Felicity Lott

Presenter0:00

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.

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The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand eight.

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My castaway this week is the soprano, Dame Felicity Lott. Her skills as a singer, actor, and story teller are relished by audiences internationally, and after thirty years performing her concerts remain instant sell outs. Yet her loyal fans are lucky ever to have seen her on stage at all. She planned to be a teacher.

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but was so crippled with nerves and the thought of addressing a class that she abandoned the idea. She was, she says, a shy, gawky girl, who never thought she was good enough, or had sharp enough elbows to get to the top. I'm constantly inadequate, except when I get on stage, she says and even then some one will come round afterwards and pierce the bubble. I veer from laughter to tears all the time, and try not to stop at the dangerous bits in between.

Presenter1:13

So I wonder, Felicity Lot, how on earth does someone who couldn't face teaching, because the the element of performance in front of a class scared them so much get in front of

Presenter1:23

Let's call them paying customers, the audience, and have the confidence to sing.

Felicity Lott1:25

Brilliant.

Presenter1:28

I suppose because I'm doing something I've learnt.

Presenter1:32

Ideally I've learnt what I'm doing and uh

Presenter1:35

I mean, with a chance, but but with standing up in front of a class, if I have to speak, I mean, even here now, it fills me with.

Presenter1:42

Terror really and and standing in front of a class of of unwilling students was I I only did it in France actually and I mean it was a complete joke. One of the important elements there is that people have paid to come and see you and therefore they're buying into the idea that this is somebody they like, which a class might not be doing.

Speaker 41:58

Yeah.

Felicity Lott1:58

Yes.

Speaker 41:58

Time.

Felicity Lott1:58

Okay.

Speaker 41:59

They like, which is fast might not be

Presenter2:01

Yes, that's right. It's awful, isn't it? No, I do it. So it makes perfect sense, really. Um, so it was nineteen seventy five then when you made your debut. You were Pomini and Mozart's magic flute. Do you remember any of the the nerves, the sensations on that particular night?

Felicity Lott2:03

And now I do

Presenter2:16

I think I jumped in at the English National Opera for Barbara Walker, bless her, who was ill. And so the whole day was spent in a complete rush of going through th staging and working with the conductor and trying to find a dress that fitted, because I'm I was always quite a lot taller than everybody else with bigger feet. Were you six feet tall? Not quite, but I'm five foot ten and a half, I used to say. I think it all went by so quickly and I was on stage really almost before I had a chance to think what was happening. So once I was on there I felt reasonably happy. And what about afterwards?

Felicity Lott2:33

Then everybody

Felicity Lott2:39

Yeah.

Presenter2:52

Oh, euphoric, actually,'cause it went quite well. And then I thought

Presenter2:55

Oh, here I am, my life's going to change, but it didn't actually happen for quite a long time.

Presenter3:00

I'm curious about your list. I noticed from looking at it that none of the eight contain any sort of big solo voices. I mean, we are going to hear some voices. You you're surrounded by this type of music all the time, professionally. Do you not listen to it at home? Not very much, no, actually. Why is that?

Presenter3:17

Ah

Presenter3:18

Well, I don't know. I actually I love silence now, more and more.

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And I listen to spoken voices more and more. I mean, it's crazy, really. I haven't quite got the house sorted to sit comfortably somewhere and listen to music. Do you listen to yourself ever to your own performances? Not really, no. Because

Felicity Lott3:31

Do you listen to your s

Felicity Lott3:32

Your own performances

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One has an idea in one's head of how this glorious music should be and

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Well, I admit you you never quite manage it. Perfectionism is a devilish thing. Tell me about your first choice then today. Well, my first choice is the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante. I think I've always known this. We must have had a recording of it at home.

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I love dueting, I love musicians playing together, and I love in this particular piece the wonderful build-up.

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As the orchestra sort of rises up, and you you've the anticipation something's going to happen, and then suddenly these wonderful instruments come in.

Speaker 45:02

Uh

Presenter5:06

Itzak Perlman and Pinkas Zuckerman playing part of the first movement of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for violin, viola, and orchestra, with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Zubian Mehta. So, Felicity Lott, you were brought up in Cheltenham, and you sang from a very young age. When was your first performance?

