Harry Rabinowitz

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

Presenter0:10

For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.

Presenter0:35

My castaway this week is the conductor and composer Harry Rabinovitz. His list of credits and collaborations read like a who's who of twentieth century music. Gracie Fields, Charles Aznavour, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Matt Monroe, and Barbara Streisand are only a handful of the stellar names who've benefited from his talents.

Presenter0:54

He's conducted a lot of movie scores too, including Chariots of Fire and the talented Mr. Ripley. Indeed, the late director Anthony Mangella described him as the UK's best-kept secret. It wasn't an illustrious start. His first job was playing sheep music for prospective customers in a Johannesburg department store. He was fired after six weeks. His first go at conducting was enhanced not by an elegant baton of the finest maple wood, but a rolled-up old newspaper.

Presenter1:22

He's almost a hundred years old now, and as befits a man of his years, seems prone to the odd bout of plain speaking. He says, Underneath this hard exterior there's a heart of pure granite. I don't stand any nonsense from players and singers. So welcome, Harry Rabinowitz. It's uh it's delightful to meet you. Um you say a heart of pure granite. It's a good line, but I'm not sure I believe it, because much of your conducting is a very particularly in the movie scores, very lyrical and quite romantic sounding music. Do you really have a soft centre?

Harry Rabinowitz1:54

It's the nicest statement I've heard for some time.

Harry Rabinowitz1:59

I work as fast as the devil will allow me to do. I can get through scores and memorise, etcetera., in no time at all. And if I think there's a good bit of sentiment available, I exploit it. And so, yes, I'm I'm partially connected to the words you used.

Presenter2:16

So exploiting the sentiment, I can understand that pretty easily. That's in order to to heighten people's connection with the movie they might be watching or the singer they might be listening, but doing it very quickly. What's that all about? Why why why the speed?

Harry Rabinowitz2:29

Well, I learned when I was s a small person, I learned to read music very quickly and very accurately. And generally speaking, among the people that I came to join in the profession, there were some pretty damn good talents, but very few people could read fast and accurately. So I could get through a score which could normally take somebody like twenty minutes to put right. In other words, to make it sound good, I reckon I could do it in seven and a half minutes.

Presenter2:54

Tell me about the first of your choices this morning, then. What are we going to hear first off?

Harry Rabinowitz2:58

Louis Armstrong

Harry Rabinowitz3:00

and Earl Heinz. This was my first exposure to real inventive jazz, and it came to me on the radio in Johannesburg when I was quite a small person, in my adolescence, in fact.

Harry Rabinowitz3:12

And I had to play the disc after hearing.

Harry Rabinowitz3:16

The transmission on the radio in Johannesburg in South Africa.

Harry Rabinowitz3:21

And I took it into my home and put it on my little wind-up grammar phone and my father said, take that rubbish out of here immediately. So I thought, well, what's he talking about? He said, it is A, distasteful to me and B, it'll disturb my poker school because we will be playing poker to extremely high values. He didn't really know what he was talking about then. In the next room. So if you're going to play that stuff while those people are playing poker, in the bedroom with a blanket over your head and keep quiet while it's on.

Speaker 43:58

What wobbado Wadwaddle What I did

Harry Rabinowitz4:20

Yeah.

Presenter4:44

West End Blues performed by Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines. I have to say, Herr Habinovitz, it was an absolute pleasure to sit and listen to that with you, because you took me through it in a way that I would not otherwise have listened to it. You sort of took it apart and put it back together again. You d you obviously still take intense and immense delight in music.

Harry Rabinowitz5:03

I do, I do, and I keep looking for the best and finding it.

Harry Rabinowitz5:09

Within my own terms, finding it is so rewarding, and thank you for putting it so kindly.

Presenter5:14

It is a delight to have you here today, not least because your first invitation onto Desert Island Discs was how many years ago? Sixty-two years ago.

Harry Rabinowitz5:21

I had just joined the B B C, and in a canteen the producer waved to me across scores of people drinking tea, and he said, Hurry, hurry, we've got to have you on Desert Island Discs and I can tell you when that was. It was nineteen fifty two.

Presenter5:30

The heavy one does

Harry Rabinowitz5:36

And now you're here. And then I thought to myself the other day when the telephone call came and then a little uh piece of paper arrived.

Harry Rabinowitz5:43

I've been nursing this invitation for sixty three years.

