Lord Weinstock

Speaker 30:00

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 30:08

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

Presenter0:29

My castaway this week is a business man. Born into a family of Polish Jewish immigrants, he was orphaned by the age of nine and brought up by his older brothers.

Presenter0:37

He studied at the London School of Economics, and married the daughter of a manufacturer, the owner of a small electrical company.

Presenter0:44

By the age of thirty four he was its managing director, and to day the company is a huge institution. Safe, careful, and very rich, it embodies the man who has steered it through nine changes of government and six prime ministers. He is the managing director of GEC, Lord Winstock, and a man who's managed to avoid uh personal publicity so skilfully, Lord Winstock, that there are only a handful of cuttings about you in the BBC files. Would you describe yourself as a as a shy man?

Lord Weinstock1:12

I am shy, I must say, that I I find it rather surprising that BBC's PRO's or Publicity Department has not picked up more of these rather disagreeable cuttings which have appeared from time to time, which I'd rather hadn't been there.

Presenter1:25

But there aren't very many of them. I mean you you do refuse interviews in the main, don't you?

Lord Weinstock1:29

Yes, I don't like it. I don't have a flamboyant personality and I n never been attracted to this the public relations way of doing things.

Presenter1:37

And one can understand that, I suppose, on the personal level, and your desire to remain private. But you're also, I suppose, quite a mysterious figure in the business sense as well. You don't take to public platforms, you don't crusade in the way that perhaps the Sir John Harvey Joneses have, and Lord King one might think of.

Presenter1:57

You're not there, you're not speaking up, why is that?

Lord Weinstock1:59

Well, John's retired. He he no longer has an executive role. I am fully engaged.

Lord Weinstock2:05

In trying to run the business, and I don't have time to do all these other things.

Presenter2:09

Do you mix business with music? Do you play music to work by in your office?

Lord Weinstock2:13

No, I don't play mu I can't do the two at the same time.

Presenter2:17

But you play it in the mornings, apparently, in your dressing room, in your bathroom. What do you play? What sort of thing?

Lord Weinstock2:19

In your dressing room, in your bathroom.

Lord Weinstock2:22

Oh, whatever. This morning I was listening to some Mozart pianoforti concerti.

Lord Weinstock2:27

Um different things on different occasions.

Presenter2:29

Opera?

Lord Weinstock2:29

Sometimes, yes.

Presenter2:31

What happens if it's a if it's a very moving piece of opera? Um I mean, you might begin the day

Presenter2:38

With tears running down your cheeks.

Lord Weinstock2:40

But it has been known to happen that that frequent

Lord Weinstock2:43

But um there are particular conjunction of circumstances which has caused me on one occasion to be rather tearful for about a quarter of an hour in the morning. It was when a very close friend of mine died.

Lord Weinstock2:55

And I played a piece of music, um, partly knowing that it was in connection with with this man's death, and that moved me greatly, and I was rather upset for a bit, but normally I can manage to contain my emotions.

Presenter3:08

Now all eight of your records have something in common because they're all conducted by the same man. Will you explain who and why?

Lord Weinstock3:15

Yes, I mean, given the necessity to choose eight records from the great mass of music which I love, I've I found that quite impossible unless one reduced the number of variables. So I took a couple of constant themes. One was that since I have a a very um special relationship with Riccardo Mutti, who has been a friend for very many years, I chose to have only records performed by him. And secondly, all the performances which um the I shall choose uh are things which I've actually saw happen.

Presenter3:49

So you're what I think you've described as a as a mutie groupie.

Lord Weinstock3:52

Yeah, I'm a woody group.

Presenter3:54

What's the first one?

Lord Weinstock3:56

I am going to take first um the work by Maula. My taste for music, my love of music originated when I sang as a boy in a choir in a synagogue.

Lord Weinstock4:06

And that uh translated to uh going up to the gallery once a week at Saddlers Wells before the war and listening to people like Joan Hammond and artists who are no longer recognised.