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I suppose my first performance was for my grandmother on a recording, which I have at home, singing um Away in a Manger and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. And how old were you? Two.

Presenter5:34

Actually, it's in tune. It's quite interesting. It's I I can hear my mother prompting the words, but

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So at aged two, it was in tune.

Felicity Lott5:39

Yeah.

Speaker 45:39

So this

Presenter5:43

She's actually quite interesting. It is very interesting. I'm sure your mu that was a a great red flag to your mother, was it? The idea that she had somebody who aged two.

Speaker 45:43

Do that.

Presenter5:52

Even if it was a simple song could sing it in tune.

Speaker 45:54

Yeah.

Presenter5:54

Because my mother sang to me all the time, and my father too.

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And both of your parents were they weren't professional performers, but they did perform. Yes, they did. What did they do? They did concert party, and my father wrote sketches and played piano, a sort of pub piano, by ear. And my mother sang, still sings beautifully, actually, in lots of choirs. My father died about twenty years ago in 1988. But no, there was music everywhere, always. And did you love to sing? Oh, yes. I'm sure they couldn't shut me up. In fact, we had a

Felicity Lott6:22

I'm just

Presenter6:28

An old school and college reunion last year and uh and a friend brought a recording of when I was twelve, I think.

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I was saying I know an elf in Laburnum tree, and it's it's frightfully posh.

Presenter6:42

Yes, elocution lessons. I want to ask you about the Freitfri Perschwitz. You had elocution lessons and music lessons, and do you think your mother had a very determined view of the sort of little girl she wanted to bring up?

Felicity Lott6:42

Yes, my elocution lesson.

Presenter6:53

Oh, very likely. I think so. Yes. Which was what?

Presenter6:57

Well, I was

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Yes, I was supposed to be.

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Mm-hmm.

Presenter7:01

I was going to say a bit better.

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I mean improved. Yes, I was supposed to be improved and uh

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I had seen lessons, piano lessons, violin lessons. I joined the all the

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The brown is in the

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Church choir and I mean it was great. It was lovely. Very directed, very strong. Very structured by your mother. Yes. And I'm very grateful for all of that.

Speaker 47:18

But very structured.

Felicity Lott7:19

Uh

Presenter7:22

And what about your father? You say he played piano by year and he had, you know, a an ability and an affinity with music. Was he a gregarious chap? Yes, very.

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He had a very hard start in life'cause he he was the youngest of five children and

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His father died in the flu epidemic in 1918 when he was five. And he was sent up to an orphanage in Derbyshire. And he used to tell the most amazing stories of coming down to break the ice in the wash basins and to swap around pieces of bread to get a thicker crust in the morning. I mean, awful poverty. Yes. And so.

Felicity Lott7:54

Yeah.

Felicity Lott7:55

Cannesian.

Presenter7:58

I mean, although he stayed very close to his older brothers and sisters, and there was a he had a tremendous sense of the importance of family.

Presenter8:06

And had that left a sort of insecurity in his soul, Do you think that's the only thing that I've seen?

Presenter8:11

Yes, I think so. When I think about it now

Presenter8:14

He found it quite difficult to express affection, um although he I mean, I know he loved me to bits, but um it was almost too close to the surface for him. It was difficult for him to I mean to hug or

Felicity Lott8:23

Yeah.

Presenter8:26

You know, he he probably wasn't ever shown any signs of affection when he was a little lad.

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But he was I mean, he was always the life and soul of the party and and

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They had all had endless parties at home.

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And always music.

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Let's take a break for your next piece of music.

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Well, I think I've chosen this because I've always

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been part of

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Church choirs or church quartets.

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And I sang also in King's College, Cambridge, sometimes with the Choir of Kings. I mean, this piece of music that I've chosen isn't anything I've ever sung, but it's

Presenter9:01

A glorious piece of English church music, I think.

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And it is

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Paris's wonderful setting of I Was Glad.

Speaker 410:03

We try some

Presenter10:08

The choir of Saint George's Chapel, Windsor, singing Perry's setting of Psalm one hundred and twenty two, I WAS GLAD. I very much get the impression, Felicity Lot, that you are a clever little girl.

Presenter10:19

Where you passed all the tests? I mean, you passed the 11 plus. I passed the 11 plus, yes, I did. I was.

Felicity Lott10:21

Yeah.