Presenter5:47

We eventually go Back to you. Sometimes things take time within the B B C, isn't it? Talking of time then, you were born in nineteen sixteen, which scarcely seems credible looking at you today, in South Africa. You were the eldest of what would be three brothers. Tell me a little bit about your parents.

Harry Rabinowitz5:48

Sometimes things

Harry Rabinowitz5:50

The B B C is India, yeah.

Harry Rabinowitz6:03

Father was an emigré from Russia in the year 1912, and he had come away with a degree in pharmaceutical practice, what we would call a chemist in the old terms. And when he came to the port at Cape Town, they said, We're very pleased to see you here, but you can't practice as a pharmacist. And he said, Why not? And they said, We don't recognize your degree. So he had to join in with the ordinary physical and mental life of people who wrapped parcels or ran cafes or whatever. My ma, on the other hand, was born in South Africa of Russian Jewish parents, and she and my dad met, I suppose, around about 1912 and probably got married about 1914. And so I was born in 1916.

Speaker 36:24

Hmm.

Presenter6:47

In an observant household was was religion important?

Harry Rabinowitz6:50

No, it was just something that was quietly observe. There was no any depth.

Presenter6:55

Was money tight? Did he gamble to make a living, as well as wrapping the parcels?

Harry Rabinowitz6:59

He occasionally provided good friends with hair oil.

Harry Rabinowitz7:03

because he knew a jolly good mixture which couldn't be bought across the counter in the chemist shop. Everything he touched just turned to dross. You know, some people make it turn to gold. He they made it turn to dross. He battled a lot with the game of poker because he often maintained that he'd educated us through his efforts at the card table.

Presenter7:23

Was he dealing with a degree of anti-Semitism, do you think?

Harry Rabinowitz7:27

No, it was not evident there. The country passed through a lot of political turmoil, and it culminated in World War Two, where those of us who joined the army, which is a a f volunteer army, were staggered to s hear on occasion men in uniform, same uniform as I was wearing, saying

Harry Rabinowitz7:46

in the Afrikaans language, which of course I understood.

Harry Rabinowitz7:49

We're on the wrong side. We should be fighting with Hitler. Well, you're in a violently changing situation like that, and you've got you've got to keep your wits about you. I finished up going into a thing called the entertainment unit, like Ensa in Britain.

Presenter8:04

More of that to come. For now, Harry Rabinovitz, let's have your second piece of music. What are we going to hear now?

Harry Rabinowitz8:08

Beethoven, I'm back in my lower teens and it's a school concert and I noticed there was a piano and I slowly, slowly sank over these men of a couple of hundred young people and I opened the top and I started on the Beethoven and suddenly there was an attempt at silence and then there was a total silence from the entire couple of hundred people and at the end there was the kind of applause you only get from stupefaction at the other end. Who is this kid and how did he learn to do all that? And I think that at that point

Harry Rabinowitz8:44

Music got into me to the point where it says, If you do this good, sonny, you'll have a good life.

Presenter9:52

That was part of the first movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. Twenty in G major, opus forty-nine, number two, played there by John Lill. And memories for you, Harry Rabinovitz, of being this young boy at school and suddenly rather shocking the entire room. Y you said they were thinking, who is this kid and how did he learn to do that? So how did you learn to do that? When did you first begin to play piano?

Harry Rabinowitz10:12

At the age of nine, a neighbour,

Harry Rabinowitz10:15

started showing interest in music in general and dragged me into it, and then we got a piano.

Presenter10:22

Said you were nine plus then, you're ninety nine plus now. Do you still play?

Presenter10:27

I Cannot

Harry Rabinowitz10:27

Bear being diverted from playing the piano each day. Have you played yet today? No, I'm in a hotel that hasn't got a piano.

Presenter10:36

It was nineteen thirty seven then, I think.

Presenter10:38

When you visited Europe for the first time, you would have been, of course, around about twenty-one. What was it that propelled you to Europe? Why why did you come?

Harry Rabinowitz10:45

If I was going to be really serious about music and I was captivated by the art as a whole now by now, I'd have to have a go.

Harry Rabinowitz10:52

And having a go meant going to Europe.

Harry Rabinowitz10:55

And I came over. I actually heard Heifitz play.

Harry Rabinowitz10:59

and Rachmaninoff I heard Rachmaninoff in the flesh. It became evident that w when the war intervened and changed the way of my life, it changed the way of everybody's lives at the time that if I was going to test myself elsewhere it would have to be after the war.

