Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Sue Lawley
Conductor who pioneered authentic early music performances, formed the Monteverde Choir, and won three Gramophone awards.
Eight records
Love Scene from Roméo et Juliette
London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Colin Davis
I think it's probably the most beautiful romantic music that came out of the 19th century, arguably anyway. You never see Romeo or Juliet, it's all in the orchestra. But the atmosphere that Berlioz creates is so sensual and so much to do with Italy and with the romance of those two people. It's so palpable. I love it.
This is an old friend of mine, Charlie Andrews, who was the estate carpenter and gamekeeper and sort of odd job man. And he was also a marvellous friend to me. ... He spoke out loud and remembered out loud William Barnes's local dialect poems and there's one wonderful one called The Giet of All in Two which Charlie actually recorded just before his death.
Hugues Cuénod, Paul Derenne, Nadia Boulanger
It's got such charm, and I wouldn't be without it for anything.
This is actually another singer, a Lebanese pop singer called Fairuz. And she's singing Ya Habibi from an album called Sentimental Mood. I adored her. ... I found myself busking well, moonlighting as it were, playing backing for Fairuz.
Entry of Polyhymnia from Les Boréades
English Baroque Soloists, John Eliot Gardiner
This particular piece that I love so much is the entry of Polyhymnia. And it's a purely orchestral piece, but it shows how different Rameau is from Bach and Handel, in that his music resembles a kind of French sort of 1920s blues style, which is very characteristic of the high Baroque. And I find it so special, I wouldn't be without it for anything.
Erbarme dich, mein Gott from St. Matthew PassionFavourite
This is particularly special to me because it's a recording we made in Aldborough at Snape in the wonderful Maltings concert hall, and it's got three of my most favorite musicians taking part in it. ... It's got the leader of the orchestra playing the obligato violin part, who happens to be my wife, Elizabeth Wilcock, and her playing of this obligato line and also what it represents to me in terms of her commitment to English Baroque Soloists and to me and to music making in general and the influence she's had on my life is enormously important. I wouldn't be without that for anything.
This is the MJQ, the modern jazz quartet, playing Versailles. It's from an old album called Fontessa, which as a child, as an adolescent at school in Branson, I used to play all the time. ... I can remember exactly how that was, the MJQ they are so special, these four very serious black gentlemen playing magnificently and improvising with such flair.
May no rash intruder from Solomon
Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists, John Eliot Gardiner
The group of musicians to whom I'm most indebted and who have been as it were my longest companions and friends are the members of the Monteverdi Choir. ... This is a very gentle chorus of Handel's, uncharacteristic perhaps, and it's the most soothing and the most English pastoral of his choruses. And it's the one that I will remember the Monteverdi perhaps best by.
The keepsakes
The luxury
an endless supply of Sancerre wine and a lemon
if it's too practical, then how about [an] endless supply of san cer to drink with them
In conversation
Presenter asks
Which gets the greater share of your time, the beef cattle or the music?
Well, I like to think that I do music on the side, that I'm really a farmer, but unfortunately that's not true. In the sense that I always wanted to be a farmer initially, but conducting soon became the most important thing in my life, and I've tried to combine being a conductor with a love of the countryside and also for the last ten years an active involvement in farming again.
Presenter asks
The musical precocity apart, it was a very normal childhood, was it?
Oh yes, I mean I wasn't particularly interested in I had no thought of music as a career. I mean it was just natural to be part of what was going on in the house and that was musical. But the most important part of my life then was being in the country, being on the farm, being always at the stable door, working when I could or thought I was working, driving a tractor, having a marvellous time, I mean a blissful time until Till I was sent away to boarding school and then trouble started.
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Speaker 4
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 4
The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety two, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.
Presenter
My castaway this week is a conductor. He's combined his knowledge of history with his love of music to help pioneer a new approach to the work of the early great composers. While he was still at Cambridge he formed the Monteverde Choir, and at the age of twenty-five he became the youngest person ever to conduct a prom concert. He's famous for his performances and recordings using authentic instruments through which he tries to bring a new excitement and vitality to musical works. But he's not just an early music buff. His broad tastes have brought him important positions in the world of music and many accolades for his recordings. He's the only conductor to have equalled Herbert von Karrion by winning three Gramophone awards. He is John Elliott Gardiner. And on top of all that, John, you're a Dorset farmer. Now which gets the greater share of your time, the beef cattle or the music?