Lord Weinstock4:18

And Mahler was born a Jew but became baptized. He wasn't particularly Jewish in his upbringing, neither was I for the larger part of my life after the war started. But in this work, suddenly the conventional Vietnamese music becomes very Jewish. It reproduces Eastern European statal melodies. You hear a Jewish wedding at one point. And so to keep me in mind of my origin, I would like to take an extract from the third movement of the Mahler First Symphony in D major.

Presenter5:52

Part of the third movement of Mahler's Symphony No. One in D major, played by the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Riccardo Mutti. And memories, Lord Weinstock, of your childhood. You were born in the mid twenties. Where did your family live?

Lord Weinstock6:05

In Stoke Newington, North London. And then when my parents died, I went to live with a brother in Highbury, still in North London.

Presenter6:12

But was it your parent your your parents were Polish Jews? Had they come here or was it your grandparents?

Lord Weinstock6:17

You know, my parents came here at the end of the century, the last century.

Lord Weinstock6:21

Um and they'd been here a long time when I was born.

Lord Weinstock6:24

I was an accident. My mother was forty-five at the time I was born. I don't think I was intended at all.

Presenter6:30

You a mistake, yeah.

Lord Weinstock6:31

Yes, I mistake.

Presenter6:32

And you had lots of elder brothers.

Lord Weinstock6:34

Yes, I have five much older brothers.

Presenter6:36

How how much older was it?

Lord Weinstock6:37

My next brother was nearly eighteen years older than I was.

Presenter6:40

Good heavens. And what did your father do?

Lord Weinstock6:42

My father was a master cutter. He used to cut designs um for a firm in the West End who then made up the um patterns which he cut into um many coats and suits and I don't know what.

Presenter6:54

And your parents died when you were very young. What happened to them?

Lord Weinstock6:58

My father had a bad heart and he got pneumonia.

Lord Weinstock7:01

and died of congestive heart failure.

Lord Weinstock7:04

My mother had cancer.

Lord Weinstock7:06

My father died in nineteen twenty nine and my mother in nineteen thirty four.

Presenter7:09

So you would have been nine when you were orphaned?

Lord Weinstock7:11

Yeah.

Presenter7:13

And and what happened to you? Who looked after you?

Lord Weinstock7:14

One of my brothers took me in for a bit until the war, and when the war came I was sent off with a label and a gas mask and a train to the wilds of Warwickshire.

Presenter7:24

And and there did you find some kindly people to the party?

Lord Weinstock7:26

All my life I came across somebody who took an interest in me and helped me. I was finally billeted on a farm in the middle of nowhere with no electricity and no running water, an outside loo, and most primitive. But the wife of the farmer with whom I lived, the small holding of 120 acres or something like that, had been a schoolteacher. She was very kind to me. And it was a very happy time, despite the lack of all these mod-cons. I used to walk four miles a day to school. And there I was taught by a master who in London had taught us some mathematics and music. He was a lay preacher.

Lord Weinstock8:11

And he helped me enormously. He made me take an interest in work which no one had ever been able to do before. And I took a school certificate in about four months. Um I remember learning the Holder Macbeth, walking backwards and forwards to school. I never had to look at the thing in the class at all.

Presenter8:26

What was his name, Steve?

Lord Weinstock8:27

His name was Fogg, Freddie Fogg.

Presenter8:29

Did he become sort of surrogate father, perhaps?

Lord Weinstock8:32

Sort of, yes.

Presenter8:34

When you say you had

Presenter8:36

always found somebody who who

Presenter8:38

would look after you or took care of you. I mean, do do you class this as luck, or do you think you were a particularly appealing child or?

Lord Weinstock8:44

Oh, I can't I wasn't appealing by any me I was horrible.

Lord Weinstock8:47

It it must just be chance.

Presenter8:50

Let's have your second record.

Lord Weinstock8:51

I think I'd like to hear now an extract from Cosis Hantuti, recorded in Salzburg, and um what I think the most beautiful and probably the most significant part of the opera, the closing part of the of the trio Suave su ilvento.

Speaker 49:33

Peace.