Presenter10:25

Well, I I was a good learner, right. I had a very good memory. You like structure? I liked structure, yes. I liked to be told what to do and then I was very happy to learn what I was told to learn, but I I'm never very

Speaker 410:27

Yeah.

Presenter10:35

Very good at being curious at all the other things. Like I would read the set book but I wouldn't bother to read all the ones that the other ones he wrote.

Presenter10:43

And you also say about yourself that you're gawky.

Presenter10:47

Exp explain that. What do you mean Go you look very elegant and sort of

Felicity Lott10:49

Yeah.

Presenter10:51

Well, my dad said when he came to see me on stage for the first time, at least you didn't knock anything over. So I presumably did a lot. I don't know. I was I don't know. I d I thought I was awfully

Presenter11:02

Unattractive with my short curly hair and my specs, and I didn't fit into any of my personal ideas of what.

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What people should look like if they wanted to be singers, anyway. You know, I quit.

Speaker 311:14

Put John's f

Presenter11:16

Oh, Mitzi Gaynor or somebody

Presenter11:19

South Pacific, is that right? Yes, those girls in the musicals, those little petite.

Felicity Lott11:21

Yeah, those little petite

Presenter11:24

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and I mean doing that all that dancing. I couldn't do that. I mean that was the sort of thing I used to watch those films when when we got a television we first got a television and they'd have things like that on T V and I'd watch these

Presenter11:35

Beautiful women doing all that, and I wasn't like that at all, and they could sing and dance, for goodness' sake. So although music was a big part of your life, there was never at that age that in the teenage years an idea that this was a possibility for a for a future life, a professional life.

Felicity Lott11:50

A knife.

Presenter11:51

And I was also completely in love with French, and I thought I would do that. And when in France music found you, as it were, what happened? Yes, I had so much free time in my in between my attempts to teach and do English conversation, which was a complete riot.

Presenter12:06

And anyway, I went and enrolled at the Conservatoire in Garnables and found a teacher there. Just for something to do, really, to fill up the eyes. Yes. And the teacher who taught you at the Conservatoire said She said if you were to do a little bit of work, maybe you could do something with singing.

Felicity Lott12:12

But the other one.

Felicity Lott12:15

Yeah.

Presenter12:19

And she was called Elizabeth Maximovich and I bless her. Let's take a break for your next piece of music then. What is it?

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I was given a recording of Tony Bennett when I was in my first year, and I don't think I'd ever heard any music quite like this with all my.

Presenter12:33

You know, Mozart and Handel and all the things I used to sing, and suddenly this was a whole whole new door opening.

Speaker 412:40

Uh time for summer skies for hummingbirds and butterflies

Speaker 412:58

For tender words.

Speaker 413:04

That harmonize with love

Presenter13:09

Tony Bennett and A Time for Love and I get the feeling uh lots of memories of early romance. I'm not sure I'm not sure how many of them you'll share with us, Felicity lot, but those early days of those early days, yes.

Felicity Lott13:15

Yeah, I

Felicity Lott13:17

But goes on

Presenter13:20

We were talking then about this French singing teacher who said to you there there's a future for you in music. You went on to attend the Royal Academy of Music. And I imagine that by doing that you were committing yourself to a future in music, that you were going to try to build some sort of career. Yes, I was going to try.

Presenter13:41

They gave me so many opportunities. I sang in operas and and we had terrific teachers there, John Streets, who was the opera head of the opera class. I mean you won the you won the principal's prize there when you graduated. Yes,'cause I didn't win anything else. It was so funny. I mean why was it qualified like that, I wonder. I think they gave it me because I couldn't well, I don't know, I was useless at competitions and auditions and all those things. I d I have a kind of nerves that I'm

Felicity Lott13:51

Yes, cause

Felicity Lott13:54

I'm a cypical

Felicity Lott13:56

And I think

Presenter14:04

I mean, I know I'm not completely useless. I realise that. Good, I'm glad you recognise that at least, yes. But.

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But I I kind of go to pieces if I think I'm

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putting myself out there to be shot at. So I never won anything. And and I always thought the principal was quite fond of me and gave me this prize because I never won anything else. I'm gonna leave that hanging in the air. But I what about the being nurtured, being tutored by people? I mean do you find that you respond very well? Did you then to the idea that if somebody who is respected in their field has faith in you, then you will deliver to them?