John Eliot Gardiner
Well, I like to think that I do music on the side, that I'm really a farmer, but unfortunately that's not true. In the sense that I always wanted to be a farmer initially, but
John Eliot Gardiner
Conducting soon became the most important thing in my life, and I've tried to combine being a conductor with a love of the countryside and also
John Eliot Gardiner
and for the last ten years an active involvement in farming again.
Presenter
And if you like your your your music authentic, um what about your farming? Is that organic?
John Eliot Gardiner
It is. I actually I loathe the word authentic because I don't I mean it suggests something sterile and and sort of museum-like and um I know what people mean by it, but it it's not really something that it means a lot to me personally. Uh uh I I mean historically aware or something like that is is probably near the mark.
Presenter
It is the problem, isn't it, that people when you say you like authentic instruments and original music, they people think it's going to be dry and dusty and academic and tedious.
John Eliot Gardiner
Okay
John Eliot Gardiner
And absolutely boring. And it it it doesn't need to be that way at all. I mean the whole
Presenter
And it
John Eliot Gardiner
The whole interest in doing it is really to get closer to the composer, and, if the composer has something to say, to make him sound as though he's saying it to day rather than two hundred years ago.
Presenter
We'll talk some more about that in a minute, but tell me about your the music that you'd need on a desert island. I mean, is that all authentic music or does it reflect your broader tastes?
John Eliot Gardiner
Really?
John Eliot Gardiner
Not a bit. I've found like everybody, I find it agonisingly difficult to select, but the things that I have selected are all to do with very specific memories of moments in my life or else marvellously exciting musical moments that have often got nothing to do with playing on period instruments at all.
Presenter
And the first one is?
John Eliot Gardiner
Well, this is a prime example. It's the love scene from Berlioz's great Romeo and Juliet.
John Eliot Gardiner
Which I think is probably the most beautiful romantic music that came out of the 19th century, arguably anyway. You never see Romeo or Juliet, it's all in the orchestra. But the atmosphere that Belioz creates is so sensual and so much to do with Italy and with the romance of those two people. It's so palpable. I love it. And it's conducted by Colin Davis, who is absolutely unmatched as a Belios conductor and was somebody who influenced me very much early on. I sang under him and played under him in my student days, and he is the great guru for Belioz.
Presenter
Part of the love scene from Romeo and Juliet by Berlioz, played by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Colin Davis.
Presenter
You were b brought up on the farm then, John Elliott Gardiner, but but the family was very musical.
John Eliot Gardiner
Well, they were amateur musicians, but
John Eliot Gardiner
Mad keen on on singing and actually the first music I ever heard was folk songs sung by the people working on the farm or people connected with the farm or in the village and then lots and lots of polyphonic music at home, Bach motets, bird masses, lots of stupid madrigals and cannons and catches and rounds.
Presenter
But your parents were just self taught, they just loved music.
John Eliot Gardiner
My mother was trained as a singer, but was an amateur singer. She didn't do it as a professional. She was a marvellous producer of children's dramas, and she did lots of illustrated mimes and fairy tales and also nativity plays with using the local children. And so there was always something going on, either in the garden or in the house, connected with music or drama.
Presenter
And you fell in love with Monteverdi, aged six, I read.
John Eliot Gardiner
Well, I was very lucky because um there was a summer school of music just down the road at the at the Branson Summer School um and my parents took me off there. Yes, I was six years old and met Imogen Holst and above all Nadia Boulanger who was lecturing there on Monteverdi but also on Stravinsky and um
John Eliot Gardiner
Sir William Glock was there, he was organizing the whole thing and he he organized this marvellous um opportunity of hearing Monte Vedi Magicals for the first time. And that was my first experience of Monte Vedde, and I was absolutely overwhelmed.
Presenter
Wait, even at the age of 60.
John Eliot Gardiner
Oh yes. And then two years later I heard the Vespers performed by Walter Gerr from Yorkminster and it was broadcast by the BBC and we taped it and and played it over and again and again.
Presenter
The musical precocity apart, it it was a a very normal childhood, was it? It wasn't. Oh, yes, I mean, I wasn't.