Presenter10:09

Agnes Baltzer, Joseph Van Damme, and Margaret Marshall singing part of the trio Suave Sier Vento from Mozart's Cosifantute, with a Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Riccardo Mutti and recorded at the Salzburg Festival in nineteen eighty two.

Presenter10:23

So by the early war years, Lord Weinstock, you'd been taken under the wing of a this group of kindly people in Warwickshire and were getting down to some solid learning. Nevertheless, there's uh an awfully long way between that and studying for a degree in statistics at the LSE. How did you

Lord Weinstock10:39

No, no, it was uh quite rapid. I mean, I went um I went up uh to LAC in Cambridge in nineteen forty one. So that was only, what, eighteen months?

Presenter10:50

But it must have taken a lot of determination on your part, a lot of application on your part.

Lord Weinstock10:54

Yes, I worked quite hard for a few months.

Presenter10:57

But it also um what is said about you is that you have a tremendous eye for detail as well as this this great application, um that you you are have a relentless eye for detail.

Lord Weinstock11:07

Well, I don't believe it possible, um at least for me.

Lord Weinstock11:11

to be a great policy maker without knowing what the thing is about. And in order to know um what decisions to make and on on large matters, I think you have to know what the detail is.

Presenter11:23

Don't you think you get people's backs up by constantly attending to what they might regard as their detail?

Lord Weinstock11:28

Um well, what I hope happens is that they regard it as our detail and that um as I regard it as their policy and their strategy. I mean, I don't think that we should freeze out the people who make um do the work in the trenches.

Presenter11:41

But one has this image of you sitting at your desk with a a very large telephone which apparently you have and and little buttons that you can press to call up.

Presenter11:49

the important people at every level in i in in your um organization and and sort of pouncing on them and them living in fear of the pounce.

Lord Weinstock11:57

No, no, no, I hope that's not true. I don't pounce on anybody. I do call them up, they they do know they can expect to hear from me at any time, but I hope my relations with them are not such as to inspire fear. You would have hoped that um that they are more friends than um that they are uh people are victims.

Presenter12:15

And do you also, um or have you posed as a disgruntled customer and rung up and complained to see what sort of service you are?

Lord Weinstock12:21

I have. I think that the customer is king. The only thing I can remember of my years as an undergraduate was the title of the first economics textbook I ever saw when I was seventeen. And that was The Consumer is King. And I never forgot that. And I think that's a basic rule which anybody who is engaged in industry must keep in his mind.

Presenter12:43

Let's have your third record.

Lord Weinstock12:45

Well now, for me anyway.

Presenter12:46

Me and

Lord Weinstock12:47

The greatest orchestral work ever composed is the Beethoven Ninth Symphony, D minor Symphony Choral Symphony. And it has a slightly special connotation because during the war we had the blackout and Cambridge is most of the institutions in Cambridge are in Trumpington Street and beyond it. And Trumpington Street is very, very wide. And if you were on one side of the road, there was no way in the blackout of knowing who was on the other side of the road. So the little clique with whom I hob-nobbed, it was mostly a table tennis playing clique at the time, used to whistle the theme from the last movement, the choral movement of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony, the choral part, as we were walking along. And by that means we could recognize each other. And this was a rather useful way of making contact. The piece I would choose, however, is from the third movement, the Endanti, and there is a particular extract which I particularly liked in that rather long movement.

Presenter14:45

Part of the third movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. Nine in D minor played by the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Presenter14:51

In nineteen forty-nine, you married Netta Sobell, the daughter of Michael Sobel, who owned an electrical company. What job were you doing at the time?

Lord Weinstock15:00

Well, I was at the Air Route from nineteen forty-four until nineteen forty-seven.

Presenter15:00

Night.

Lord Weinstock15:05

in Bath. When I when I came down from the Admiralty when I was let out, I went to work for a man who was engaged in property development and um other financial and investment enterprises and I did that for seven years.

Presenter15:17

Is that what you want it to do?

Lord Weinstock15:19

No, it's what I happened to do. I mean, I I I was always a bit extravagant and um I loved the Admiralty. I mean, I spent three years in the Admiralty working very hard, but I really

Lord Weinstock15:32

Couldn't stay because I I needed more money than that. I used to lecture.