Speaker 414:23

Yeah, I'm the

Presenter14:38

Well, it does amazing things for my confidence. If there's somebody that who is respected who thinks I'm okay, then maybe I am and maybe I can be.

Presenter14:46

It's almost pathetic, isn't it? But it's it's still like that. I suppose one is a bit vulnerable in this business. So one is tremendously helped by

Presenter14:57

Conductors, or um, well, when I was at the Academy, I met Graeme Johnson, who's been

Presenter15:02

Kind of important. Yes, kind of important. Let's talk about that. And this enduring relationship I mean professional relationship, I should say you have a long and and happy marriage to uh the actor Gabriel Wolfe. We'll talk about him later, but let's talk for now about Graham Charles.

Felicity Lott15:04

Let's talk about

Presenter15:17

How long have you been married to Graham Johnson then? Since about nineteen seventy, I think. How did you meet? He played for some of my lessons with Flora Nielsen, who was a wonderful teacher at the Royal Academy.

Felicity Lott15:18

Mr. Graham Johnson then.

Presenter15:28

He played beautifully and we we kind of had the same idea about the way things should go. And ter terribly clever. I was quite frightened of him. But wonderfully.

Presenter15:37

supportive and encouraging of his friends and full of brilliant ideas. And he he started this group when we left the Academy called Songmakers' Almanac. Well, that seems the perfect time then to ask you about this next piece of music in particular. Why have you chosen this one? Because The Songmakers has been really important in my life because

Presenter15:55

Well, when I started singing you could only do song recitals really if you were frightfully famous. Elizabeth Schwartzkoff would come and do recitals at the Whidmore Hall, and everybody else would do a debut recital and then kind of disappear, it seemed, anyway. And the song makers was to try and make

Presenter16:11

Song recitals more accessible and so we spoke and sang a Schubert song, then a Noel Coward song and a bit of Oscar Wilde text and all kinds of things to sort of liven it up a bit for for possibly a new audience who might come and hear beginners rather than established artists. And this I think was on our first recording called Voices of the Night.

Speaker 416:41

Wait.

Speaker 416:49

But it's true.

Presenter17:30

The Songmaker's Almanac and Brahm's Arbentlied. So, Felicity Lott, let's turn to opera now. I mean, you've taken on all the major soprano roles in

Felicity Lott17:36

Not one.

Presenter17:40

Opera Houses the World Over. Can you give me?

Presenter17:43

If you like sort of a thumbnail sketch of how you go about preparing for these huge roles, where do you start? I mean, you've said that you don't particularly like to listen to other people's.

Presenter17:52

Recordings. So what do you do? I listen to other people's recordings, of course. I think.

Presenter17:59

And wonder how you're going to do it. Wonder how I'm going to do it. Yes.

Felicity Lott17:59

Wonder how you're going to do that.

Presenter18:02

Oh, certainly. I do listen to other people's recordings, yes. Do you read the score? Yes. I work with um a repetiteur, somebody who comes and plays piano for me. I I try and sort it out a bit myself, because I can play the piano a little. And and typically, how much rehearsal do you get actually on stage with the rest of the cast and and everything in place as it will be? Well, with the opera I've done, I've been really lucky, and actually it's the only way I could possibly have done it, is to to have long rehearsal time so that I really get to know everybody, so I don't feel that here I am coming in and doing my performance in the middle of something that already exists. I mean, for me, I was so lucky to

Presenter18:43

After two or three auditions for the Glaimon Chorus, I was accepted to sing on the Glaimon Tour, to do a real part on the tour. And then one has the most amazing nurturing at Glaimon.

Felicity Lott18:50

And

Presenter18:54

They turned you down for the chorus.

Presenter18:57

How can that be?

Presenter18:58

I don't know. I was I didn't too tall or perhaps I sang badly. I say I was a really bad auditioner and that was so wonderful and the producer of that was so extraordinary. It was John Cox. And we got on very well and he could he could see something in Gorky me that I didn't know I could do and helped me amazingly. Your acting ability is so often commented on by people who enjoy your performances, not least the critics. You know, they say you have this wonderfully perceptive, nuanced moving ability on stage. Now, you're a very difficult person to ask about this because I know your first thing will be, well, I don't think I do. But if you look at what these people say, and they're people who know their stuff, I wonder where the acting ability comes from. There must be something inside that you're mining there.