John Eliot Gardiner
Oh yes, I mean I wasn't particularly I mean I wasn't particularly interested in I had no thought of music as a career. I mean it was just natural to be part of what was going on in the house and that was musical. But the most important part of my life then was being in the country, being on the farm, being always at the stable door, working when I could or thought I was working, driving a tractor, having a marvellous time, I mean a blissful time until
John Eliot Gardiner
Till I was sent away to boarding school and then trouble started.
Presenter
Record number two.
John Eliot Gardiner
This is an old friend of mine, Charlie Andrews, who was the estate carpenter and gamekeeper and sort of odd job man. And he was also a marvellous friend to me. I mean, he was my father's age, but he was very irreverent of what was going on on the place. He told me all the stories. He used to have a great line saying, Yere, come here, I'll tell you something, and off he went. And I was virtually bilingual and I was brought up speaking with a heavy
John Eliot Gardiner
Dorset accent and then spoke proper at home. And Charlie also had a wonderful way of wearing his headgear, um a cloth cap which would change its angle according to the mood he was in. And he spoke um out loud and remembered out loud William Barnes's local dialect poems and there's one wonderful one called The Giet of All in Two which Charlie actually recorded just before his death.
Speaker 2
In the sunshine of our summers,
Speaker 2
We the high time now a come
Speaker 2
How busy were we out of
Speaker 2
We view were left at home.
Speaker 2
When waggons rumbled out o' yard,
Speaker 2
Red wheeled be body blue
Speaker 2
And back behind'em loudly slammed
Speaker 2
The get of all in two.
Speaker 2
Through day sheen for how many years The git has now a swung
Speaker 2
Behind the vit a fugrown men, And footstraps of the young
Speaker 2
Through years and days it swung to us
Speaker 2
Behind its little shoe
Speaker 2
As we trip lightly on avoor, The get of all in tow.
Presenter
The gates have fallen too, is that is that right? How do you say it?
John Eliot Gardiner
The git, like a ye, a git, the git of all into.
Presenter
A functional
Presenter
Read by Charlie Andrews, and it's a poem by William Barnes. It's strange, John Elliott, considering all of that musical background, that you didn't end up studying music at university. You studied history. How did that come about?
John Eliot Gardiner
Oh, I got to Cambridge on a history scholarship, not on a on music one, and I was uh fascinated by history at the time and at still at that stage I had no thought of of really of doing music professionally. I was also put off very much by
John Eliot Gardiner
The type of musical world that went on at Cambridge, particularly at my college, King's, which was very precious and reverent and rather stuffy, and everything was sung in an extremely holy way, and it didn't seem to me to correspond with my own childhood memories of how that music went.
Presenter
This is the King's College Choir, you want to selfie?
John Eliot Gardiner
Yes. That's right. And they they are. I mean, I was actually offered a place in the choir as a volunteer, but
John Eliot Gardiner
I was really almost allergic to the sound they made and um something in me uh really wanted to see whether it was possible to u to w using the same material, the same singers, who were very disciplined and they blended beautifully and they sang perfectly in tune, uh whether it was possible to get a totally different range of sounds out of them and to to actually do justice to
John Eliot Gardiner
Italian music and to Mediterranean music.
Presenter
So you turn down the invitation to join them and you filch them instead and set up your own
John Eliot Gardiner
Well, I didn't quite filter them. I just started a a brand new choir just for one performance. I had a very understanding tutor at Cambridge, and uh after my second year I said to him, Look, I really don't know whether
John Eliot Gardiner
I want to be a musician or not, or whether I want to be a historian. And he said, Well, fine, take a year off. And what are you going to do? I said, Well, I'm actually going to
John Eliot Gardiner
concentrate on on doing a new edition and of the Monte Vedi Vespers of sixteen ten, and I want to um form a choir to do it. He said, Fine, but look, you do actually have to read something. What what are you going to read? And I said, Well, I'd really like to read uh classical Arabic and and mediaeval Spanish because
John Eliot Gardiner
The thing in history that was really preoccupying me was the transmission of
John Eliot Gardiner
Greek thought into Western Europe as a result of the Arab conquest of North Africa and of Spain.
John Eliot Gardiner
And I'd spent a little bit of time in the Middle East before going to Cambridge and
John Eliot Gardiner
It was fascinating to actually explore it in terms of the languages, in terms of classical Arabic and in terms of medieval Spanish, which draws very strongly on Arabic. But all the while I was really concentrating on Montevedi and and starting this choir and trying to get a new sound.