Presenter15:34

What were you extravagant about?

Lord Weinstock15:36

I like to spend money. I like to buy nice things and I like to eat well.

Presenter15:42

Yes, I read somewhere that you used to spend your month's salary in the first three days.

Lord Weinstock15:45

Well, m maybe it took four or five and it didn't take very long and then and I was back to the canteen.

Presenter15:51

But did you ever consider a career in music in any way?

Lord Weinstock15:53

No, I wasn't talented enough. I don't think it would it wouldn't be impos I need either outstanding talent or to be quite well off financially and I had neither of those advantages.

Presenter16:02

But you would have liked a current.

Lord Weinstock16:03

Ah, yes.

Presenter16:04

What would you like to have been? What are your dreams?

Lord Weinstock16:07

When I was very young, the two ambitions I had were to be a pianist or an ice hockey player. I think ice hockey is a marvellous game.

Lord Weinstock16:15

But now that I'm older, I would like to have been a conductor.

Presenter16:18

You'd like to have been Ricardo Musso.

Lord Weinstock16:20

I would indeed that was aspiring to a height of achievement which is far beyond my talents. But if I if it had been possible for me to have been that good, that would have been ideal, yes.

Presenter16:30

But eventually, anyway, you went to work in your father in law's company and Michael Sobell's company. What what did the company do?

Lord Weinstock16:38

We made radio and television receivers and that went rather well so that after four years the company went public.

Lord Weinstock16:44

And after six years was bought by G C.

Presenter16:47

And that was radio and allied industries.

Lord Weinstock16:49

That was radio and I didn't discern it.

Presenter16:51

And I mean, was there it was a great success story, really, wasn't it? Because in in one sense it seems one day you were manufacturing televisions and radios in West London and

Presenter17:01

A decade or so later you were running most of the electrical industry in Britain.

Lord Weinstock17:06

It wasn't quite we were making we were making this stuff in South Wales actually. And um let's see. I I was managing director effectively of GEC in about nineteen sixty two. So actually it didn't take it didn't take ten years because GC at that time was not that big. It had sales of ninety million a year in the first year I was there and profits of two. It's not all that big. It became much bigger later.

Presenter17:07

That's how it reads on paper.

Presenter17:35

Record number four.

Lord Weinstock17:36

Um the fourth piece is an extract from the Vivaldi Gloria, and this is a very fine piece of music. Amwutti is a great conductor of choral music, and this was a recording he made rather a long time ago, but it's still very, very high class stuff.

Speaker 417:53

Jesus

Speaker 418:07

Please.

Speaker 418:13

In the peace Peace for the big state of bliss.

Speaker 418:27

Praise

Presenter18:52

Lucia Valentini Tirani singing part of Vivaldi's Gloria with the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted once more by Riccardo Mutti.

Presenter18:59

You're sixty nine this year, Lord Weinstock, but leading as full a working life as ever. Why not? Would you describe a typical working day to me? What time do you go to your office?

Lord Weinstock19:09

I get up at about a quarter to eight.

Lord Weinstock19:12

And I start to read while I have my breakfast.

Lord Weinstock19:15

And then while I am shaving and doing all that sort of thing, I listen to music. And then I would have arrived in the office at about ten thirty. And then when I get to the office, I will go through the post.

Presenter19:27

How much time do you spend on the telephone?

Speaker 419:29

Uh

Lord Weinstock19:30

Oh, a lot. A great deal. I much prefer personal contact to writing stiff memos. The stiff memo is for the time when I can't get the chap I want to speak to or when I really don't want to talk to him in case I sound harsh.

Presenter19:43

Now, your office, by all accounts, is is is not particularly luxurious. It's it's utilitarian, in fact. Is that fair?

Lord Weinstock19:49

Yeah

Presenter19:50

Is there a reason for that? I mean, it's that you've said you're extravagant and you like nice things.