Presenter11:14

Now, apartheid wasn't officially established in South Africa till I think it was 1948. So there you were a young man pre-established apartheid, but presumably living amidst very much racial division. When you were in the military, was it Cape Coloured's one side, blacks here, whites there, Jews there? How did it work?

Harry Rabinowitz11:34

Well, it did work in the colour of the skin. They were separated. I was a corporal by then. The sad part of it was when people like me who were well intentioned we wanted to take labour and black talent and train it, or improve it, or welcome it anyway. We had to do it in secret because he was not allowed on the streets after ten o'clock at night. Unless he had a pass, a pass, and this white man, meaning in my age now twenty one years old, had to write on a piece of paper and say, I hereby authorise James to be on the streets until ten thirty to night.

Harry Rabinowitz12:10

That's quite one of the worst things about their part, I think. I say one of the worst. It became much more violent and much more awful.

Presenter12:16

When you were you say, sort of training and helping and fostering talent with these uh young black guys, what were you working on them with? You were working on them with music and singing and

Harry Rabinowitz12:26

Yes, in primarily with singing and if we could borrow, or s they could borrow, a blown instrument.

Presenter12:33

Were you ever allowed to perform together at any point?

Harry Rabinowitz12:36

Uh

Presenter12:36

Uh

Harry Rabinowitz12:36

No, we were never allowed to perform together unless it was in private.

Harry Rabinowitz12:42

Substantially a secret place. The police didn't know about it.

Presenter12:46

Time for some music, Harry Rabinovitz. Tell me about your third.

Harry Rabinowitz12:49

Walking down Elof Street, Johannesburg one day in a sort of after the war now.

Harry Rabinowitz12:55

And one of the graphphone record shops had a a player out on the pavement, and this magic music came at me, and I made a few inquiries, and I found that it was British music by British composer, British singers, and instrumentalists, and I went in and came away with the entire serenade.

Harry Rabinowitz13:14

For Tenner, Horn and Strings by Benjamin Britton.

Harry Rabinowitz13:18

If anybody is singing or playing that piece, I'm there.

Speaker 413:22

Yeah.

Speaker 413:23

There it's of no interpose Since the shiny orb was made.

Harry Rabinowitz13:28

Yeah.

Speaker 413:30

Heaven declare when they declaim Bless us then with wishes I bless us then with wishes I'll say

Harry Rabinowitz13:34

We should sight, bless us then with wish inside.

Speaker 413:50

And thy crystal shiny quiver Give unto that flying heart space to bring function so ever.

Harry Rabinowitz13:56

Flying heart space to breathe.

Speaker 414:03

God makes the day of life.

Speaker 414:05

Thought it makes the day of night.

Speaker 414:08

Love that makes love.

Speaker 414:13

God this goddess there

Presenter14:22

Benjamin Britton's hymn to Diana from the serenade for tenor horn and strings. Britton was conducting the Boyd Neal String Orchestra with the tenor Peter Pearce and Dennis Brain on Horn and My goodness me, you were enjoying that, Harry Robinowitz. Was that taking you right back to when you first heard it? It was. After the war, you had come to uh the Guildhall School of Music in London in 1946. It must have been a fairly dank and dilapidated London post-Blitz that you came to live in. What are your memories of that time?

Harry Rabinowitz14:52

My first child was born in that period, and uh my first wife was pretty well adjusted to.

Harry Rabinowitz15:00

or determined rather to see it through in circumstances in which a large number of people from either Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, etc. came to London and they couldn't take the burdens or their wives couldn't take the burdens. It was a matter of saying I'm damn well going to stay and the only really encouraging thing was the Spanish gallery section of the National Gallery where there's a Velasquez painting.

Harry Rabinowitz15:27

The Roqueby Venus. When weather's bad in a city like London and your shoes are leaking, there's only one place to go, and that's an art gallery. And I walked down and saw this painting captivated, and as I stood there

Harry Rabinowitz15:40

The woman in the painting talked to me.

Harry Rabinowitz15:43

And she said, You're having a thin time, aren't you?

Harry Rabinowitz15:47

And by then I was thinking, now, wait a minute. I looked up and down, there were no other people there. And I said, yes, and she said, stick at it. You're going to have some bad patches and it's not going to be easy to get there. But I assure you you well, I tell a story to people and they just don't believe me. They think it's absolutely crazy. But I have brought other people to the Spanish Gallery in the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square and told them and introduced them to the Roqueby Venus.