Presenter
So it was established and and it was su a success.
John Eliot Gardiner
It was a success thanks really to the encouragement of William Glock at the BBC and other producers on Radio 3 who.
Presenter
It was a
John Eliot Gardiner
Who?
John Eliot Gardiner
realized what was going on and was were fascinated by the sounds. And William gave me the chance to conduct um the Vespers at the Proms in nineteen sixty eight, and that was a bit of a breakthrough.
Presenter
Shall we have your third record?
John Eliot Gardiner
Well, this is Monteverdi. It's actually a very old record conducted by Nadia Boulanche, my teacher, and it's of the wonderful Chacon Zefirotorna sung by those two marvellous old tenors, Uqueno and Paul Duren. It was actually recorded in 1937, and it's slightly a French version of Monteverdi, but it's got such charm, and I wouldn't be without it for anything.
Speaker 4
Neviron, Neviron, Neviron.
Speaker 4
Levy Walter.
Speaker 4
There you go, sir.
Speaker 4
E Piroto.
Speaker 4
Oh God,
Speaker 4
We won't.
Speaker 4
And he saw the change.
Speaker 4
Pedi saviach love.
John Eliot Gardiner
Ready
John Eliot Gardiner
Or the uh
Speaker 4
What a grand island.
Speaker 4
It is all your Lord.
Presenter
Part of Monte Verde's Zephyrotorna, sung by Hugh Kineaux and Paul De Rennes, conducted by Nadia Boulanger, under whom you studied in Paris.
John Eliot Gardiner
I did indeed. You know, I first met her when I was six and then I decided to to study with her, uh, having left Cambridge and having had a year at King's College London and uh with a remarkable detective musician, Thurston Diart, and he decided that I ought to study abroad and wanted me to go to Eastern Europe and I said, No, there's one person I really want to study with and that's Nadia Boulanger.
Presenter
But she was very disparaging about you all about your lack of knowledge.
John Eliot Gardiner
Oh yes, she was revolting. She was horrible, but marvellous, and I adored her. She said to me, But, my dear, your harmony is a tragedy without name, which indeed it was. I was twenty-two and was doing the sort of exercises that musical exercises that she was doing at age five and six. I had no formal musical education at that stage, and she put me through the the real grill for two years.
Presenter
Was it ever likely that that that you would become a a a conventional symphonic conductor, or were you always really someone who didn't fit into the conventional mold?
John Eliot Gardiner
Well, I didn't know at that stage and one of the first things to test that out was going in for an apprentice conducting scheme, which I did with the BBC Northern Orchestra. And for two years, I was their apprentice conductor, which was a terrific training, because one got to conduct the overture in a live broadcast. And if the tradition was that if the overture lasted 12 minutes, you were given 10 minutes rehearsal time, that's all, to rehearse it with the orchestra, and then you were on the air.
John Eliot Gardiner
So I got to know an awful lot of overtures and also to to economize on rehearsal time. It was a very salutary, very good experience. And they were extremely tough and outspoken and told me when I was making a Horlix of it and were also reasonably appreciative when it went well.
Presenter
Next record.
John Eliot Gardiner
Well, this is an odd one. This is actually another singer, a Lebanese pop singer called Fehrouz. And she's singing Yehabibi from an album called Sentimental Mood. I adored her. She was singing in Beirut at the casino when I was working just before going up to Cambridge. I got a number of odd peculiar jobs in the Middle East, one of which was writing a film script on Palestinian refugee conditions. And in the evenings, the lady who was acting as my secretary, I followed her one evening and discovered that she was actually a belly dancer at the casino down the road. And when she saw me there, she was rather surprised. She used to eat aspiro almost continuously all through all through working hours, but in the evening she came to life and looked wonderful. And she said, You're a musician and you did you bring your violin? And I said, No, but I can get hold of a violin because they're short of violinists.
Presenter
In the nightclub.
John Eliot Gardiner
In the nightclub? In the nightclub. Well at the casino. And so I found myself busking well, moonlighting as it were, playing backing for Feroux. And it was rather unnerving because there was no music. You had to do it entirely by ear. And it was full of twiddles. And your your company did the octave and uh it was full of ornaments and twiddles and you had to play absolutely according to the way that the Lebanese musicians were playing. Anyway, she was a star.
