is reincarnation. I did not have to be shown how to hold a bow, and that, you know, is usually at least six months of agony.

Harold Fielding6:53

And I could literally play and I'd be like,

Presenter6:55

What did you play?

Harold Fielding6:56

And I could just play the violin. I couldn't play any particular piece, but I could manipulate it and play it.

Presenter6:58

In

Harold Fielding7:03

I started to study straight away and within a year, eighteen months, I was giving recitals.

Harold Fielding7:08

It and it was the most wonderful experience. I absolutely adored it.

Harold Fielding7:13

You know, it was a wonderful career. I got taken all over the country.

Presenter7:17

And you were you were billed, weren't you, as England's Wonder Boy violinist?

Harold Fielding7:20

I'm afraid I was. Isn't it awful?

Presenter7:22

What did you wear to perform?

Harold Fielding7:24

In fact, sometimes builders in England's young Chrysler or something, which was even more embarrassing. Um oh, well, I am told I can't remember I'm told that at first I actually was put on in a velvet suit, isn't that revolting too, and white socks or something. But of course, you know, we all have mummies, don't we?

Harold Fielding7:42

And she was wonderful.

Presenter7:44

And what happened to you?

Harold Fielding7:44

She sold all her jewelry to buy me a violin and I mean all those sort of things. Quite remarkable. Daddy was a amateur musician, played with the Stock Exchange. He was a stockbroker at Stock Exchange Symphony Orchestra. And in fact they engaged me one year to be their soloist at the wonderful old Queen's Hall. And uh so it was very, very exciting. Big

Presenter8:03

But one day, I think it's true, isn't it, when you were about seventeen or eighteen, something happened which also signalled the end of this this playing career. You can you tell me about that? You you lost your memory.

Harold Fielding8:12

I know what you've you've done some research, haven't you? Very good, Sue. I you probably mean that the deciding factor.

Harold Fielding8:21

Which was when I had a memory breakdown, and I slipped up in the middle of the slow movement of the Mendelssohn Concerto, and which I was playing with the big symphony orchestra.

Harold Fielding8:33

For four or five bars I was out.

Harold Fielding8:36

I got back, but when I came off the stage I said that is it. That I can't afford to go through again. And that was when I made the decision to go into concert promotion. I don't regret the career as a violinist. In fact, I adored it. And I think next we're going to play a very short unaccompanied piece by the great Hungarian violinist Joszka Szigeti.

Harold Fielding9:04

My mother was determined she adored this man he was one of the great virtuosi of the time and she decided that I must go to this man and be taught and he said, Madam, I do not teach. And she persevered for nearly two years, and in the end he agreed to teach me.

Harold Fielding9:22

for a lot of money, which really gave mummy a lot of problems. But he said the only way is my your son will have to travel with me. So I sort of travelled as an unpaid secretary, but but got a lesson every so often of which w he was

Presenter9:35

So what is he to play on your discussion?

Harold Fielding9:38

Well, he was apart from other qualities, he was a world expert on Bach, and particularly the unaccompanied sonatas and partittas, of which there are six. And I I've chosen the gavot enrondeau from the partita number three.

Speaker 410:09

Uh

Speaker 410:20

Yeah.

Presenter10:53

The Gavotte enrondo from Bach's Patita No. Three in E major, played by Joseph Shigetti, Harold Fielding's violin teacher. So, Harold, you you took to concert management instead of concert performance. Now, what and who did you manage in those early years? Which must have been the war years. Well, yes.

Harold Fielding11:09

Well, yes, I was put officially to be the concert manager of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The brief was to go into the bomb cities as quickly as possible. After I'd done that for about a year or two years, I started to run concerts on my own. One of the first stars that I got was the great Richard Talbot.

Harold Fielding11:30

And in fact I had Talbot under contract for three years for a hundred and fifty concerts a year. Well of course that was impossible, nobody, nobody could sing that. He was one of the most wonderful people I have ever worked with, an absolute darling, never any problems.

Presenter11:44

So at what point did you move on then or move out from classical music into variety?

Harold Fielding11:50

Well, then it was the time when

Harold Fielding11:53

You had people coming over to the palladium like Danny Kaye, for example, Bob Hope.

