Raymond Leppard

Speaker 10:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. For rights reasons, the music is shorter than on the original broadcast. The presenter is Roy Plomley. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:27

This week, our castaway is the musician Raymond Leopard.

Presenter0:31

How did you set about choosing your eight records? What sort of terms of reference did you give yourself?

Presenter0:37

I suppose they were they were mixed. Uh some for the sheer quality of performance and the sheer quality of the music.

Presenter0:44

And I suppose others because they reminded me of people I'm fond of and people I've worked with and those two are the main factors. Yes. Would you rather have had scores than discs? Oh, any time. Yeah. Well, you've got discs. I've got it. What's the first one? The Etresrexit from the B minor Mass of Bach. Conducted by? Karl Richter. And why do you choose it?

Presenter1:05

Well, it's a stunning piece of music. It never wears out. It hasn't worn out yet. And

Presenter1:10

It's a marvellously hopeful moment in a very great work.

Raymond Leppard1:56

Yeah.

Raymond Leppard2:11

Uh

Presenter2:12

Efre is a Rexit from the Bach B Minor Mass conducted by Karl Richter. Could you adapt yourself to extended loneliness?

Presenter2:21

Yes, I don't think I'd particularly mind that.

Presenter2:24

I'm fighting I might enjoy it. What would you be happiest you got away from?

Presenter2:29

I think the

Presenter2:30

The tiresome size of civilization, the over-ringing telephone, the smell of cars, the noise, particularly the noise.

Presenter2:39

Record number two.

Presenter2:41

Uh the

Presenter2:42

Last moment, I assume I could actually have the whole opera, I don't know, but uh anyway, I'd like to

Speaker 12:45

Anyway, my old disk hole.

Presenter2:47

Well anyway then the end of uh Virdus False Staff.

Presenter2:51

And uh I think that because it's it's uh just a wonderful, uh delightfully cynical comment upon mankind, uh especially when there isn't any mankind about to be cynical.

Presenter3:01

Yes, about it. Which version?

Presenter3:04

The Toscanini record.

Raymond Leppard3:14

Whoa, pick up the button, but a bootleg. Tutanel Mamma Yeah.

Raymond Leppard3:54

Come on in for me.

Raymond Leppard3:59

But the nip of the corner

Presenter4:04

The opening of the fugue from the last act of Vergi's Falstaff, conducted by Arturo Toscanini.

Presenter4:10

Mr. Leppard, what part of the country do you come from?

Presenter4:12

Uh well, I was born in London, but I spent a lot of my life in the West Country, in Bath. Do you come from a musical family? No, no, they're not at all musical. In fact, uh they've always encouraged me, but uh they're not not musical. It was your idea to start learning music?

Speaker 14:26

Anyway

Presenter4:26

Mhm. Yes, seemingly at a very early age I've I decided I wanted to learn the piano and yes.

Presenter4:32

John. You went up to Cambridge as a choral scholar. What were your principal musical interests there?

Presenter4:38

Well, I read music and so uh that naturally was a fairly full-time study.

Presenter4:42

And I was a good deal involved with the Magical Society with Boise Ward and

Presenter4:48

I was taught by a marvellous man called Hubert Middleton, who taught me a very, very great deal.

Presenter4:53

I got involved as one does at university in all the music that was available.

Presenter4:58

Which is a great deal, of course. And when you came down?

Presenter5:01

When I came down, I

Presenter5:03

Uh my first job was as musical director for

Presenter5:07

A show of Alice with the Looking Glass with Margaret Rutherford and Binny Hale and Michael Dennison and an artist experience.

Speaker 15:14

Turn off

Presenter5:16

And great fun too. Yes. And the next major thing was that I went to Glimborn as a repetitor, which is a very good way to learn the repertoire. Oh, absolutely. It's the only way one can learn.