Presenter19:45

Well, I've had some wonderful directors.

Presenter19:50

I think I've probably got some sort of vulnerability that transmits. And so you find it easy to access your your emotions. They're not buried deep now really. No, they're a bit close actually. I mean, trying to get through a performance without bursting into tears was was

Felicity Lott19:55

And so you find

Felicity Lott19:58

They're not buried, so they're not.

Presenter20:07

hugely difficult in lots of lots of operas I've been in. Pathetic really. I mean one shouldn't take it all so

Presenter20:13

So personally. But I yeah, I do get involved with things.

Presenter20:16

Tell me about your next piece of music, then.

Presenter20:19

Well, this is from Benjamin Britton's Midsummer Night Stream. I love all the versions of Midsummer Night's Dream. I love the Mendelssohn versions, but.

Presenter20:26

I would really love to have a memory of a memento of this production, which was a fabulous one by Peter Hall, Peter Hall, which we did at Kleinbourne in nineteen eighty one, conducted by Bernard Heitink, who has been so important in my life really, and I'm still singing with him now. It's great. I've been looking at him on the rostrum for all my life, I feel.

Presenter20:48

And this is just the end of the opera where

Presenter20:51

James Bowman as Oberon and Ilya Anna Kotrubas as Titania in this lovely production we did are blessing the house.

Speaker 421:24

Take those time.

Felicity Lott21:48

If we show as I'm offended.

Felicity Lott21:51

Think but this, when all is mended.

Presenter21:59

Smiling at the memory there, the closing bars of Britain's A Midsummer Night's Dream. A memorable recording, Felicity, because um it was the nineteen eighty one Glimeborn production. You played Helena in that. Yes, the Bean Pole, it didn't matter being tall.

Presenter22:11

What about um casting male leads with you? Is it a problem? Because you you say, you know, you're five, ten and a half and maybe a little bit more. In your heels a bit more in your heads a bit more. Is it sometimes a problem to find men of equal stature?

Felicity Lott22:20

Some feels a bit more.

Presenter22:27

Yes, it has it was a problem. I remember saying on the

Presenter22:31

In one interview a long time ago, that I got used to bending my knees for tennis, and then I said, Please don't put that out.

Presenter22:39

But in the in the big dresses you can, you know.

Presenter22:42

You get get shorter as you drew closer to the ten on the other side of the stage. Quite funny. Uh the career that you've had means of course you've inevitably spent a lot of time on the road and and not always a bad thing because it was how you met your

Felicity Lott22:47

The career that

Presenter22:53

husband Gabriel Wolfe. How tell me more about that. How exactly did you meet? That was actually doing a concert performance of Honegger's The King David up in Liverpool. Gabriel was the narrator and I was the soprano soloist and

Presenter23:08

He had a very beautiful voice.

Presenter23:10

And he was quite good looking too.

Presenter23:13

And caused quite a lot of havoc at the time, but um in both our lives. Because you were already, both of you, involved? Both married, yes.

Presenter23:22

It did, of course, resolve itself and you have had a a very long and happy marriage. How many years now? Twenty-eight years has it married? Mm, not quite. Um we got together in eighty one and married in eighty four. I can't remember. We're not very good on anniversaries. Um you have one daughter, Emily, and now I'm conscious this is a question that is not often asked of men, but is virtually always asked of women, which is how do you manage?

Presenter23:45

To balance the commitments of a very rigorous schedule with with having especially a a young child when she was a baby. What what did you do? It was sort of easier when she was a baby because she travelled everywhere.

Presenter23:57

With me, of course, and um gradually we began to travel as a family circus with both my parents initially and then with just my mother later on. And we I remember going with dad and mum to Chicago in nineteen eighty seven, being met with this wonderful stretch limber and all of us being so excited. I think my dad was probably as excited as anybody. What did your mother make of um I know your mother is still alive and thriving, but once you began to be properly

Felicity Lott24:22

Mm-hmm.

