Antonio Pappano

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. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and four, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My castaway this week is a musician. His great talent is to understand and direct the human voice. He was brought up in London, the son of Italian immigrants. His father taught singing while his mother slaved as a cleaner and housekeeper. A prodigy at the piano, with a following for knocking out rock music at his school in Pimlico, he became accompanist at his father's lessons. The family moved to America, where he earned pocket money playing in cocktail bars. He went on to become an accompanist for singers in rehearsal at many leading opera houses on both sides of the Atlantic, ending up as Barrenboim's assistant at Bayreuth.

Presenter1:04

A decade as music director at the Opera House in Brussels led to a return to the city of his upbringing. Today, the promising pupil from Pimlico is music director of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. He is Antonio Papano. It's a romantic story, yours, Tony. Obviously, um musical talent is is in the blood, but your tastes are broad, aren't they? It's not only opera that you love.

Antonio Pappano1:28

I'm I think most influenced by my mom and dad having been such hard workers, that kind of Italian, typical Italian, uh working class type of person who at the drop of a hat would burst into song or something, you know, a a Neapolitan song would come and

Presenter1:47

So, if it's Usolemio or Santa Lucia, you can do that too. Yeah, I would love it.

Antonio Pappano1:51

Yeah, well yes I can actually. I don't think anybody wants to hear me sing it, but I can do that. And I it's funny, that that type of spontaneity with regards to music is something that I think is is very important to me. And I think this kind of blitz-like surprise that that music can conjure in in one leads me to be kind of very eclectic in my tastes. I don't know.

Presenter2:16

Are they also like vegging out in front of M T V? Is this true?

Antonio Pappano2:19

Um, not so much anymore, but I've watched a lot of MT T V in the past, you know, when you're in hotel rooms and stuff. And I you know, uh, that connection to when you were young and teenager and uh um I you know, spent a lot of my teenage working um uh playing for my father's students and I I don't remember much about my childhood. So it's it's funny, through the music, through that pop music somehow, I I feel you know, sometimes thirteen, fourteen again, you know.

Presenter2:47

So what you would get the Rolling Stones on one hand and Monteverde on the other, would you? Is that the switch?

Antonio Pappano2:51

That has happened on many an occasion, actually.

Presenter2:55

There are two constants in the story, though, aren't there? One is the piano, which you were playing all that time when you worked with your father in the singing lessons, and the other is the voice. They they were always there. Taking the first one, the piano, I mean, might you did you ever consider being a concert pianist?

Antonio Pappano3:14

I did for about five minutes. Um um but I don't have the patience. I I I don't I don't think. It's just a a terrible thing. Um

Presenter3:22

But you have patience with singers, and that's the other thing, the the voice. And what you love, it seems to me, is that that immediacy of expression of the voice. That's what touches you, isn't it?

Antonio Pappano3:25

The as of

Antonio Pappano3:32

Yes, it is. I can help or hinder. Conductors um do have that power, you know, and I do my very, very best to get to really support people and to get the best out of them.

Presenter3:45

I want to hear more, but let's have your first record. What is it?

Antonio Pappano3:48

Tony Bennett with Bill Evans at the piano. This is a magical combination. They only made two records together, but this r record is probably my favorite record of all recordings that exist on the planet. It's uh often puts me in a very me melancholy mood and therefore it can be a little bit destructive, you know, uh if I listen to it too often. So I hide it away. But every now and again I I drag it out and um yeah, young and foolish.

Speaker 34:21

In the sunlight.

Speaker 34:26

Light feed in the rain

Speaker 34:32

I wish that we were young and foolish again.

Presenter4:48

Great stuff. Tony Bennett singing Young and Foolish with Bill Evans on the piano. It slays you, you say, Tony.

Antonio Pappano4:54

Yeah.

Presenter4:55

Would you sing yourself?

Antonio Pappano4:57

I do in secret. I I kind of have a voice and I love to secretly alone they're they're very much alone like to sing these songs.

Presenter5:07

Now it's your father, of course, who had the voice. He was the son of peasant farmers east of Naples, deep, deep down in Italy. W did he suddenly wake up and with this voice, was there a history of it in the family?

Antonio Pappano5:20

Um, I don't think so. I mean, everybody sings in Italy in some

Antonio Pappano5:25

shape, manner or form. But I think he, yeah, woke up with a voice and he when he was very young sang in church. But then he left to go study in Mantova in the north of Italy with uh Professore Ettore Campogagliani, who was the uh most important teacher of the day. Um

Presenter5:43

Must have been quite an achievement for for such a boy.