Speaker 4
Bhikkhu Bismakiya Habibiyal Hawinati
Speaker 4
Tiktu bismiya habibiya ramatari miktu bisma giya habibiya al haurinati.
Speaker 4
Tikto Mizmiya Havi Viya Ramil Tari.
Speaker 4
Bukhara Vi Chatidini Allah Saslim Jarrah Give us married.
Presenter
Faroo singing Yahabibi from the album Sentimental Mood, but that wasn't you accompanying her on the violin the band.
John Eliot Gardiner
No, I don't think so.
Presenter
Tell me a bit let's talk about sound, which is quite a difficult thing to talk about, although I'm sure you're very practised in it.
Presenter
How has the sound of, let us say, a Mozart symphony changed or been changed through the centuries by the the sophistication of the technology of musical instruments?
John Eliot Gardiner
Well, it's changed because the instruments themselves in the course of the nineteenth century were
John Eliot Gardiner
Beefed up, they were reinforced in the case of the stringed instruments. And in the case of the wind instruments, were changed completely and refined in a way, but also
John Eliot Gardiner
They were redesigned to project in far larger concert halls.
Presenter
So it's a richer sound, it's a bigger sound.
John Eliot Gardiner
The modern sound is far richer than the sound that Mozart would have been used to. It's also a sound that has become indelibly associated in people's minds with the late nineteenth century, with the music of Mahler, of Bruckner, of Strauss and Wagner. Therefore, if you use those instruments for Mozart, you have to somehow lighten off and refine the sound and it there's a certain
John Eliot Gardiner
Kind of a prurience about it. There's a reticence that good taste comes in and.
John Eliot Gardiner
Can stifle the natural musical flow. It doesn't always, of course. I mean, there's wonderful.
John Eliot Gardiner
to perform Mozart on on modern instruments.
Presenter
Who is to say that Mozart wouldn't have liked it? My goodness, I never knew Mozart could sell in this.
John Eliot Gardiner
Well, indeed,
John Eliot Gardiner
No, exactly.
John Eliot Gardiner
in performing Mozart on modern instruments or any other composer of the eighteenth century on modern instruments that one is actually bringing back a pattern of sounds that don't belong to his area at all.
Presenter
I suppose a lot of people would say to you when you attempt to recreate the sound that you believe that that Monteverdi or Handel or Purcell wanted to hear from from their music, they would say to you, how do you know?
John Eliot Gardiner
Well, it's a good question. How does one know? One knows only insofar as the instruments have survived of their period, and they tell you a hell of a lot.
Presenter
Yeah.
John Eliot Gardiner
The saxbutts and the cornets and and the lutes from Montevedi's time. And then there are playing tutors there just as there are singing tutors of the period which tell you lots about articulation and about phrasing and about what each gesture meant. I mean it it is a coded language which one can actually decode.
Presenter
Next piece of music.
John Eliot Gardiner
Well, this is Rameau's Les Bourréade. It's one of those extraordinary pieces, one of the very rare pieces, in the sense that it's a masterpiece.
John Eliot Gardiner
That's never been performed, was never performed in Ramo's own lifetime. And he was very celebrated. I mean, he was the great sort of triumvir in the trio of Handel Bachen himself. And this particular piece, which he wrote in his 80th year, he was in the middle of rehearsals when he died. And the management, instead of going on with it as a tribute to this magnificent composer and an even better piece, decided to sh literally shelve the work.
John Eliot Gardiner
And
John Eliot Gardiner
I had the good fortune to come across it, not to discover it, because it had been known about in the history books, but actually to look at it in the Bibliothèque Nationale when I was a student in Paris. And all the books told me that it was a boring opera and it didn't work, and that it was a sign of his feebleness. But like Verdi's Falstaff, written in his 80th year, and Monteverdi's last opera, L'Incornetzi du Poppea, it's actually a masterpiece. And this particular piece that I love so much is the entry of Polyhymnia. And it's a purely orchestral piece, but it shows how different Ramo is from Bacho Handel, in that his music resembles a kind of French sort of 1920s blues style, which is very characteristic of the high Baroque. And I find it so special, I wouldn't be without it for anything.