Lord Weinstock19:52

You've said you're ex

Lord Weinstock19:54

There's no need for waste. Um it's adequate, it does it's quite comfortable, it's it's not too cold and it's um it's big enough and I can talk in it and people can talk to me in it and the telephone with the necessary accoutrements to make communications easy are all there, so it has everything I need.

Presenter20:11

And there are no photographs of you shaking hands with.

Presenter20:14

The great and the good, and there are no

Lord Weinstock20:16

Yeah, no photographs.

Presenter20:17

No frame no photographs of your family?

Lord Weinstock20:19

There are no photographs. There are only some on the walls there are some pictures of some of my good horses.

Presenter20:24

And there there are no framed awards or and citations and so on. I mean, it's it's not that you don't have them, but you don't want to put them on show.

Lord Weinstock20:32

Nope.

Presenter20:32

Why not?

Lord Weinstock20:34

I don't need to.

Presenter20:35

Do are you suspicious of business men who do?

Lord Weinstock20:39

No. Everybody does his own thing.

Presenter20:41

The the other observation that that's been made in the rare written interviews that you've given is that your headquarters in Mayfair is not only rather an ugly building, but it's actually quite in need of a lick of paint.

Lord Weinstock20:53

But it's had it, I'm afraid. I'm awfully sorry to have to tell you. It's out of date, isn't it? Yes, I'm afraid.

Presenter20:54

Benjamin.

Presenter20:55

It's out of date, isn't it?

Lord Weinstock20:58

I afraid your information is slightly behind the times. We had it all decorated in the last few months and it's now altogether embarrassingly spick and span.

Presenter21:06

But but there's still a point there, really, the serious point isn't there, that it's to do with the not liking waste, it's to do with the fact that you perhaps don't feel your shareholders' money should be spent on such things as smart reception areas and

Lord Weinstock21:19

No, I don't. All that we need by way of a head office is the modest one that we have. It shouldn't get dowdy. We let it get probably too much of the wrong too drab and needed a lick of paint. But what we have now is adequate. It's it's sufficient. We don't need any more. And uh I'm quite satisfied with it.

Presenter21:37

So the only image because that's what we're talking about in the end when we're talking about smart foyers and so on, the only image that matters to you is the figures on the balance sheet.

Lord Weinstock21:46

Yep, the results not only that satisfied customers matter to me.

Presenter21:50

Let's have some more music.

Lord Weinstock21:52

Well now if we can have a piece of the Handel water music. Handel's rather an underrated composer. A Gluck who was the great man in Vienna even at the time of Mozart had a portrait of Handel at the bottom of his bed so that he could see it every time he woke up. And I think he was quite right.

Presenter23:10

Part of Handel's water music played by the Berlin Philharmonic and conducted by Riccardo Mutti.

Presenter23:15

Um your working environment may be utilitarian, but I suspect that's not true of home, because you've confessed to extravagance. What do you enjoy most spending your money on?

Lord Weinstock23:25

Oof.

Lord Weinstock23:30

My grandchildren, I think, is the answer to that. Um although that isn't what, that's who. But um when I spend money I like to spend it to give people pleasure. I mean I I like my wife to to like the things I give her and I like um my children to like the things I give them. But as for the particular things

Lord Weinstock23:50

I suppose fine art.

Lord Weinstock23:54

Up to a point.

Lord Weinstock23:56

I can't afford some some of the things I would have liked, but I have some quite nice things, and I've quite enjoyed collecting those.

Presenter24:04

And your horses?

Lord Weinstock24:05

And my horses I less enjoy spending money on them than than seeing them win races. I the spending bit isn't all that fun. The spending bit goes with hope. Owning racehorses is a a game for people who are optimistic, and I am naturally not all that optimistic, so it goes a bit against the grain.

Presenter24:22

But do you have time, amongst all this work, to go racing?

Lord Weinstock24:25

No. That's the worst to be done, I'm afraid.

Presenter24:27

Do you wish you had more?

Lord Weinstock24:31

I mean, I if I if I say no, it isn't right,'cause I would like to have been at the races sometimes, but um I p I suppose I prefer doing what I am doing or else I would go more.

Presenter24:40

But when you retire, it's on the race track you'll be found, isn't it?