Antonio Pappano5:47

You know, it's amazing these people to

Antonio Pappano5:51

who have the courage just to pick up and go and uh seek out your fortune or you know get an education far away from where you live.

Presenter5:59

And is that why he came here?'Cause he came here with your mother in the fifties, I think.

Antonio Pappano6:02

Yeah, there was a

Antonio Pappano6:04

You needed to get out of Italy. There was nothing there in and there were so many people emigrating at the time. Came here partly because so many people from that village were already here, came, and so there was a kind of a an enclave of people from Castelfranco.

Presenter6:21

and they came with very little.

Antonio Pappano6:21

And they came

Antonio Pappano6:23

Very little. I think uh a suitcase and ten quid, you know, and I could never do that. Um but they came and they did anything. They worked and started to create something.

Presenter6:34

And you were born here in nineteen fifty nine in Epping.

Antonio Pappano6:36

Yeah.

Presenter6:37

Did you ever see your father perform on stage?

Antonio Pappano6:40

I did actually. I saw uh it was a kind of a a small uh production of Pagliace and I remember.

Antonio Pappano6:46

I have pictures of her. He was dressed in that clown costume, but what was so vivid was that when he murdered Nedda. It was funny because the two of us went out to buy the knife that he would have to kill her with. It was obviously in a toy shop and it was a sort of a plastic, a retractable affair, I think. But I remember seeing this knife after the performance, and it was completely destroyed. The tension and the temperament that my father had had completely smashed this knife to pieces. And I must say that scared the life out of me, and yet I was fascinated at the same time. And it's important. It's a defining moment, I think, you know, because you think that, my God, I

Antonio Pappano7:30

I went on.

Antonio Pappano7:31

To do, to be around this kind of theatre, this kind of tension, this kind of blood-curdling involvement somehow, as a way of life. I do it for a living. Record number two. There are certain singers that just take your breath away, and Franco Corelli's voice. I mean, you don't hear that kind of voice today. It just doesn't exist. This moment is opera in Italy. It's a live performance from Parma, the Teatro Reggio, which is a notoriously difficult public. And of course, when you go to sing there, you're on a tightrope. And my God, does he deliver here? And if you come to my house for dinner, you always have to listen to this because it's a.

Antonio Pappano8:17

And that's what I was thinking on being on a desert island. If somebody else landed on this island, I'd entertain them with this. They said, You gotta listen to this, you gotta listen to this.

Presenter9:20

Ms. Cavarados's Vittoria, Vittoria, from Act Two of Puccini's Tosca sung by Franco Corelli with the Teatro Reggio di Parma Orchestra conducted by Giuseppe Morelli. He really hangs on that note, doesn't he? I suppose Puccini's music and the melodrama of Tosca lends itself to that kind of wallowing, but people can be quite sniffy about it, can't they?

Antonio Pappano9:42

Yes, I mean, I must say I'm very torn about things like that because obviously there's a ele an element of vulgarity to that.

Antonio Pappano9:50

Of course, I I think I have good taste, but on the other hand I think I there's a part of me that has bad taste and and I and I li and I'm proud of it.

Presenter10:00

But when you stand in the pit then, do you have to have a kind of vulgarometer, as it were, so that, you know, you know when the magical moves over into the vulgar and you sort of cut it?

Antonio Pappano10:08

Yes, I think every good musician has that kind of stopwatch. But often singers will have a a different way of measuring these things.

Presenter10:15

But it's in your control, is it?

Antonio Pappano10:18

Not always. Because they needn't look at you and just be You know it's funny, but when you're on a high note, if there's a sense like it's going to end, it's thrilling. If there's a sense you're just hanging around or you're waiting for it to get good, I think it's it's the most boring thing in the world.

Presenter10:37

This

Antonio Pappano10:37

But it's silk.

Antonio Pappano10:38

Yes, but if it has life and it has it can really get you, you know.

Presenter10:43

Mm.

Presenter10:44

Now, this all began, of course, as we've said, when you were accompanist at your father's lessons. Just tell me about that. How did that work? How little were you when you started doing that?

Antonio Pappano10:53

I think I started playing for my father's students when I was about ten. Oh, you were that good that early? Well, simple songs, little Italian arias. I was I was okay. I could play that stuff. Later on, when we moved to America actually, we built two studios so that my father would work a half an hour of technical work of scales and arpeggios and breathing stuff. And then the students would come to me to work on repertoire, little songs, some pop songs, uh, opera.