Harold Fielding11:58

And most of them who came to England either played the Palladium or they played the Palladium and my tour. Danny Kaye was an enormous success. I I he gave me the toughest contract I have ever paid anybody because he demanded the biggest

Harold Fielding12:15

percentage of the receipts I have ever seen in my life. But I needed him because that name brought other names. You had to be seen to be the sort of top concert promoter of the time. But of course I did keep somewhat serious because apart from Talbert,

Harold Fielding12:33

and his concerts. I also

Harold Fielding12:36

got the privilege of handing all Benjamin Ogili's concerts. Now that was my great triumph. He was the Pavarotti of the day.

Harold Fielding12:46

In fact, so enormous in box office that if we were opening a box office at ten o'clock, I would ring it at twelve, and if they didn't say we're completely sold out, I would say, Well, what's gone wrong? It was that enormous.

Presenter12:59

Shall we have your third record there?

Harold Fielding13:01

This is Richard Talber singing Ilmio Tazorev, Don Giovanni, and a number which Richard almost always put into his programmes and

Harold Fielding13:13

brings back to me the most wonderful memories.

Speaker 413:15

I miotezoro intamto.

Speaker 413:23

Anda, and the menu is the same.

Presenter14:11

Richard Tauber singing Il Mio Tesoro from Mozart's Don Giovanni with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Walter Goer.

Presenter14:19

So, Harold, your first big musical that was Cinderella, I think, the Coliseum, nineteen fifty eight.

Harold Fielding14:23

Yes.

Presenter14:25

With a popular young singer in the lead role called Yana.

Harold Fielding14:29

Yes, that was quite an extraordinary thing. We wanted to get somebody who wouldn't normally play the role. Jana, as you remember, was very glamorous, very much at the top of her career at that time. But it was quite.

Presenter14:41

But it was quite a novel idea, wasn't it, to take a recording artist put her into a picture?

Harold Fielding14:43

And of course Tommy Steele was buttons. It was the first my first entry into the West End.

Presenter14:45

I'm in steel.

Harold Fielding14:52

The press were kind enough to say that it revived the glories of the nineteen hundred at Drury Lane.

Harold Fielding15:00

I was also lucky in that Rogers and Hammerstein, who never allowed their scores to be used except under their own management,

Harold Fielding15:06

I don't know how I worked it, but a lot of meetings in the oak room of the Plaza Hotel in New York.

Harold Fielding15:12

And they said, we'll give you the score, which was only a one and a quarter hour score. They enlarged it for me to two and a half hours.

Harold Fielding15:20

I mean today

Harold Fielding15:22

To mount the glamour of that show with which I sort of made my reputation in London would make even Siegfield at three million look cheaper. I mean, it would have cost, I should think, four to five million. It had the most enormous amount of scenery. It had a singing chorus of twenty, a dancing chorus of twenty. I mean, it was huge in every way.

Harold Fielding15:43

I had to make my mark. And in those days, getting into West End theatres was very much a closed shop at the same time.

Presenter15:48

But it was also an innovative business. I mean, the idea of transferring a pop star called Tommy Steele.

Harold Fielding15:54

Yes.

Presenter15:54

Into a show like that was something no one had done before Meaton.

Harold Fielding15:55

Click.

Harold Fielding15:56

And I mean, Tommy and I were in Dundee one night playing a concert, normal concert, and he got totally mobbed on stage and they pulled started to pull his clothes off him and he came off, he says, Gov, he's always called me Gov, he says, Gov, that's it I said, What do you mean, that's it, Tom? What what's it? He said, That's it, we don't do any more concerts. I'll finish the tour, but everything you've booked we'll do. Not going through that. He says, Why can't we do musicals?

Presenter16:20

So it was his idea.

Harold Fielding16:21

And it was his idea very much. I mean, uh after that he's done, as you know, innumerable shows for me.

Presenter16:27

Absolutely.

Harold Fielding16:28

with with the most extraordinary success.