Lord Weinstock24:44

I'm not actually thinking of retirements, I didn't have that in mind.

Presenter24:48

It's simply not on the cards.

Lord Weinstock24:49

No, I don't think I would be very happy retired.

Presenter24:52

You you sound like a workaholic.

Lord Weinstock24:56

I'm not addicted to it, but it's a w it's a way of life that I'm used to and I'm rather conservative type. I don't like to change too much and so long as I can work, I would prefer to work than to do anything else.

Presenter25:06

You told me just now what time you went in to work. You didn't tell me what time you went home from a

Lord Weinstock25:10

Oh, well, I normally go home half past eight or nine o'clock in the evening, and I do work two weekends out of four.

Presenter25:19

Sounds like a workaholic to me.

Lord Weinstock25:22

Well, I it it depends. I don't know. Um I don't know. I mean, I if I if I go away, I leave it. I when I'm not in the office, I don't I don't ring up the office every two minutes to see what's going on. I leave it to my colleagues and that's that. So that I don't think I'm awa I'm not addicted in that sense.

Presenter25:40

Record number six.

Lord Weinstock25:42

In Cambridge I turned away from the nineteenth century and went back to Baroque music, which I thought more pure. And only later did I come again to love Verdi, largely through the instruction that um I had from my Stromuti. And the piece of Verdi probably which is the finest of all the things he wrote is his Requiem and of that I would like to hear the Recordari.

Speaker 426:24

Oh, it's fine.

Presenter27:08

Cherol Studa and Dolora Zagic singing the Ricodare from Verdi's Requiem with the orchestra of La Scala Milan, conducted again by Riccardo Mutti.

Presenter27:18

The result, I suppose, of staying out of the limelight, Lord Wanstock, as you've done, is that your critics create an image for you and make up false motives for you and and to to to sum them up for you, I suppose it is that they say that you're a a financial automaton sitting on a vast cash mountain, unwilling to take risks and therefore preventing GEC from expanding into exciting new areas.

Presenter27:43

Uh that's probably a fair summary of them, isn't it?

Lord Weinstock27:46

But the criticism

Presenter27:47

Yes.

Lord Weinstock27:47

Um I suppose so. You could actually make it wider, they can find other things on with me as well.

Presenter27:52

But how do you counter that? How do you counter those kinds of things?

Lord Weinstock27:55

Well they just don't know what they're talking about. I mean it's it's it's I mean

Lord Weinstock27:59

Our cash mountain is not nearly vast enough. I mean, we undertake vast contracts, great projects, with really complicated technologies, sophisticated modern devices, never attempted before. I mean, one takes for a current example the train which will go backwards and forwards through the channel tunnel. That's a machine, and you think of the train, it's a rather banal thing. This train has forty computers on it, and they all have to be interactive. It's a most incredibly sophisticated piece of equipment. There are great risks associated with undertaking contracts like that. So that we need funds to be able to do them and keep the financial integrity of the company secure.

Presenter28:41

But you don't like borrowing, do you? And you don't like having share issues to raise cash. These are the sorts of things that the that the people in the city would like to see you do.

Lord Weinstock28:50

I guess because they get commissions out there. We don't need to.

Presenter28:53

Do you have an innate distrust of the city?

Lord Weinstock28:57

I am I've always been somewhat apprehensive about the city and yet there is a city's vast activity which brings the country lots of income one has to say. Um enormous buildings and fantastic lifestyles of the occupants and they must be performing the most valuable service but not always possible to see from the outside what it is.

Presenter29:18

So tell me why then in two sentences, how is it that GEC has survived this current recession and it's surviving well and strongly? How have has your company survived practically intact when other companies have either gone to the wall or undergone radical surgery? And one thinks of TI and GKN, for example?

Lord Weinstock29:39

Well, we're not practically intact. We are absolutely intact, I hope. Nothing is leaking so far as I know. Well, at least not much. I think we faced up to the realities of world economic existence in the nineteen seventies and did then the things which have served us well now.