Presenter10:56

Oh, you were that good that early?

Speaker 311:26

And you're in your

Antonio Pappano11:27

And you were in your teens.

Antonio Pappano11:32

Fourteen and I was coaching basically. And while he was starting the next student.

Speaker 311:34

Basically.

Antonio Pappano11:38

So we kind of had a kind of business going, or a racket.

Presenter11:41

Evident founder, isn't it? So you learned very early on, therefore, how to deal with the fragility of the ego on stage. And I mean, you know, mentioning no names, apparently that's what you're rather good at these days, is telling these big stars, the the sort of difficult divas, how to behave.

Antonio Pappano11:58

Well, I don't tell them how to behave. What I do is I understand how difficult it is to stand on the stage in a heavy costume with lights coming at you, with somebody telling you to sing in tune, in time, with taste, with remember the words and everything. So I have a a basic admiration for singers. Then I push for that they have to achieve not only what they know they're good at, but what they don't know they're good at, what where they can go extra. And I think that that's important.

Presenter12:24

Liquid numbers

Antonio Pappano12:25

three.

Antonio Pappano12:25

Recording has been a big part of my life in the last eight years or so, and I love the process so much. Completely different from being in the theatre. To create a performance in a recording studio i is something completely different. And the reason I chose this next record is because it contains a moment of which I'm very, very proud. It's one of my own recordings, and I thought long and hard about whether I should do this or not. But I'm very proud of having persisted to achieve something special with a singer, something so personal and so intimate.

Speaker 313:06

Monte recall.

Speaker 313:12

Right.

Speaker 313:14

Mm.

Speaker 313:25

Yeah.

Speaker 313:31

Two.

Presenter13:53

Of the duet between Michaela and Giorgetta from Puccini's one actor Il Tabaro, The Cloak, sung by Carlo Guelfi and Maria Gulegina.

Speaker 313:53

I

Presenter14:01

with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by my castaway Antonio Papano.

Presenter14:06

Let's go back to you moving the family moving to America to Connecticut in the early 70s. You were just 13, as you said.

Presenter14:13

Apparently your younger brother became American, you've said, in a couple of hours flat, and you never did, although one can hear it a bit in your voice.

Antonio Pappano14:20

This is what

Antonio Pappano14:23

Uh

Presenter14:23

What that

Antonio Pappano14:24

Uh

Presenter14:24

Uh

Antonio Pappano14:24

Although I was quite sporty, if you like, here I loved to play uh football. That for a long time preoccupied me much more than did music, I must say. In America I had already made the switch to music as a future. Somehow I knew. I remember

Antonio Pappano14:43

getting uh my Grade Five piano associated board result, and I passed with distinction. I think I got very high marks. And I remember it was like a

Antonio Pappano14:53

The moment of truth, it was like a light bulb going off. So I said, This is it, this is what I'm gonna do.

Presenter14:58

But did you know what you were going to do with that?

Antonio Pappano15:00

Well, no, I I didn't know exactly what I was going to do, but I knew it was going to be music. So when I went to America, I spent less time with my colleagues in school. I didn't have many activities, sport related activities in school. Not many of those either, you know. And I was very much into the music and I've became very, very concentrated. In fact, after a break up with my first girlfriend, then I hid away. I was you know, that was the big catalyst to go and and really practice. I always need a a reason somehow to practice or

Speaker 115:14

He gave school.

Speaker 115:23

It's a

Antonio Pappano15:37

Yeah.

Presenter15:37

What did your brother end up doing, by the way?

Antonio Pappano15:39

My brother is the manager of an auto parts uh shop. He's been it's something though he's been doing for uh twenty years, and he's uh really kind of a virtuoso in his own right. He has four children. He's a terrific guy.

Presenter15:47

Yeah.

Presenter15:55

But couldn't be more different, you two.

Antonio Pappano15:56

Couldn't be more different. Terrific football player though.

Presenter15:58

Platyrific

Presenter16:00

Echo number four.

Antonio Pappano16:01

I grew up in America in the seventies and you couldn't not be hooked in as a young person to groups like Earth, Wind and Fire if you were uh susceptible to pop music. And I was very drawn to it. I find it it's it's somehow much sexier than classical music often. I w want to be free and I want to dance, you know. I don't dance that much and I'm not very good, but I love to dance the pop music.

Presenter16:58

September from Earth, Wind and Fire. So, Antonio Popano, apparently at some point in Connecticut you decided I've got to get out of here. Wh why did you feel that so strongly?