Presenter24:26

hugely successful and remembering all of the piano and violin lessons and the singing teachers and making you knuckle down to all of that. What what does she make of this great? She's thrilled to bits. She's thrilled to bits, really. She's been wonderfully supportive always and comes to performances whenever whenever she can. Although, I mean, I do get quite nervous with my mother there. I I don't like being surrounded by people before a performance. I get very nervous and I want to be on my own.

Presenter24:51

And horrible being sort of edgy and snappy and ghastly.

Felicity Lott24:53

Oh yes, we ask.

Presenter24:54

You don't want to be near me, really?

Presenter24:56

And you and your daughter, you have you given recitals together? Yes. And with Gabriel as well, yes, the three of us.

Presenter25:03

Have given concerts together, and she's given lovely ones on her own too, doing readings and being.

Presenter25:08

hysterical doing Joyce Grenfell monologues and we do duets. Yes, she's quite talented in many directions, my daughter. And you've said that I mean, we know that y your mother still sings in in choirs. Have you ever given any sort of performance with her?

Presenter25:24

Yes, for a departing vicar.

Presenter25:27

My sister sings as well, where we're and my brother-in-law. So we've we did a a concert for our

Presenter25:31

vicar who was leaving our little village.

Presenter25:34

But my mother at the end of the performance did um

Presenter25:39

You made us love you. We didn't want to do it. We didn't want to do it. Brought the house down. Fantastic performance. So I mean, don't go on the stage with children, animals, or my mother.

Presenter25:53

Tell me about your next piece of music.

Presenter25:56

Well, I've always sung when I go to France I sing a lot of lighter French funny things. And somebody said would I like to do la belleline, often Bache bellelaine?

Presenter26:04

With Mark Minkowski.

Presenter26:06

And it was the most wonderful experience because I I met this lovely Laurent Pelly producer who's sweet, sensitive, lovely guy, full of amazing ideas.

Presenter26:17

And I'm supposed to be the most beautiful woman in the world, as Helen of Troy, and there were these fantastically beautiful young

Presenter26:23

practically students, and they can all sing and dance and do everything, and here's me.

Presenter26:28

And he found a way for me to be to pretend to be the most beautiful woman in the world, and I just had a ball.

Speaker 426:39

Yeah.

Speaker 326:44

Yellow by Bookers and Osa Bookers and Osam Bookers and Osa Sir Darwin Moore It's so much so that's normal so that's normal

Felicity Lott26:51

Yeah.

Speaker 426:58

I'll take this.

Speaker 327:00

Jean l'Éce je pour se au mison mouneau. Se wa bou samon ce boo, samsa bouse amon s menu, a jum, a ja.

Presenter27:27

The entrance of King Menelaus from the first act of Offenbach's Belle Leine with Michel Seneschal as the king with the choir and orchestra of the Louvre Renoble conducted by Mark Minkowski. And you were having I I could tell you were smiling and laughing all the way through that. Was it was it Michel Seneschal that was making you? Oh, he was so wonderful. He's he's eighty, I think, now, and he was, I don't know, what, seventy-five, six, seven or something then. I should picture him and I and what about the role? I mean, you you said playing Helen of of Troy that but it was a life changing role for you. In in what respect? Well, I'd always played kind of stately ladies, princesses, countesses.

Presenter28:03

Because of being so tall, you know, it c you carry the clothes quite well, I suppose.

Presenter28:07

That this it's sexy and and wiggly.

Presenter28:11

And you find that Sexy and Wiggly kind of suited you. Certainly the critics loved it. Well, it's quite nice when you get to a certain age and you can do a bit of sexy and wiggly. I mean.

Felicity Lott28:13

Yeah.

Presenter28:20

I'm not knocking it.

Presenter28:22

Uh you said, you know, I'm now a woman of a certain age. Are you are you conscious of that now professionally, when when it's when it comes to what you choose to do and what you're asked to do?

Presenter28:31

I do think about it but I mean,'cause some of me feels

Presenter28:35

Absolutely the same. I don't know that my voice feels absolutely the same.

Presenter28:39

What one doesn't know as a singer is what actually gets across the orchestra to the audience at the back.

Speaker 428:45

Yeah

Presenter28:47

But obviously things change. I just hope that somebody's going to

Presenter28:50

tell me that uh I ought to stop before everybody says, What a shame she didn't stop before. I I would hate that to happen. But I have such fun and people still seem to come.