Harry Rabinowitz16:14

And I think some of them believe me.

Presenter16:16

And did you ever go back and talk to her again?

Harry Rabinowitz16:17

Oh yes, I'll be there later to day.

Presenter16:20

I'm s I'm quite serious, Harry. Have have you been back? Do you look to her for advice?

Presenter16:25

It's interesting that you say to me at that point, you know, things were pretty thin on the ground, because I read that in your first marriage, your best man was Sid James. Is that right?

Harry Rabinowitz16:33

Yes, we'd been in the army together and his wife had also been a soldier.

Harry Rabinowitz16:38

I was unemployed.

Harry Rabinowitz16:40

and I walked down Piccadilly

Harry Rabinowitz16:42

and their crossing, Lower Regent Street, was Sir James.

Presenter16:46

And at that point, Sir James was an established star here, was he? Yes, very much so.

Harry Rabinowitz16:49

It was it

Harry Rabinowitz16:51

And we greeted one another quite warmly and so on. And he said, What are you doing? and I said, I don't know, he said, I'm unemployed.

Harry Rabinowitz16:58

And he said, Go with thee, and he took my arm and he led me to the officers, Jack Hilton, the Impesario band leader, etcetera. Talked ten minutes, said, Harry will do anything you like, he'll do it well, do better than any conductor, etcetera, etcetera. And I walked out of there with a contract, and life began again after seventeen minutes.

Presenter17:18

He gave you a a leg up. A leg up. Time for some more music then, Harry. What are we going to hear? We're on your fourth of the morning.

Harry Rabinowitz17:25

Vision up head of music in London Weekend Television, the music department, and they organized through me.

Harry Rabinowitz17:32

A meeting with William Walton in my office in London to discuss the music for the opening of the National Theatre a fanfare for the opening of the musical theatre. Well,

Harry Rabinowitz17:43

Walton was not really interested in that, nor was I. We were far more interested in talking about the symphonies, and I said to myself, This is the man who is an OM, an order of merit. He's written a wonderful viola concerto, he's a wonderful Belshazzar's feast, and super works, etcetera.

Harry Rabinowitz18:00

I think that I can safely say to myself that when I grow up I want to be like that.

Harry Rabinowitz18:06

It still holds good, by the way, when I grow up. I do want to

Presenter19:10

That was part of the fourth movement of William Walton's Symphony No. One, performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted there by Edward Gardiner. So, Harry Rabinovitz, then tell me about this first big I think it would be reasonable to call it your big break. It was nineteen fifty three and you got a staff job at the BBC as uh conductor. No more holes in your shoes and and padding the wet streets of London then. What were the most notable shows and names that you worked with in those early days of the fifties?

Harry Rabinowitz19:38

There were the the usual concerts of light music and so on, and the the major variety shows like Take It From Here and Educating Archie and Drown the Horn and eventually The Goons and so on. And everything, of course, live as you like. All live. At the end of the time allotted to the recording of the show, you put on your jacket, went and had a bear and went home.

Presenter20:00

You took part in, I think, um two Eurovision song contest entries for the United Kingdom in the nineteen sixties. You were with Kenneth McKellar on one of those, who's

Harry Rabinowitz20:09

Very well under me,'cause I'm Scottish. I did t quite a lot of television shows with him, live, of course. But on the Eurovision Song Contest we were in Luxembourg, and uh the nationalities had their various places where they could sample the opinions of countries which had been represented.

Harry Rabinowitz20:28

Now the B B C had had a very sharp debate in the city because McKellar had taken the kilt with him, but the B B C couldn't make up its mind, since it was a television show, whether he was to appear in the kilt or not. And in the end he sang in the kilt.

Harry Rabinowitz20:45

And when the BBC went round and collected the opinions about the show and all that sort of thing afterwards they said

Harry Rabinowitz20:50

The outstanding one was they had said

Harry Rabinowitz20:53

The Yugoslav delegation the song was pretty good, but they thought that the lady who sang it was rather butch.

Harry Rabinowitz21:01

Ha ha ha!

Harry Rabinowitz21:02

Well

Harry Rabinowitz21:04

Yeah.