Antonio Pappano17:09

I realized being in uh involved with opera had something well, something, uh a lot to do with languages and really getting inside the languages. I needed some other experience and the main catalyst was that I I didn't speak German. I'd studied in England already, um French, and I felt confident, but I didn't speak German, and this was a kind of a thing that was started to bother me. And I started to feel i very insecure about it. So bic as somebody would bring something in German, I wouldn't know what it was, you know, in terms of the language. And so the first step was I got an audition with the New York City Opera as a pianist. Somebody recommended me and I I got a job. Overnight, all of a sudden, six days a week, I wasn't teaching with my father. It was a huge step.

Presenter17:59

He must have missed you.

Antonio Pappano17:59

He must

Antonio Pappano18:00

Well, yeah, it was a big separate but I had my mother was be behind me, You've got to do it, come on, you've got to go and she you know, and but I I always felt very strange about how it

Antonio Pappano18:10

Then changed my father's life. But I did it.

Antonio Pappano18:13

And through that I was all of a sudden I was playing these big scores that I'd never played before.

Presenter18:18

But this was always as a repetitor, as well as

Antonio Pappano18:19

Repetitor, I had no visions, no aspirations to conduct.

Presenter18:24

Really?

Antonio Pappano18:25

At all.

Presenter18:26

When did that happen?

Antonio Pappano18:26

Well While I was at New York City Opera, I met two people, Inge Nielsen and Robert Hale, both singers, they're married. And I coached the two of them. They saw in me something else. And Inga is Danish, and she said, You've got to come and conduct. You play the piano like an orchestra. You've got to come. And I'm doing these concerts in Denmark, and you're going to conduct. I said, but I've never conducted really. Yeah, you can do it. And all of a sudden,

Antonio Pappano18:54

I was conducting the South Jutland Symphony Orchestra, doing these arias and overtures.

Antonio Pappano19:00

And I was in front of this orchestra. I didn't I couldn't conduct my way out of a paper bag, really, but I did the flated mouse overture, the opening. I mean, it sounded like World War Three. It was so all over the place. I'll never forget it.

Presenter19:10

And did you then it was so uh what would you have been? You'd have been in your mid-twenties that you suddenly thought as you stood on that podium in South Jutland, this is what I want to do, I'm a conductor.

Antonio Pappano19:20

I still didn't. I still mixed it up until about nineteen

Antonio Pappano19:25

eighty seven, after New York City Opera, I went to Barcelona, I went to Frankfurt, I was a pianist in Chicago at the Lyric Opera, I met Daniel Barenboim, and that was another decisive moment because he brought me to Bayreuth, to the Wagner Festival in Germany, and there I was his assistant for six summers.

Presenter19:43

You'd have been 27. This is 1986 in Bay Road. So, is this the moment? I'm trying to get to this moment when you say, I am 18.

Antonio Pappano19:45

1986 in Pyroid.

Antonio Pappano19:50

In 1987 I went to Oslo and I conducted La Boheme, and all of a sudden I saw myself just take over.

Antonio Pappano19:59

I said, no, you've got to do this. No, you've got to move over there. Move with this music here. When you sing that note, you've got to have a look like this on your face at the Mosette Desaria. You've got to have a lure and you've got to. You've got to get the audience and you've got to get the chorus with you. And all of a sudden, I was stage directing. I just, it was the moment that I knew this is it, this is what I am, this is what I do. And because as an opera conductor, it's not just about the music, it's fusing the music to the visual.

Presenter20:28

It's the toad

Antonio Pappano20:29

It's the total thing. But then I knew that that's what I where I belonged.

Presenter20:29

It's the total thing.

Antonio Pappano20:34

Echo number five. This next r record, the Kromalink duo, are wonderful pianists, and it reminds me of the time my wife, Pam, and I first got together, and at breakfast time we would listen to this music.

Presenter21:47

One of Vorjak's Slavonic dances Opus seventy two, No. Two in E minor, played by the Krumlink piano duo.

Presenter21:54

Antonia Papono, you you spent ten years in Brussels, at La Monnet, as you say. During that time you were offered other jobs, I know but You had a feeling, you said, in your bones, that you were destined to come to the Opera House Covent Garden. Why?

Antonio Pappano22:09

Well, I think it was

Antonio Pappano22:11

When I was reading Sir George Shulte's autobiography, there was a chapter on London, and I was reading this chapter along, and I just got this weird premonition.