Raymond Leppard5:24

The only one

Presenter5:26

And you formed your own chamber orchestra? Mm-hmm. A success immediately? Yes, it went quite well. It's all those things are really as successful as the amount of money you can find to put the concerts on.

Speaker 15:30

Gear?

Presenter5:36

But I was helped very greatly by various uh people and organizations. Yes. You were doing a lot of harpsichord work.

Presenter5:43

Yes, I've always enjoyed playing the harpsichord, but especially uh continuo work and I've never really had the patience to practise the solo repertoire uh to any great extent. And you were with the Philharmonia Orchestra for quite a while? Yes, I used to play their keyboard uh parts, uh with the piano and harpsichord and things like that and that was a marvellous experience because one saw all the great conductors in Europe at that time um and one could watch them and see how they worked and uh what did work and what didn't work and why and so yeah.

Presenter6:13

and Stratford above.

Presenter6:14

Yes, I wrote music for some productions that Peter Hall did there and then when he became director of the theatre he asked me if I would become their musical advisor, which I did and uh for a number of years and I enjoyed that very much. You cut out the familiar pit orchestra there. Yes, that was really the main thing. Uh um we discussed it at great length and decided that

Presenter6:36

Uh the old days of incidental music to uh Shakespeare were done, and I still believe they are.

Presenter6:42

Uh so the music had to be integrated with the performance and so there was of course no need therefore for a pit anymore.

Presenter6:48

And you provided the wind octa, did it? Well, it varied. It rather depended on what plays we were doing. Of course, we sometimes had a lute and a harp and harpsichord if there were that sort of plays on. But generally speaking, it became a wind band. And you also provided a cheerful version of the national anthem, which still produces delighted giggles from audiences. Yes, and irritated letters, too, I understand. But it is, in fact, an authentic early version. Oh, yes, it's the oldest known version. It is perfectly authentic. It was actually sung to the king at the 45 Rebellion, to cheer him up at Drury Lane.

Raymond Leppard7:24

Yeah.

Presenter7:27

Now as a conductor, you were presenting mainly 17th and 18th century music, including items you would duck up in manuscript while you were still a schoolboy.

Presenter7:36

Yes, I always had immense curiosity for music, to find out what is uh good in unknown music and what is not so good of course.

Presenter7:42

I mean the percentage of of loss and gain is or gain to loss is very low.

Presenter7:48

Um but yet it'd always been a gate curiosity man and Cambridge helped that.

Presenter7:52

Yeah. You also had a stake in in modern music. You always salted your concert programmes, and still do, with items from contemporary composers. Yes, I'm I'm um what might be now c I suppose called a conservative modern. Nicely put, getting older. Now before we talk about your work in the Opera House, let's have your third record. What'll that be for?

Presenter8:14

Well, I'd like to hear of the Italian serenade played by the old Budapest Quartet.

Presenter8:19

Simply, in this case, it's a delightful piece of music and a very well-written one, but it is one of the most stunning pieces of ensemble playing that I've ever heard, I think, on record or in the flesh.

Presenter9:31

Hugo Walt's Italian serenade played by the Budapest String Quartet.

Presenter9:35

Now, in nineteen fifty eight, wasn't it, you prepared a version of

Presenter9:40

A Monteverdi opera for the Olborough Festival.

Presenter9:42

That's right, uh you balladelli and grati the

Presenter9:45

dance of the ungrateful women.

Presenter9:48

Yes, uh that was the first venture into Monteverde, as far as I was concerned, on any great scale, as it were. And the same year you introduced some excerpts from other Monteverde operas at the Festival Hall. That's right. At that time you went back to Cambridge and and and took an academic post. Why was that?

Presenter10:03

Um

Presenter10:04

Well, I was invited to do so, and uh so therefore it was a a proposition to say yes or no to.

Presenter10:10

I also I love teaching and enjoyed my time both as a student and as a Don very very much indeed.

Presenter10:19

Now you had an invitation from Blindbourne to prepare a new theatre version of the coronation of Papia.