Presenter
Part of Act Four of Rameau's Les Bourillard with the English Baroque Soloists conducted by my castaway, John Elliott Gardner. You've held several top jobs in Europe. John Elliott, music director at the the Lyon Opera, not at least for for some five years or more. You have a huge audience in Europe.
Presenter
In Japan, in the States.
Presenter
But would it be fair to say that you really haven't achieved the same kind of acclaim here at home in Britain?
John Eliot Gardiner
I think to record buying public, yes, but to concert going public, probably not. Um I don't know why it is. It's something to do with with perhaps the incredible diversity of music making that goes on in London, and therefore the rarity value isn't so much. Uh and there's also I think it's to do with
John Eliot Gardiner
English musicians perhaps not being appreciated uh at home as much as they are abroad generally. I mean, it's a very English characteristic to allow that to happen. Unless you happen to be very, very young or very, very old, and then that's then there's usually
Presenter
But it is odd, isn't it? I mean, you you you conducted at Coffin Garden, I think, in sixty eight, once and once only. Yes. And then at the ENO a handful of times.
John Eliot Gardiner
That's right.
Presenter
But I mean, you must have wondered. I mean, do they have something against you or?
John Eliot Gardiner
It is odd, and it may be due to the fact that one was trying too hard at an early stage to get a certain result from an orchestra, and they bridled and bristled at being asked to do things that they weren't used to. But I think it's more to do with the very conservative nature of English music making, and people pigeonhole you very easily. If you have a reputation for doing Baroque music, well, then you must be a vegetarian and have a beard and sandals. I mean, it still goes on, this absurd myth that Baroque music is associated with a kind of 1960s hippie movement, and people don't think of Baroque specialists as being able to conduct Mahler or Stravinsky or Shostakovich.
Presenter
Record number six.
John Eliot Gardiner
This is the Bach St. Matthew Passion. I don't think it would be possible to be on a desert island and not have some Bach with one. And this is particularly special to me because it's a recording
John Eliot Gardiner
We made in Aldborough at Snape in the wonderful Maltings concert hall, and it's got three of my most favorite musicians taking part in it. It's got Anthony Rolf Johnson, who I think was a castaway with you some while ago, singing The Evangelist, and he's an old mate of mine and he sings marvellously.
John Eliot Gardiner
It's got Michael Chance singing the Aria Erbamadisch and he's one of the most extraordinary gifted countertenors of his day, of our day, and he was a former member of the Montevedi choir. And it's also got the leader of the orchestra playing the obligato Valenpart, who happens to be my wife, Elizabeth Wilcock, and her playing of this obligato line and also what it represents to me in terms of her commitment to
John Eliot Gardiner
to English Brock Solis and to me and to music making in general and the influence she's had on my life is enormously important. I wouldn't be without that for anything.
Presenter
Part of Peter's Denial from Bach's St. Matthew Passion with Elizabeth Wilcock, Anthony Rolfe Johnson, and Michael Chance, conducted by John Elliott Gardiner. Are you um
Presenter
going to fare well on your desert island, John Elliot. Will your music be enough to sustain you? Or?
Presenter
Might you drift into madness?
John Eliot Gardiner
Oh, might easily go round the twist. The thing I I would miss most was my family, and the second thing I'd missed most was
John Eliot Gardiner
The the landscape, I mean, Dorset.
John Eliot Gardiner
England.
John Eliot Gardiner
Very definitely that the nostalgia I mean, when I'm abroad now
John Eliot Gardiner
I get terrible withdrawal symptoms. I've just come back from Japan and and being in in a hotel in Tokyo, in Osaka, where you just look out on grey concrete jungle.
John Eliot Gardiner
It it begins to get to you, and if you're conducting something like Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, it's very difficult to relate that to the source of its inspiration, which I know in another part of my brain I know very well and can smell it and see it in my mind's eye. But when one's absolutely divorced from it, it's appalling. And it's my father used to inveigh against that. I mean, he thought the whole idea of becoming a professional musician was, in a sense, selling one's soul to the devil. He believed in music being very much connected with the cycle of the seasons and local festivals and amateur music making, spontaneous music making. I mean, he would sing at the top of his voice when he was riding his horse or on the top of his tractor. And he thought that the dangers of professional music making were such that you do lose touch with the sources, the roots of what music is all about. And I know exactly what he means, and I regret that very much. And try and
John Eliot Gardiner
Avoid it by going back to my own geographic and social roots whenever I can.