Presenter22:21

'Cause he held the job you now hold disappointed exactly as you know.

Antonio Pappano22:22

It's pointed exactly.

Antonio Pappano22:25

And I

Presenter22:26

What sort of premonition? What do you think? I just read it and thought I'd like to do that.

Antonio Pappano22:27

Maybe I shouldn't have had that premonition because I conducted once before disastrously in nineteen ninety at at Coven Garden. I was just too inexperienced to handle it.

Presenter22:39

But in spite of that, so there was possibility of the power.

Antonio Pappano22:40

In spite of that so there was part of that and part of you know, I've got to set this thing straight, you know,'cause it was so not good when I was first here. So it was a little bit of both, you know.

Presenter22:53

You parted company recently with the architect Daniel Liebeskind, didn't you, whom had been who had been commissioned to design the sets for the new ring cycle, which begins next year. You know, how how diffic well what was wrong with that? What was wrong with his sets? And how difficult was it to reject them?

Antonio Pappano23:10

First of all, Daniel Liebeskind is a wonderful man, a a fantastic artist and craftsman and a great genius. But architects tend to think of stationary structures, of course. And something like Das Rheingold has four definite scenes and there has to be movement between these scenes. And I think just the fact that something has to move and has to be flexible was I think um

Antonio Pappano23:39

Alien to Daniel's world.

Presenter23:40

Do

Presenter23:42

And then of course there was recently the story of of the soprano Deborah Voigt, from whom again the the Opera House parted company. She'd been booked to play Ariadne Alphnaxos, which is kind of a signature role of hers, but she's a woman of ample proportions and I think it was felt she wouldn't look right in the part. Again, that's a change of approach, isn't it? Because, you know, for years, for decades, Pavarotti, a man of extremely ample proportions, has has b played romantic leads. Does it come down to this wanting the total theatrical presentation? People have got to look right as well now.

Antonio Pappano24:15

I think that's part of the story. I think w like Pavarotti, I think you don't expect to see Pavarotti move very much on stage. And I think in this production of Ariadne of Naxos it's actually the quality of movement that was very important. It's not about the slinky dress, it's that's that's has nothing to do with it. The whole picture of the production and the movement, I just don't think would have suited her. I mean this was a decision made among the whole artistic team.

Speaker 324:45

Hmm.

Antonio Pappano24:45

It's unfortunate that a private matter between the Covent Garden Opera House and Deborah Voyd became such a uh sort of feeding frenzy for the press. Artistic matters are uh artistic matters.

Presenter25:01

Record number six.

Antonio Pappano25:03

Well, I think if you're on a desert island you can fall into a stupor if you're not careful. And I think that you need to be reminded of life's energy and life's force. And Beethoven is so somehow so basic and so natural that you need to be reminded of what's somehow what's possible.

Presenter26:25

The opening of Beethoven's fifth played by the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Carlos Kleiber. Um I see that you've you've cast away the baton, Tony, these days. You conduct with your hands. Is there a reason for that?

Antonio Pappano26:37

Last season, at the end of the season, I had tremendous problems with tennis elbow.

Antonio Pappano26:43

And I'll never forget it was in a performance of I Pagliacci, and the baton just came flying out of my hand at one moment, you know, as it sometimes happens. I think it went into the audience. And I have a spare one there on my music stand, and I decided I'm not going to pick it up. And I just said, let me give this a try, let me see what happens. And two things happened. All of a sudden, the pain in my elbow just disappeared. And all of a sudden, this feeling of embracing the orchestra and making more flowing movements, more expressive movements with my hands.

Speaker 127:22

Uh

Antonio Pappano27:22

happened. I think I've become, I think, warmer and more expressive without using the baton. At least that's what people tell me.

Presenter27:32

So you're liberated. I'm liberated. Feeling of liberation.

Antonio Pappano27:33

I'm liberated.

Presenter27:35

Your nickname at the Opera House is Mr. Motivator, you know, after all the problems that accompanied the Restoration and so on. You breathed new spirit, new life into the place, they say. I mean, there have been some blips, and I didn't mention them it would be churlish to do so, but I just wonder if you're learning anything about what the audience want what the what the British audience wants as opposed to your experiences in in in Europe.