Presenter29:01

Um over the next few months then, you're giving concerts in France, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Ireland, as well as at home here in the UK. Do do you prefer the intimacy of those sort of concerts and recitals to the great big numbers where you're part of a juggernaut of a production?

Presenter29:18

I think I do now, yes. I haven't actually got any opera at all, except for one woman show of La Voir U Men.

Presenter29:26

And it's not a it's not a decision that I've taken. I dunno, maybe it's better. I don't know. It's it's funny it's not awfully funny getting older, but you you I feel I've sussed out a few things that I never

Felicity Lott29:30

Maybe.

Presenter29:39

I never had before, but um, you know, things change. You can do things that you couldn't do and you and you can't do things that you could do, so it's a

Presenter29:47

With swings and roundabouts. That's one of the meagre compensations of the years. Tell me about your next piece of music then.

Presenter29:54

I don't know when I first heard this. A long time ago, I think in Another Life. I say I don't listen to a lot of music, but this brings me.

Presenter30:03

kind of comfort and it's it's spiritual in a way it isn't it isn't it isn't church music or anything but it's got

Presenter30:10

Tremendous humanity and I just love it. And it's Schubert, who's one of the absolute greats. I find his songs quite difficult. Schubert seems a huge mountain to climb for me.

Presenter30:24

And this these are two wonderful pianists climbing a wonderful mountain.

Presenter31:26

Murray Pariah and Radu Lupu playing the opening of Schubert's Fantasia for Piano for Four Hands. It seems to me, Felicity Lott, it's important to you that you have always worked. Yes. I can't imagine life without it, really.

Presenter31:39

I can't imag I don't know what I'd do. I'd go

Presenter31:42

I mean, I haven't got a million things that I feel I haven't had time to do really. I just love what I do. I mean, I have such fun. And here I say, I'm terrified all my life.

Presenter31:52

But I have such fun. Yes, that's interesting. I mean, that those two things can happily exist in the same person's life. That it that it is a a sort of anxious torture to have to deliver what you do, and yet you love doing it. Yes. I mean, I can't do anything else anyway. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do with myself.

Presenter32:10

Anyway.

Presenter32:11

There we are.

Presenter32:12

You'll be on the island then, lots of time, on your own.

Presenter32:16

Relishing the thought of that?

Presenter32:18

No. I I always think when I'm going away to do a concert or whatever, I think, oh, wonderful. Be glad to be on my own and I'm after about a day

Presenter32:28

I don't know what to do with myself, but I'm terribly.

Presenter32:31

impractical really. I don't think I'll be able to build myself a a shelter. I'd be yet complete useless person on this island. Comfort yourself with some music then. What's your final piece? Well my final piece is the is part of Capriccio by Richard Strauss. I'd have to take Richard Strauss because he's been really a very important part of my

Presenter32:52

professional life and that goes back to the Glenbourne Tour in 1976 where they finally let me in.

Presenter33:00

And let me play this wonderful part on the tour, and I've been playing it all the rest of my life.

Presenter33:07

Performing live.

Presenter33:56

Moonlight Music: The Prelude to the Final Scene of Richard Strauss's Capriccio played by the Viana Philharmonic conducted by Horst Stein.

Presenter34:04

So this is the point where I give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, and I'm keen to know what your book's going to be.

Presenter34:10

Well, my book is going to be something I haven't read since I

Presenter34:14

The night before finals.

Presenter34:17

I'd like to take Victor Hugo's Les Miserable.

Presenter34:19

It's yours and a luxury.

Presenter34:22

Apart from the box of tissues that I'll need if I listen to all these things.

Presenter34:25

I'd like lots of champagne and pistachio nuts. Really frivolous, please. Yes, that's fine. I will I mean, it's a technical breach of the rules, but I'll allow you both if they're on a tray together, I think. Yes, let's do that. Champagne and pistachio nuts. And of the eight pieces of music that you've chosen, which one would you save if you had to?

Felicity Lott34:29

Yeah.

Felicity Lott34:32

Okay, okay.

Felicity Lott34:35

Yeah.

Presenter34:44

I think I'd take the Strauss.

Presenter34:47

Dame Felicity Lotts, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you so much, I've really loved it.

Presenter34:59

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