Presenter10:25

Uh this you had in in fact sort of given a trailer for at your Festival Hall concert. Yes, I'd done quite extensive uh uh parts of it and uh I was asked to prepare the the whole opera.

Presenter10:38

And so really this got the Montiverdi movement going because you also did Lafayette for Saddler's Wales.

Presenter10:44

Yes, I did. I well, I'm I don't think it got it going,'cause it it was bound to happen anyway and and uh it just happened at that time, you know. Yes. And then he moved over and dealt with Caballi. Uh was he an exact contemporary of Monteverde? No, he was younger. He was a pupil of Monteverde.

Presenter10:59

And I came across him really on when I had a sabbatical term from Cambridge and went to live in Venice.

Presenter11:07

hoping to find some Monte Verde manuscripts. Uh I believe that there are still the the lost operas, of which are a certain number, uh must exist somewhere in Italy. I mean Italy is an absolutely hopeless place as far as libraries are concerned.

Presenter11:19

Um but having got there and uh discovered these cavali pieces, I thought those sort of birds in the hand were worth several uh doubtful Monte Verdes in the bush. Yes. You've done two now.

Presenter11:31

Two cavaliers, yes, and there are lots, lots more.

Presenter11:34

When was he last performed?

Presenter11:36

Oh, he hasn't been performed since since the seventeenth century. Nowhere at all. No.

Presenter11:42

And now you've got a new opera coming up at Gleinbord in May. You're back with Monteveterdi. Absolutely. This is the one before Poppaire. It's written a year before Poppaire and he still was an old man in his seventies. It's the uh Return of Ulysses.

Presenter11:56

I believe work has been held up because of a rather nasty domestic disaster.

Presenter12:01

Yes, I had rather uh a sizable fire at my home and the

Presenter12:07

Uh full score that I'd prepared of um of the Monteverdi opera, of Reton and Dulisse was burnt. And so I've had to rework that. Yes. Can you do it from memory?

Presenter12:18

I started by trying to do it from memory and I found that I got hung up because every time I uh got to a bit that I couldn't quite remember it took hours of of puzzling out so I decided to abandon that as a as a practice and rework it. And of course you'll be conducting yourself with line. Oh yes.

Speaker 112:32

Oh yeah.

Presenter12:33

Let's have record number four.

Presenter12:35

Um well

Presenter12:37

Uh record number four is is going to be uh by somebody who's going to sing, in fact, in the Return of Ulysses, and it's Janet Baker, who is a person I love working with, and and she's a very she and her husband are very great friends of mine, and I like them as much personally as I do artistically.

Presenter12:53

And I'd like to have her singing with John Barbaroli, who was also a very good friend and extremely kind to me.

Presenter13:01

Singing that song from the Sea Pictures Where Corals Lie.

Raymond Leppard13:09

Francis fly to rolling words of raiment strength.

Raymond Leppard13:30

Thy lips are like a sunset glow.

Raymond Leppard13:37

I smile it like a morning score

Raymond Leppard13:49

Tony

Raymond Leppard13:51

Let's be glad to see a land where corals love.

Presenter14:02

Janet Baker singing Where Corals Lie from Elgard See Pictures.

Presenter14:08

In recreating these forgotten 17th century operas, what do you have to work on, what state are the original scores in?

Presenter14:14

They're almost all in the same state. That's to say they consist mostly of a vocal line and a bass line.

Presenter14:20

And that's really how they always were written. There never was a full orchestral score.

Presenter14:25

No, I don't think there was actually at any point ever a full score. The composer I think wrote his set the libretto in this way with a voice and a bass line. It's a supremely practical way of making an opera because of course you can cut it in the theatre itself and tailor make the work for that theatre, for that performance and make it work in this way. I mean you certainly can't do that to Wagner for example. No, indeed. So an assistant used to take his directions for the orchestral part. Indeed, I think not only one assistant, probably several. It's very I find very touching and moving to find in the manuscript for example of the coronation of Poppeare.