Harry Rabinowitz21:06

He was a hell of a good musician and a good he produced a lovely sound.

Presenter21:13

Let's have some more music, Carrie Robinovitz. Um tell me about this fifth one.

Harry Rabinowitz21:17

As Navora was a single

Harry Rabinowitz21:20

By then, this 1974, a pretty important figure in popular music on the continent. He had never had a success in Britain. When I was heard music in London Weekend Television, they came to me and said, we've got this program called She and it's about a woman and we think that Asnova would be a very good composer to provide a theme tune.

Harry Rabinowitz21:40

Get at him and see if you can get some stuff. So I did. And he sent in a couple of pieces which were sort of very close to being total rubbish. And I played them over for the brigade staff and they said, well, it's not very good, isn't it? And I said, no. Okay, they said, give him one more chance. Give him a bit more detail. So I did. And in came the manuscript of a song called She. I played it. I adored it. I played it to the management. We loved it.

Speaker 422:04

She may be the face I can't forget A trace of pleasure or regret

Speaker 422:13

Maybe my treasure are the price I have to pay.

Speaker 422:20

She may be the song that summer sing

Speaker 422:24

Maybe the chill that autumn brings Maybe a hundred different things

Presenter22:30

Charles Aznavour singing She. That was the nineteen seventy four uh recording. You've worked with so many names it's impossible to talk about them all, but I would like for a moment to talk about Barbara Streisand. She has a reputation for being something of a stickler.

Presenter22:49

How did you find her?

Harry Rabinowitz22:51

Well, the stickler part of it I'd heard about.

Presenter22:54

Mm.

Harry Rabinowitz22:54

And in fact, I didn't really believe it, but the more I heard about her efforts in the recording studios.

Harry Rabinowitz23:01

the more I realized that there was something there that she was not prepared to release. She'd can't keep absolute control. But turning up at the studios one day in Barnes, London, South West, thirteen,

Harry Rabinowitz23:15

With an excellent orchestra.

Harry Rabinowitz23:18

We were told, as we were assembled and shutting keeping quiet, having tuned up, they said

Harry Rabinowitz23:24

Miss Streisand will, as she usually does, enjoy a dish of Chinese food at about one hour and fifteen or twenty minutes into this session.

Harry Rabinowitz23:34

And I thought

Harry Rabinowitz23:36

Who's kidding who? You know, we're gonna stop while Chinese etcetera. And by God, at one hour and fifteen in when we'd done sort of three takes and we were battling to find out why she was wanting to record it again.

Harry Rabinowitz23:49

Waiters came in with trays and Chinese food, and Miss Streisand went to the control room and had a Chinese meal.

Harry Rabinowitz23:56

Now

Harry Rabinowitz23:58

If you can do that and just sort of take all the circumstances of a recording session and just think about your chopsticks.

Harry Rabinowitz24:05

Jonah, you're on a different world, different level.

Harry Rabinowitz24:08

And I have to say.

Harry Rabinowitz24:10

That was one of those rare occasions when I signed Harry signed the wrong contract. He just signed for the fee for conducting the recorded session instead of a farthing per disc royalty or something like that, because it was a big success. It was a big success.

Presenter24:27

Yes. And when somebody like Barbara Streisand is saying to you, Well, you know, j let's just go for the eleventh take, uh would you at any point be crossing swords, or would you just be buttoning your lip and getting on with it?

Harry Rabinowitz24:39

Well, you wouldn't achieve much by crossing swords, so the answer is no. Because if you cross swords, somebody's got to walk out of the studio, and that's not what you're there for.

Presenter24:50

Did you work with her again?

Harry Rabinowitz24:52

No.

Presenter24:53

What are we going to hear now?

Harry Rabinowitz24:54

On the opening night of Cat.

Harry Rabinowitz24:57

In London in 1981, 11th of May, we played to the first full-time professional audience, critics and everything.

Harry Rabinowitz25:07

and at the end of the show there was a storm of applause which could be heard in America. And while the applause was still roaring away, one of the actors

Presenter25:11

in America.

Harry Rabinowitz25:17

came to the front and said quietly, held his hands up, called for quiet, and said, We've just had a warning from the IRA that there's a bomb in the house. Would you please clear?

Harry Rabinowitz25:27

So naturally applause stopped the people ran and got their clothing, did this and the other, and then down the stairs into the street outside. Now the consequence of all that speed was that the people who danced and sang were still in their skimpy stage clothes. Anything to do with memory with cats is tied to that opening night. Never forget it.