Presenter
Record number seven.
John Eliot Gardiner
Oh, this is the MJQ, the modern jazz quartet, playing Versailles. It's an from an old album called Fontessa, which as a child, as an adolescent at school in Branson, I used to play all the time. We had three records we played lots. One was Westside Story, the other was this Versailles, the MJQ, and the other was Fischer Discourage singing the Schoene Millerin. But I can remember exactly how he does that, was the MJQ they are so special, these four very serious black gentlemen playing magnificently and improvising with such flair.
Presenter
And do you still play it for yourself?
John Eliot Gardiner
PS.
Presenter
The MJQ playing Versailles from the album Fontessa. Do you have, John Elliott, one?
Presenter
particular musical ambition. I mean, is there one work that you dream of performing in a specific location? Whether it's I Domineo at Gleinborn where you've never conducted or or a great choral work in St Paul's or is there something idea that you covered?
John Eliot Gardiner
Yes, I've got a Zaini idea which I would really love to do, and that's following a sort of si northeast-southwest ley line pilgrimage route from probably Samarkand or Bukhara through Isfahan to Istanbul, to the Great Mosque in Istanbul, the Hagia Sofia, Santa Sofia in Istanbul, probably via Venice, to the Great Mosque in Cordoba, and then ending up in the Cathedral in Seville, doing a whole range of
John Eliot Gardiner
Polychoral, Venetian and English music. I mean Gabrielli, Talis, Allegri, Montevedi, Purcell, a whole jumble of of music with a movable audience, probably a promenade type situation, and different groups of performers playing in different parts of those wonderful buildings. I think that would be absolutely marvellous.
Presenter
Last record.
John Eliot Gardiner
Well, the group of musicians to whom I'm most indebted and who have been as it were my longest companions and friends are the members of the Montevedi Choir. We began in'64 and they're still going strong. There's still some singers who've sung with me since 1966,'sixty seven.
John Eliot Gardiner
Um there are others very much younger. I couldn't be without something of the music that we've done together. And we've done such a vast range of stuff from Montevedi through to the most contemporary music. I mean, we did Alexander Goe's Death of Moses as a first performance in the Lysias Proms. But I suppose our main
John Eliot Gardiner
Centre of activity is concentrated in the Baroque with Purcell, Bach, Rameau and Handel. For ten years I was music director of the Handel Festival in Göttingen and this piece, Solomon, is one of his best oratorios. Beecham made a great success of it and he re-orchestrated it completely. Well we didn't. This is a very gentle chorus of Handel's, uncharacteristic perhaps, and it's the most soothing and the most English pastoral of his choruses. And it's the one that I will remember the Motivertoi perhaps best by. It's called May No Rash Intruder from Solomon by Handel.
Speaker 4
It's a soft green Let's go
Speaker 4
Sing the best song.
Speaker 4
He's ever software in this tumbler's belonging like white and gay as well. Post night there was gone. Possibly
Presenter
May no rash intruder from Handel's Oratorio Solomon, with the Monteverde Choir and the English Baroque Soloists conducted by John Eliot Gardner. If you could only take one of those records, which one would it be?
John Eliot Gardiner
Oh, I'd find that very hard. I mean, f the last one from the point of view of the choir and the evocation of England. But no, it has to be the Bach for all sorts of reasons, not least of all because of Liz, my wife, but uh also it is
John Eliot Gardiner
To me the most beautiful music of the lot.
Presenter
And your book as well as the Bible and Shakespeare.
John Eliot Gardiner
Oh, it has to be Berlioz's memoirs, because I find Berlioz a crucial figure in the history of music and one of the most appealing figures. Like Montevedi, he was somebody who revealed himself through his writings. And he's also a very good writer and very funny. And it evokes so much the whole world of France of the 1830s and the terrible times he had in trying to get his own music.
John Eliot Gardiner
heard and performed.
John Eliot Gardiner
And
John Eliot Gardiner
It's always entertaining and I wouldn't want to be without it.
Presenter
And your luxury.
John Eliot Gardiner
Well, I imagine there are gonna be some f oysters on this island, are there, somewhere are there?
Presenter
I don't know. I'm it's your island.