Antonio Pappano27:58

I think this is one of the biggest challenges of being an artistic director of an institution like Covent Garden. It's an international institution. We have international singers here. We have the quality of the orchestra as international chorus. But of course, I am somebody who is interested in the total picture in theatre and psychological working through of the characters, not just the singers we know and love and listen to them singing, just all dressed up in a costume standing at the front of the stage. I'm not saying that that doesn't belong at Covent Garden, because I think we have beautiful old productions that absolutely belong at Covent Garden. What I love is actually to have a library of productions that mixes the old with the new. And I think that one of the challenges for me

Antonio Pappano28:49

Is

Antonio Pappano28:50

to come to terms with the fact that certain things work in certain countries

Presenter28:57

What doesn't work here?

Antonio Pappano29:00

Um well, I think an overly conceptual approach to opera production.

Antonio Pappano29:08

You know, it's I challenge myself to get it right. And why did this work? Why didn't this work? I ask myself the questions. But, you know, I think it's an exchange. Theater is an exchange of ideas, of emotions. And I think this is very important, that it's not just the fun night out, the opera. It can be and it should be on

Presenter29:27

They're paying big money for it. It's got big fun. It's got a lot of fun.

Antonio Pappano29:29

Yes, it can be, but it depends on the piece. If you come to Simon Bocanegra, it's not a fun night out, it's a deep experience, and opera can be many, many things. And that's what I don't think opera is one thing. I think it's many things. And the fact that we have a Bob Wilson production next to Schlesinger production of Rosen Cavalier and Moshinsky's production of Simone Bocanegra next to Tom Cairns' production of The Tempest, this is what I want this opera house to be. I want it to be many things. Mego number seven.

Antonio Pappano30:01

You know, if you're on a desert island I think you need to be made to smile and to laugh. And Louis Prima makes me smile.

Speaker 330:09

We'll go walking Where the mountains of the sun come into sight And father little jewelry shop will stop and linger

Speaker 330:23

While I buy a wedding ring for your finger

Speaker 330:28

And in the meantime, let me tell you that I love you.

Speaker 330:32

Hey, Monica, Signorina, kiss me good.

Presenter30:39

Louis Prima and Buena Serre. Good fun. Actually you'll be jogging up and down to that one on your desert land.

Presenter30:45

Um your parents are still around. They're still in America. What do they think of this son of theirs, this sort of pianistic prodigy who's now risen to the top of his profession?

Antonio Pappano30:54

Well, they're extremely proud. I call them every day. Actually, I speak to them every day and I tell them about, you know, this performance or this recording session or this. But I'm not allowed to say, Oh, that didn't go so well, or that didn't My mother will scream at me, What's the matter with you? You're the best. Why you always put yourself down? My father says, You know, and and so they don't let me wallow in self-pity at all, which has followed me through my career actually. It's been a wonderful antidote, you know. If they think I'm the best, then that's that's that's cool with me.

Presenter31:33

Wonderful. How are you going to cope on this desert island we're sending you to? Are you any good? Are you practical in any way?

Antonio Pappano31:39

I'm totally impractical. That's why I um in a way maybe brought this book, you know, Mark Twain, with me, because I'm very I I've a very, very um I was very affected by Huckleberry Finn and and and the adventures of Tom Sawyer. And I figure there's a chance that maybe I will learn how to make a raft somewhere in this book must be.

Presenter31:57

So we're in this book.

Antonio Pappano32:00

Together.

Presenter32:00

But I mean, if you're completely impractical, you can at least stand there and conduct all these pieces of music, can't you? And it's a wonderful eclectic list. What what's the last one on it?

Antonio Pappano32:08

It's a slow movement from the.

Antonio Pappano32:10

Great B-flat sonata of Schubert. I chose this record as much for the pianist Richter, Sviatoslav Richter, as for Schubert. Everybody has their own touch on the piano, and Richter's is very, very special. He always inspires me to try and achieve something as special to myself at the piano.

Presenter33:30

Part of the slow movement from Schubert's piano sonata in B flat major D nine six O, played by Sviatoslav Rishta. Now, if you could only take one of those eight records with you, Tony, which one would you take?

Antonio Pappano33:43

Tony Bennett Bill Evans. Would you? Definitely.

Presenter33:44

Mon Dieu?

Presenter33:47

You've told us your book is Huckleberry Finn. What about your luxury? One luxury.

Presenter33:53

No practical value.

Antonio Pappano33:54

I've always been looking f you know, I'm always trying to squeeze a minute here, two minutes there, trying to practise the piano and I w I would want to take a piano with me. I just feel what an opportunity to finally just get it together, you know.

Presenter34:10

Antonio Papano, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Antonio Pappano34:13

Thank you.

Speaker 134:21

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