Speaker 325:53

Not a sound from the pave.

Speaker 325:57

Has the moon lost her memory

Speaker 326:02

She is smiling alone

Speaker 326:07

In the land black

Speaker 326:10

The withered leaves collect at my feet

Presenter26:17

Elaine Page singing Memory from the Musical Cats. That was the 1981 recording with you, my castaway, Harry Robinovitz, conducting there. Aside from the Oscar-winning English Patients music, you've worked on many, many successful films, conducting for Chariots of Fire, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Howard's End, and so on and so on. When you are going through the process, do you know when the films are hit? Do you get a sense of that as well?

Harry Rabinowitz26:36

So one on

Harry Rabinowitz26:43

I don't, but other people can.

Harry Rabinowitz26:47

The team that produced Chariots of Fire, David Putnam was the producer and

Harry Rabinowitz26:53

said about three quarters of the way through the work on that movie.

Harry Rabinowitz26:57

Putnam said there's a smell of success here.

Harry Rabinowitz27:00

Now I'd never heard anybody say that about a film before.

Harry Rabinowitz27:04

It's easier to predict failure. You can think they made a balls up with this. The critics will hate it, or the public will not understand what it's all about. Until the orchestra has played the first ten measures of the music for a movie, nobody knows what it sounds like. They all think they know it's going to match, and it's going to be loud in this battle scene, and it's going to be soft in the love scenes. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Put up the images, put the music against that, and you know whether it's going to work or not.

Presenter27:38

On that note, Harry Robinovitz, I want you to tell me then about why you've chosen particularly this seventh disc. This is Kipps Lights from the English Patient.

Harry Rabinowitz27:46

It was one of those instances where the m moment you ran through

Harry Rabinowitz27:52

The music, and you suddenly realize that this scene can't be improved on.

Presenter27:52

The

Presenter28:49

That was Kipps Lights from The English Patient. The film score was composed by Gabrielle Yarrett and performed by the Academy of Saint Martin, the Fields, with Harry Robinovitz, my castaway conducting. Um when did you eventually retire?

Harry Rabinowitz29:02

About five years ago.

Presenter29:04

In when you were what, ninety-four?

Harry Rabinowitz29:05

Yes, and I had the position of being in London, which is a city I love to work in.

Presenter29:05

Yeah.

Harry Rabinowitz29:11

And I loved working with the s the excellence of the players. You know, between the the the best players in London and in Los Angeles there's a vast gap. Those two cities have produced talent and expertise of a kind that I've just been, you know, delighted to work with.

Presenter29:30

Great conductors and great musicians very often do work in their seventies and eighties. That is common. I'm interested, though, in the turn that you were.

Harry Rabinowitz29:34

Yeah.

Presenter29:39

Personal life took in your 80s? Because it's not very often that people get married in their 80s. You did.

Harry Rabinowitz29:46

Yeah, I'd be married again, yes. Yes.

Presenter29:47

Yes. Well, it's quite optimistic for a kickoff, isn't it?

Harry Rabinowitz29:52

Yeah. Um let's see how you're going to phrase the question then.

Presenter29:56

Well, no, I'm just in I'm interested at the age of what were you eighty one or eighty two when you married for the second time? Yeah.

Harry Rabinowitz29:59

Yeah.

Harry Rabinowitz30:00

The sec.

Presenter30:01

I knew I was meeting somebody who was ninety nine today, but if you'd come in and I hadn't known that, I probably would have thought you were at least twenty years younger than you are. Are you always somebody who's had a sort of surfeit of energy?

Harry Rabinowitz30:05

Yeah.

Harry Rabinowitz30:12

Oh yes. The genes in the family are just that way. I got two brothers. One died i in the eighties and one died in the nineties. So

Presenter30:19

When we've made you tea, you've had a good big, healthy scoop of sugar in it, and it's had milk in it. Are you somebody who enjoys life? You haven't you don't live a very monastic life?

Harry Rabinowitz30:23

Yeah

Harry Rabinowitz30:27

No, but I do limit it to a regular intake of the right kinds of food. So I take very little sugar.

Harry Rabinowitz30:35

And uh

Harry Rabinowitz30:37

I mean, are you really interested in this?

Presenter30:39

I'm really interested Yeah.