Presenter16:30

You were mentioning just now how you bullied Rogers and Hammerstein into letting you have the score of Cinderella. Now who else have you nagged into submission in your professional lifetime? Sam Goldwyn, I think.

Harold Fielding16:34

The school

Harold Fielding16:41

Well, again, this was in fact Tommy's idea that we should try and get the rights to the hands as it was on the film Hans Christian Anderson uh with Danny Kaye of course and we should get the stage rights.

Presenter16:43

Uh

Harold Fielding16:53

Sam Goldwin

Harold Fielding16:54

held those stage rights for himself, always intended to do it.

Harold Fielding16:59

We worked for some years on him, and eventually

Harold Fielding17:02

Uh just before he died he said, Okay, I will grant those rights to you and we did do it very beautifully at the London Palladium, but it also Tommy was magnificent in it.

Presenter17:11

But it also

Presenter17:13

But it also shows that story, all of these stories, that you are simply not a man who takes No for an answer.

Harold Fielding17:19

Guilty, my Lord.

Presenter17:21

Let's have your next record. What's that?

Harold Fielding17:23

The next record is Juliet Prowse.

Harold Fielding17:27

I brought her here for the show which I did with Bernie Delphant at the Prince of Wales Theatre Sweet Charity.

Harold Fielding17:37

And the song I've chosen there is If My Friends Could See Me Now. And I thought for this programme, thinking we're on a desert island,

Harold Fielding17:46

That might be appropriate.

Speaker 417:47

If they could see me now, that little gang of mine. I'm eating fancy chow and drinking fancy wine. I'd like those stumble bums to see for a fact the kind of top drawer first-rate chums I attract. All I can say is, wow, we look at where I am. Tonight I landed Powell, right in a pot of jam. What a setup! Holy cow! They'd never believe it if my friends could see me.

Speaker 118:09

RAAAAAAA

Presenter18:21

Juliet Proudh's singing If My Friends Could See Me Now from Bernard Delphonte and Harold Fielding's production of Sweet Charity. And if your friends could see you on a desert island, Harold, what would they see? A lost and dejected man, or the eternal optimist expecting the rescue boat?

Harold Fielding18:35

Well, I think I'd do that.

Harold Fielding18:38

I'd also be looking very, very carefully for something. I am terrified of snakes.

Harold Fielding18:43

And I would have to examine that island very carefully, as quickly as possible.

Presenter18:48

Talking about snakes, let's talk about the critics.

Presenter18:52

Uh

Harold Fielding18:52

Oh, I say

Presenter18:54

Do you have much regard for them? Do you liked that, did you? I liked them.

Harold Fielding18:57

I like it.

Presenter18:58

Well

Presenter19:00

I don't.

Harold Fielding19:00

It's a very difficult situation regarding critics. I do think criticism...

Harold Fielding19:07

is becoming

Harold Fielding19:09

A little strange in this country because success is not a story, failure is a story. And it can be shattering because when you have put a new show on, you are at your lowest ebb. You've worked eighteen, nineteen, twenty hours a day for weeks, you've got really het up and the next one you open it is all written awful about. It's pretty shattering.

Presenter19:31

But you've managed in the main, haven't you, to appeal to your audience over the head of the critics, as it were. You've gone straight out to the audiences and said, Look, I've put this show on for you. Do you want to come in and see it?

Harold Fielding19:41

If you've got enough money in the kitty,

Harold Fielding19:44

Enough guts to do it?

Harold Fielding19:46

A caste who won't get depressed playing to very small houses.

Harold Fielding19:51

and a few other things.

Harold Fielding19:53

In my view, you can beat the critics, even if they've reviewed very badly. But it is becoming more and more expensive. I was very successful in rescuing one or two, particularly Charlie Girl, which had the worst press ever known in history. In fact, we issued so many writs the next morning it wasn't true. We did it to to get space in the you know, do anything.

Presenter20:15

No such thing as bad publicity.

Harold Fielding20:17

Oopsa.

Presenter20:18

Uh

Harold Fielding20:18

But you

Presenter20:19

But you're also known as as the coach party king. I mean, do you object to that title? No.