Speaker 114:54

Indeed.

Presenter15:04

Because a great deal of it is in Cavalli's hand. Really? So it looks as if Cavalli helped his boss. The size of the orchestra and the instrumentation is marked. No, it's not marked, but that we know about because of theatre accounts which have survived. Most of the theatres themselves burnt down so that we have no, simply no parts or anything left. We only have copies, generally speaking, of these manuscripts. Yes. So you're really guessing at what the composer's intentions were in orchestration? Oh, absolutely. Yes. I mean there are there are lots of principles to go on. It isn't as wild guesswork as that might uh sound.

Presenter15:41

Uh there's there's a lot of evidence uh and of course one has the experience of the music.

Presenter15:47

Itself, yeah, and everything else they compose. And some critics have said that.

Presenter15:52

You're inclined to soup the operas up to please modern audiences. Do you romanticize them?

Presenter15:58

No, I don't. I they uh I certainly don't do anything of that nature. Um I feel that they are em uh very highly emotional works.

Presenter16:07

And uh they are high romantic, uh the operas.

Presenter16:12

And that's how they come out. Yes. You do occasionally interpolate numbers from other operas. Yes. Th this this was a practice right from the very beginning of opera and and every composer since has done it. It's nothing very new.

Raymond Leppard16:23

Nothing but it

Presenter16:24

Is there a rich store of material still to be explored? Oh, enough for 50 people, 50 lifetimes?

Presenter16:31

So really a lot of it is is dusty work, delving into uncatalogued uncatalogats that you might find anything.

Speaker 116:35

Yeah.

Presenter16:39

Certainly. A lost play of Shakespeare or whatever. I wouldn't doubt it for a moment. Certainly a loper of Monteverde. Certainly. There must be a gorgeous sense of the past in even touching this stuff. Yes, it is absolutely thrilling. Very, very exciting indeed, especially when you look at and this takes of course a long time. You look at the manuscripts look often very much alike, even the Cavalli operas, they look very similar. And it's only when you actually sit down with them and see what life is in them, which takes a long time and you've got to be calm and listen to it carefully. And then when you feel that life coming off the page, it's absolutely wonderful. Listen to them in your head. Yes.

Speaker 117:10

Uh

Presenter17:16

Now, what are you working on now? You've got your new opera coming up in May at Kleinborn. Conducting, of course, takes up a great part of your life.

Presenter17:24

It does. It it takes a lot of time.

Presenter17:27

And I'm

Presenter17:28

As you know, doing cuisine at the Cotton Garden at the moment and then in the autumn I'm going to do Figaro there, which I look forward to very much. Yeah, let's have record number five.

Presenter17:37

Well, uh number five, because I think sometimes one might

Presenter17:41

Um want to think about love and the people one has loved, um and what better if one's going to be stuck on a desert island and die there than the love deaths from Tristan Nizola, sound by Fluxstadt Piece.

Presenter18:49

Kirsten Flagstart in the latter part of The Lieberstoad from Tristan and Isolde. Let's have record number six.

Presenter18:58

Well, this is a piece of

Presenter19:00

A story by a southern American writer called Eudora Welty, which I happen to think is a masterpiece of comic writing.

Presenter19:08

She's reading it herself.

Presenter19:10

The accent takes a little bit of getting used to, but I should like to have time to play it again and again and learn it by heart.

Speaker 219:17

I was getting along fine with Mama, Papa Daddy, and Uncle Rondo until my sister, Stella Rondo, just separated from her husband and came back home again, Mr. Whitaker. Of course I went with Mr. Whitaker first when he first appeared here in China Grove taking pose-yourself photos, and Stella Rondo broke us up, told him I was one-sided, bigger on one side than the other, which is a deliberate calculated falsehood. I'm the same.