John Eliot Gardiner
Yeah.
John Eliot Gardiner
Well, if there are, I would I I w wouldn't be able to resist the oysters and I'd have to open them and I must have an oyster knife to do that. But
John Eliot Gardiner
Perhaps there's an is the knife there already?
Presenter
I I think it's a bit practical, a knife and a
John Eliot Gardiner
Well, if it's too practical, then how about
John Eliot Gardiner
An endless supply of san cer to drink with them.
Presenter
and a lemon.
John Eliot Gardiner
At eleven school.
Presenter
A squeeze of lemon.
Presenter
John Elliott Gardiner, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.
John Eliot Gardiner
Thank you.
Speaker 4
You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive. For more podcasts please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio form.
Presenter asks
Considering all of that musical background, you didn't end up studying music at university. You studied history. How did that come about?
Oh, I got to Cambridge on a history scholarship, not on a on music one, and I was uh fascinated by history at the time and at still at that stage I had no thought of of really of doing music professionally. I was also put off very much by The type of musical world that went on at Cambridge, particularly at my college, King's, which was very precious and reverent and rather stuffy, and everything was sung in an extremely holy way, and it didn't seem to me to correspond with my own childhood memories of how that music went.
Presenter asks
Was it ever likely that you would become a conventional symphonic conductor, or were you always someone who didn't fit into the conventional mold?
Well, I didn't know at that stage and one of the first things to test that out was going in for an apprentice conducting scheme, which I did with the BBC Northern Orchestra. And for two years, I was their apprentice conductor, which was a terrific training, because one got to conduct the overture in a live broadcast. And if the tradition was that if the overture lasted 12 minutes, you were given 10 minutes rehearsal time, that's all, to rehearse it with the orchestra, and then you were on the air. So I got to know an awful lot of overtures and also to to economize on rehearsal time. It was a very salutary, very good experience. And they were extremely tough and outspoken and told me when I was making a Horlicks of it and were also reasonably appreciative when it went well.
Presenter asks
Would it be fair to say that you really haven't achieved the same kind of acclaim here at home in Britain?
I think to record buying public, yes, but to concert going public, probably not. Um I don't know why it is. It's something to do with with perhaps the incredible diversity of music making that goes on in London, and therefore the rarity value isn't so much. Uh and there's also I think it's to do with English musicians perhaps not being appreciated uh at home as much as they are abroad generally. I mean, it's a very English characteristic to allow that to happen. Unless you happen to be very, very young or very, very old, and then that's then there's usually
Presenter asks
Do you have one particular musical ambition? Is there one work that you dream of performing in a specific location?
Yes, I've got a zany idea which I would really love to do, and that's following a sort of si northeast-southwest ley line pilgrimage route from probably Samarkand or Bukhara through Isfahan to Istanbul, to the Great Mosque in Istanbul, the Hagia Sofia, Santa Sofia in Istanbul, probably via Venice, to the Great Mosque in Cordoba, and then ending up in the Cathedral in Seville, doing a whole range of Polychoral, Venetian and English music. I mean Gabrielli, Tallis, Allegri, Monteverdi, Purcell, a whole jumble of of music with a movable audience, probably a promenade type situation, and different groups of performers playing in different parts of those wonderful buildings. I think that would be absolutely marvellous.
“I loathe the word authentic because I don't I mean it suggests something sterile and and sort of museum-like and um I know what people mean by it, but it it's not really something that it means a lot to me personally.”
“I was virtually bilingual and I was brought up speaking with a heavy Dorset accent and then spoke proper at home.”
“She said to me, But, my dear, your harmony is a tragedy without name, which indeed it was.”
“The thing I I would miss most was my family, and the second thing I'd missed most was The the landscape, I mean, Dorset. England.”
“I've got a zany idea which I would really love to do, and that's following a sort of si northeast-southwest ley line pilgrimage route from probably Samarkand or Bukhara through Isfahan to Istanbul, to the Great Mosque in Istanbul, the Hagia Sofia, Santa Sofia in Istanbul, probably via Venice, to the Great Mosque in Cordoba, and then ending up in the Cathedral in Seville, doing a whole range of Polychoral, Venetian and English music.”
“It has to be the Bach for all sorts of reasons, not least of all because of Liz, my wife, but uh also it is To me the most beautiful music of the lot.”