Harold Fielding20:22

Oh, I don't object to it. I love the coach parties. They're adorable. It isn't a part of the job that I like very much. The marketing side

Harold Fielding20:32

is a bit boring, but I will tell you, Sue, very, very, very important. And you see, although Ziegfeld was not a success for reasons which I can't talk about on this programme, some of them,

Harold Fielding20:46

On simply announcing that it would be a Harold Fielding extravaganza.

Harold Fielding20:50

at the London Palladium, which is my favourite theatre, and that it was based on Siegfield, not one name other than that. We took over a million pounds. Now that was a case of salesmanship that worked. So what went wrong?

Harold Fielding21:06

Well, it wasn't by the time it got to the stage and I really, without getting into a libel court can't say some things, it wasn't the show we'd originally planned. It was very disappointing. It had wonderful qualities. I think now, with the hindsight I've got, I should have however expensive it was, said I need six weeks, pay the theater rent to stay dark.

Harold Fielding21:29

Bring in some other people I could have thought of then changed the format of the show, because one of the problems was that mister Ziegfield was not a very interesting person, and the interesting parts of his life weren't all that nice. Now, people don't want in a musical to sit and hear nasty things, they want to hear nice things. And um

Harold Fielding21:48

Oh, it's a sorry story, but um best past history now.

Presenter21:51

Well, I'd like to hear a bit more about it, but I'd like to have your next record first of all. What should that be?

Harold Fielding21:56

Well

Harold Fielding21:57

How about having Tommy Steele? Now there's a mad tear little story about this song. It comes from half a sixpence.

Harold Fielding22:05

It's called She's Too Far Above Me.

Harold Fielding22:07

It was the quiet moment of the show.

Harold Fielding22:11

And it was so successful for Tommy that every show Tommy and I have done since, we've always had what we call as the Too Far Above Me number.

Speaker 422:21

She's too far above me.

Speaker 422:26

Bye-bye.

Speaker 422:28

She is, she'd love, she would.

Speaker 422:35

Not a she would

Speaker 422:39

If I was to say

Speaker 422:43

I loved her so.

Presenter22:46

Tommy Steele singing She's Too Far Above Me from Half a Sixpence, one of Harold Fielding's great successes. So what's the secret of a good musical, Harold? Good story, obviously.

Harold Fielding22:57

It's very, very difficult.

Harold Fielding22:59

To know what makes a good musical.

Harold Fielding23:02

And of course there is a certain change

Harold Fielding23:05

That's why Cameron McIntosh, whom I admire enormously, is being very successful with shows like Miserab, which are quite heavy in their way, more like opera.

Harold Fielding23:16

That is a change at the moment. I still believe, though, that

Harold Fielding23:20

The people I market to, the mums, the dads, the kids, the coaches, want glamour, they want to see beautiful costumes, which I've always thought are f uh much more important than scenery, because scenery they don't really look at. Costumes come right down to the footlights and they see them and they see them swirling and so on. And it's always been one of my big things.

Presenter23:41

But I mean again you gave them all of that in Siegfeld and they didn't come for it in the end. I mean the most expensive musical ever mounted in Britain was

Harold Fielding23:43

Yeah.

Harold Fielding23:48

Well, the story wasn't right. I mean, we couldn't get the story right. We should have I know what we should have done. We should have taken off for six weeks, abandoned the story, the book, altogether.

Harold Fielding24:01

I didn't. I still persevere with putting it on as you know, you get an idea and I thought this is his life.

Presenter24:07

And you put a a lot of your own money into that one.

Harold Fielding24:09

Oh, unfortunately I did, yes. Well that's I've I've always gambled with all through my career. I've been in I mean I've started with a hundred pounds and

Harold Fielding24:19

those concerts which cost virtually nothing, if they made ten pounds or fifteen pounds.

Harold Fielding24:24

That was a good day in those days.

Presenter24:27

So you've always put your money where your mouth is.

Harold Fielding24:31

Yes.

Presenter24:31

Yeah.

Harold Fielding24:33

Well, yes, okay. We've got a little hump at the moment that these things, these things happen. It's very lucky.

Speaker 124:39

Uh

Harold Fielding24:41

I've always had a bubble inside me. I've got a huge amount of energy.