Speaker 219:38

Stella Rondo is exactly twelve months of the day younger than I am, and for that reason she's spoiled.

Presenter19:43

Eudora Welty and the opening of her short story, Why I Live at the PO.

Presenter19:48

One question we have to consider, Mr. Levard. How good would you be as a castaway? Could you look after yourself?

Presenter19:54

Not very well, no. I'm rather impractical about things. What sort of shelter would you live in or under?

Presenter20:00

I think I might be all right by then. I'd think I'd rather hope there were palm trees and I could lop off a few leaves. That'd be rather agreeable. I like shade. Yes, and food.

Presenter20:10

Yes, I suppose I wouldn't do badly with that either. Rather keen about food. Is good living important to you? Very.

Presenter20:16

So that's a portal guy, isn't it? Have you had any experiences on your travels of of of tropical climes?

Presenter20:24

Well, um

Presenter20:25

Is Lebanon with that kind? Yeah, that's really hot and and all that. Yes.

Speaker 120:27

Yeah.

Presenter20:30

Well if it's too hot, the heat would vary me almost more than here, I think. Would you try to escape?

Presenter20:34

No, because I'd make a muck of it. I like a man who knows his limitations. It's got record numbers up.

Presenter20:40

How

Presenter20:42

Well, this is to exercise the mind. Um I'm told that

Presenter20:46

This work of Pierre Boulet, The Master of Salmaitre, is a great masterpiece of our time. I find the science very intriguing.

Presenter20:53

I've simply no idea how it works or or how it's composed. I mean, I have some idea how it's composed, but I've yet to find the

Presenter21:01

There

Presenter21:02

the raison detro musically of it and I think this would be a very good chance for me to find out.

Presenter21:45

A section from Le Marteu Sans Maver conducted by the composer Pierre Boulez.

Presenter21:51

Now we come to your last record. What's that?

Presenter21:54

But that's the piece

Presenter21:55

which is to me perennially joyful and if I were wilting uh I would be lifted up by it and that's a duet Chiomedoro by Monteverde.

Presenter22:05

And sung by um Gerald English and Hugh Queno, two very great friends and and it would remind me of very happy times apart from raising the spirits.

Raymond Leppard22:20

Um

Raymond Leppard22:22

The hero, the hero, the hero.

Speaker 122:28

Uh

Raymond Leppard22:32

There fell in your own.

Raymond Leppard22:37

Very low, happy room, and all home, Lord Los Vero.

Raymond Leppard22:47

Oh no dear.

Raymond Leppard22:55

Let me all go now. Let me throw your trendy love. I am more common for you.

Presenter23:12

Monte Verde duet, Huyomodoro, sung by Gerald English and Hugh Cueno.

Presenter23:19

Out of the eight records you've chosen, which one would you choose if if seven got lost or broken?

Presenter23:25

Well, it would have to be a serious choice, although I suppose if they got broken, choice wouldn't come into it. But however, B minor mass, clearly.

Presenter23:31

And one luxury to take with you?

Presenter23:35

Yes, I'd like a case of gin, please.

Speaker 123:35

Yes?

Presenter23:38

Uh with just enough room for half a bottle of martini, dry martini. Yes. I'm assuming the lemons are going to be on here. Of course, yes. And the proportions are right. I think you'd better have two cases. Oh, thank you very much. Or three. Yes. And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare.

Raymond Leppard23:45

Yeah.

Presenter23:54

I I'd like please the Iliad and Odyssey.

Presenter23:58

Um

Presenter23:59

So that I can I've of course been re reading the Odyssey uh avidly because of of the uh Monteverdi opera, uh, Return of Ulysses, so I'd like to to have it so that I could read it even more carefully. Yes, in the original?

Presenter24:11

Could I have a crib with the original? Certainly. And thank you, Raymond Levard, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. It's been a very great pleasure.

Presenter24:20

Thank you. Goodbye, everyone.