Harry Rabinowitz30:39

Okay.

Presenter30:40

Uh

Harry Rabinowitz30:40

Okay.

Presenter30:42

I think listeners will be too, because it's remarkable to meet somebody of ninety-nine who absolutely you're a phenomenon sitting here today.

Harry Rabinowitz30:47

Yeah.

Harry Rabinowitz30:49

Well, I don't smoke. I haven't smoked for a long, long time indeed. I try not to eat white flour in any form. Eat masses of vegetables and fruit. Fish, small amounts of red meat and uh

Harry Rabinowitz31:06

drink alcohol at a modest level. Sometimes I go days without any alcohol at whatever.

Presenter31:10

Daniel.

Presenter31:12

Days. I love to hear. That's good. Days is fine. If you'd said weeks or months, I would have worried. That's hard. That's hard going. Yeah, yeah. As we both know, you've waited a long time to be cast away. I'm about to cast you away. You've led this life that have been.

Harry Rabinowitz31:15

If you said we

Harry Rabinowitz31:17

Well that's hard. That's hard going.

Speaker 431:21

To be cast away.

Speaker 331:23

Wait.

Speaker 431:23

Uh

Presenter31:25

It's been full of collaboration. You know, you've been working with uh talented performers, with orchestras, with composers. How are you on your own? Are you good with your own company?

Harry Rabinowitz31:26

Yeah.

Harry Rabinowitz31:34

Yes, I'm pretty good with on my own company. I wouldn't probably wouldn't enjoy it very much if I had to starve, or um never sittle down and read by a decent light.

Presenter31:45

In that case, let's go to your final disk.

Harry Rabinowitz31:47

Right.

Presenter31:47

Yeah.

Harry Rabinowitz31:47

Yeah.

Presenter31:47

Tell me about this piece.

Harry Rabinowitz31:49

Independent Television got a story about a spy in World War One named Riley, who had a very strange career because he upset everybody he worked with, but he did an enormous amount of good work on behalf of the then Allies.

Harry Rabinowitz32:04

And in a movie called The Gadfly, Shostakovich, the Russian composer,

Harry Rabinowitz32:09

wrote a a theme, and the people in independent television in London thought that Shostakovich's theme would be just right for this, but it needed rearrangement. So they said, Would you like to do it? and I said, Yes, with pleasure.

Presenter33:21

Based on an original piece of music by Shostakovich, that was the theme from the T V series Riley Ace of Spies, arranged by Harry Rabinovitz, My Castaway, and performed there by the Olympic Orchestra. It's time for me now to give you the books, Harry. I give you, to take to this island, the complete works of Shakespeare, and also a copy of the Bible. And you can take one other book. What's your one other book going to be?

Harry Rabinowitz33:43

My book would be, if it exists in a like in a collection by the author. The author is Standhall, whose real name is Henri Bale, and he was a writer in the 19th century. He went to Russia in Napoleon's army as a soldier and a writer and came back to civilian life. He adored music and writes about it with enormous sensitivity. He wrote a biography of Rossini.

Harry Rabinowitz34:15

And that's pretty good.

Harry Rabinowitz34:17

And he wrote the one masterwork called The Red and the Black. Anything by Standhall, preferably collective Standhall, that'll be fine. Right, so the Red and the Black

Presenter34:27

The black, definitely, the collected works. Um and what luxury would make life just a little bit more bearable for you on this island?

Harry Rabinowitz34:36

I'd like to have

Harry Rabinowitz34:38

A very sophisticated pitch pipe. I was born with a faculty called absolute pitch. In other words, if you drop a teaspoon, I can tell you what note it is, or if you play a note, I can tell you what the name of the note is. Now I need verification of that as I get older. So my pitch pipe will help me to adjust my sense of pitch. So if there was an imaginary figure on the desert island which said Sing me the first part of Beethoven's Papasionata Sonata, I'd go Ba ba bomb bomb boom bomb boom bomb But that could be all wrong in pitch, and my pitch pipe would put it right for me.

Presenter35:13

I won't deny you that then. And finally, if you had to pick just one of these eight discs to save from the waves should they be washed away, which one? Raleigh Ace of Spice. It's yours. Harry Dorbinovitz, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Yeah.

Harry Rabinowitz35:28

Thank you.

Presenter36:09

You've been listening to a download from the BBC.

Presenter36:11

You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website bbc.co.uk slash Radio4