Harold Fielding24:46

I

Harold Fielding24:47

Love the challenge of all these things. I don't like disaster, of course I don't, but by God, I've had it so many times

Presenter24:53

Has it not depressed you at all? You seem still full of energy and optimism. Has it not brought you down at all? Or is this your power?

Harold Fielding25:01

In private, yes. Of course it has. Of course it has.

Presenter25:04

I wonder what your wife Maisie might have had to say about all of this now.

Harold Fielding25:09

She would have been very cross.

Harold Fielding25:12

I don't think that I would

Harold Fielding25:15

If she had been alive, there were certain things I wouldn't risk, and I might not have risked Siegfield, but she died of a heart attack in one minute before I could even say goodbye. And I suppose I'm living now

Harold Fielding25:33

for the shows, for everything, and I do take risks.

Presenter25:36

Shall we have another record?

Harold Fielding25:38

Yes, now we come to another star that I've been very fortunate to have who is also a wonderful friend, Michael Crawford.

Harold Fielding25:47

He's only ever done one show for me, although I hope he will do another, and that was Barnum.

Harold Fielding25:53

Michael

Harold Fielding25:55

The thing is that in his dressing room you daren't go near Michael, however friendly you are, for the last half hour before curtain up.

Harold Fielding26:04

He revs himself up, just like you see long distance runners or runners on the track. He does that for half an hour before revs, revs, revs up.

Harold Fielding26:15

And to be able to go out and sing this number right at the beginning of a show.

Harold Fielding26:21

You need to have appeared as if you've already been on the show and you're halfway through.

Speaker 426:25

Barnum's the name.

Speaker 426:27

Humbugs, Mikey.

Speaker 426:30

Whether you end up thinking that humbug's a blessing or a curse, you're still gonna buy it. Why? Because every 60 seconds in this world, a delightful phenomenon takes place, which absolutely guarantees it.

Speaker 426:45

There is a sucker on every minute.

Presenter26:48

Michael Crawford singing There's a Sucker Born Every Minute from Barnum.

Presenter26:52

Well, now there's a big house in Mayfair called Fielding House, and behind its pink front door these shows we've been discussing have been masterminded from the initial planning and the finance and the scripting and the casting right down to the last sequin.

Presenter27:05

You've involved yourself at every stage, Harold, haven't you?

Harold Fielding27:09

Yes, I I'm afraid I have to admit that, but it's the only way I know to work. It is the true tradition of impresario as against what they call producers today, who are very often m not in show business at all. They put up money, they want their name at the top of the the hoarding and so on and so on. I believe that that a true impresario should be into every bit of it. Not because I know better than anybody else, but somebody has to be the captain. I've always explained to new people joining me, there has to be a captain. My job

Harold Fielding27:42

like a captain on a ship is to make all his officers working as a team. They're carrying out all the jobs. Somebody's got to put them together. Somebody's got to have the last word. And I have never ever allowed any director and that's why I've lost some directors who normally want to have complete artistic control. I said that isn't the right way to do it. If the show goes wrong, it's my fault. Who's being blamed for Zegphil?

Harold Fielding28:07

Not other people, me. I do play a part. Nobody seems to object to it. And in fact, most of the people say it's good.

Presenter28:15

And what do you think all of those people whom you've employed, what would they say was your greatest fault, do you think?

Harold Fielding28:22

Well, I can lose my temper.

Harold Fielding28:24

I can slam my phone down if I don't like the way the conversation's going.

Harold Fielding28:29

I can do lots of naughty things, but

Harold Fielding28:31

I don't know.

Harold Fielding28:34

Perhaps wanting to put on more and more musicals could be a fault. I don't know.

Presenter28:38

Let's put on more and more records. What's number seven?

Harold Fielding28:41

Number seven is Albert Salmons, who in his day, thirty, forty years ago,

Harold Fielding28:47

was the Nigel Kennedy.

Harold Fielding28:50

of the moment. In other words, the top English violinist.

Harold Fielding28:54

Before I went to Sigeti, I was lucky enough to be taken to Salmon's and became a pupil of his.