Lord Weinstock30:00

And uh we have had to continue to do things that are not all that pleasant. Making people redundant is not fun, besides being very expensive. But we did the worst of it at the time when we had over full employment, so that when we made people redundant, we also placed them in other jobs. It was much easier then.

Presenter30:18

Record number seven.

Lord Weinstock30:19

Record number seven is going to be from E Capoleti di Montechi, which was seen in London about ten or eleven years ago at the Royal Opera House. And the the piece I would like is the a duet of the second scene of the first act in which Romeo and Juliet sing together. This marvellous sound of these two girls' voices soaring.

Presenter31:46

Agnes Beltzer and Editor Gruberova, singing a duet from Act One of Bellini's E Capuletti ei Montecchi, with the orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Coffin Garden, and recorded at your behest, I think.

Lord Weinstock31:58

Yes, I was very keen that uh EMI should m should record that and um

Lord Weinstock32:03

We had um small argument about it, but we settled it in the end. They recorded four live performances and made this superb record out of it.

Presenter32:11

What will you do on your desert island? Are you all that practical, or have you been looked after for so many years that you

Lord Weinstock32:15

I can just about use a screwdriver, but that's all.

Presenter32:18

Make a cup of tea.

Lord Weinstock32:19

I have made many cups of tea in my time, yes.

Presenter32:22

But but all that

Presenter32:23

determination and application we were talking about will presumably

Presenter32:27

Keep the wolf from the door.

Lord Weinstock32:29

Um, yes. It depends if the wolf is friendly. I'll have him in.

Presenter32:35

Your success in in business has been honoured. You were knighted in 1970 and you were ennobled in 1980. How important has that recognition been to you?

Lord Weinstock32:44

I think it's quite important. I'm not going to say that those were things I did only for my wife, as I've heard some of my friends say. I mean, I think that recognition does lend incentive and does entitle you to a certain respect from your comrades and the people with whom you have to deal. I must say that I prefer to have them than not have them.

Presenter33:02

I'm

Presenter33:06

But you'd sacrifice it all for the conductor's rostrum.

Lord Weinstock33:08

Absolutely.

Presenter33:10

Last record.

Lord Weinstock33:12

We'll come right up to date. I went for the first time this year to Vienna for the New Year and um on Christmas Eve we had a rather act actually we had a concert on Christmas Eve, which was repeated on New Year's Day.

Lord Weinstock33:25

We had a very jolly supper afterwards.

Lord Weinstock33:28

At an Italian restaurant in Vienna. And during this concert, which was itself a celebration as well as a musical event, and it's quite remarkable how Viennese waltz music can be made into proper serious music given the right orchestra and the right conductor. And in this case, you had both. One of the elements in the programme was an Egyptian march I'd never heard before by Johann Strauss. And this piece struck me as embodying the whole sense of fun and celebration which marked that occasion.

Presenter35:01

The Egyptian March by Johann Strauss is played and sung, I think, by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.

Lord Weinstock35:06

They burst into full voice in the middle of the feast.

Presenter35:09

Feats.

Presenter35:10

Now if you could only take one of those records.

Lord Weinstock35:14

That's very d if I could only have one record, I don't think I'd take any of them. I think I would take either the Bach's and Matthew Passion or the Mozart K six two six Requiem Mass. And since if if I'm going to keep to my rule they must be conducted by Ricardo Mutti, I would have to take the Requiem Mass.

Presenter35:30

But you have to take one of these eight hands.

Lord Weinstock35:32

Oh dear, well if I have to take one of those, uh then I think I would take um

Lord Weinstock35:39

Well, I would have to take the whole of the Verdi Requiem.

Presenter35:42

Right. And what a about a book? What book would you take?

Lord Weinstock35:45

Well, preferably I would like Grove's Dictionary of Music, but there's rather a lot of volumes. If I only have one volume, I think I would take a book of Primo Levi, um, If This Be a Man, or possibly one of his others, probably that one.

Presenter35:59

And your luxury.

Lord Weinstock36:01

I would like a photograph album with photographs of my family, my colleagues, my friends and my horses.

Presenter36:09

Lord Winstock, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Speaker 336:20

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