Harold Fielding29:01

He at that time was just about to give the first performance of Elgar's Violin Concerto, for which he was regarded as the ace interpreter. And this is just a little bit of Salmon's playing part of the first movement of Elgar's Violin Concerto.

Presenter30:18

Albert Sammonds playing part of Elgar's Violin Concerto in B minor, Op. sixty one, with the new Queen's Orchestra conducted by Sir Henry J. Wood, and that was recorded in nineteen twenty nine.

Presenter30:30

Let me ask you finally, Harold.

Presenter30:32

I think an awful lot of people believe that showbiz is is a rather superficial business in which people pretend to adore each other but don't necessarily, and in the end most of them are just there for the money. Patently that hasn't been your experience.

Harold Fielding30:47

I've never been in it for the money. I've I've if so I would have stopped doing after certain things and been and been a very rich man. That has never been I love doing shows. I get a tremendous kick from doing them. Amazing enjoy di doing them. All my wonderful staff, some of whom are still with me. I mean, I've had people with me forty years and more. That's remarkable.

Harold Fielding31:07

Okay, there's a lot of of of false loving each other and calling each other darling and all this damn silly thing. That, of course, I don't particularly like. But one of the things I say to youngsters when they're coming into the show for the first time

Harold Fielding31:21

Would you please remember the theatre is my factory?

Harold Fielding31:25

And in a factory you work, and you work properly and you work hard. It isn't a game. It's very, very hard work. You've got to be prepared to be.

Harold Fielding31:36

Somewhat dedicated to doing it. If you can like it at the same time, if you don't like it, then get out. Because it isn't an easy job at all. And my father summed it up marvellously once when he said, Well, neither of you wanted to that's my brother, I wanted to become a stockbroker. He said, But as for you, Harold, having gone into a damn silly business where you start again six o'clock at night, he said, Words fail me, probably a good way of summing it up. But I have been happy, I've enjoyed it. The best moment of my life is to stand at the back of a theatre, hear the audience going out and say,

Speaker 131:59

He is at work.

Harold Fielding32:11

Had a wonderful time. It's a huge reward.

Presenter32:14

Shall we hear your last record now?

Harold Fielding32:16

Yes, this is Shari Balabash with Diane Todd.

Harold Fielding32:21

and the huge ensemble of the Great Wolfs Company singing the Blue Danube.

Presenter33:19

Cherie Barabash, Diane Todd, and the Ensemble of the Great Waltz Company, singing The Blue Danube.

Presenter33:27

One of those records you have to choose, Harold, which you'd need and treasure more than any of the others.

Harold Fielding33:33

Solomon and the Schumann piano concerto, because although we only played a little bit at the beginning,

Harold Fielding33:39

The slow movement is even more calming.

Presenter33:43

And a book, you must choose. You've got the Bible, and you've got the complete works of Shakespeare.

Harold Fielding33:47

I've always had a tremendous interest in the legal profession.

Harold Fielding33:52

And if you'd asked me, which you haven't, what else I might have liked to be in life, would have been to be a great barrister.

Harold Fielding33:59

And Sir David Knap Pleasney, very eminent lawyer.

Harold Fielding34:02

is writing a series of books at the moment, Great Murder Trials of the Twentieth Century, and I think one of the most fascinating of all is Murder at the Villa Madeira, which was a great trial in London, and, extraordinarily enough, a woman and a boy were on jointly on trial.

Harold Fielding34:22

She was rather an elegant lady. What fascinates me about her she was a concert pianist and violinist.

Presenter34:30

You could make a musical about it.

Harold Fielding34:31

Maybe I should.

Presenter34:34

And your luxury, what's that to be?

Presenter34:36

You have to choose something which is inanimate, just something that you would like to have there too.

Harold Fielding34:43

A very, very big bag of sugar, because I'm completely mad about sugar.

Harold Fielding34:49

I eat sugar on fish, on meat, on salads, everything. I mean restaurants who know me, the first thing they always come say

Harold Fielding34:57

They mistress the sugar.

Presenter34:58

And how are the teeth?

Presenter35:03

Harold Fielding, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Speaker 135:14

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