Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Roy Plomley
A drama and music critic best known for his work on The Guardian and the BBC.
Eight records
I want a tune rather like that, a a good unending tune. I think it is a very magical tune, actually. It's Dupita's song to Semmele in Handel's opera, Where'er You Walk, What a Benediction.
I think it would be a disc which would be useful in killing four birds with one stone. It's the Chopin episode from Carnival by Schumann, two composers who I absolutely love, Schumann imitating Chopin. And this is also part of one of my most treasured memories in life, which is the Russian ballet, indeed all ballet.
Piano Quintet in A major, D. 667, "The Trout"
Clifford Curzon & Members of the Vienna Octet
I think uh something would always lift my heart. The Trout Quintet by Schubert. I can remember listening to it after an air raid and feeling completely cured. It was one of those Mara Hess concerts in the war at the National Gallery. Marvellous lifting stuff.
This is an example of Italian opera of the kind that I like. I know it's not great music, but I think it's marvellously effective music. And I adore the baritone who's singing it, Robert Merrill. Most marvellous voice. For the day I'm bored with this kind of thing, I shall know I'm dead.
Sei nicht bös (from Der Obersteiger)
Uh seinisht Bees, a little uh song from the Obersteiger, sung by one of the great lovely voices and joys of my life, Elizavet Schwartzkov.
Well, I'm very attached to the voice and manner of Charles Traine, and I should like to take a record with me of him singing La Mer.
Well, I know what I would need, and that is a lullaby, because I think getting to sleep all on your own with your own concerns would be tiresome. So can we have the the lullaby, the vegan lead of Richard Strauss, and especially sung by somebody with another marvellous voice, Lisa De La Casa?
Salva me, fons pietatis (from Requiem)
But I would want something which would re-spur or re-inspire my religious sense, which was very strong when I was young. And I would like something which would make me fall on my knees, I think. And I can't think of anything which combines more marvellously a sense of religious fervor and the excitement and joy of opera that I've had than this moment from the Requiem of Verdi salvame fonds beatatis.
The keepsakes
The book
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There is something huge and deep and boring that I have never really explored to the full. Though I know bits of it and love bits of it, I should like to know the whole thing. I would take Goethe's Faust in German both parts.
The luxury
Ivory chess set and chessboard
No, that's awfully difficult i if it counts as a laxity. I think um A perfectly beautifully carved ivory set of chess men and a chessboard would be very good value because you could play chess with yourself or the parrot. I guess that may take time.
In conversation
Presenter asks
What would you be happiest to have left behind?
I can't think I'm enjoying life so much. I can't think of anything I'd be happy to leave behind. Splendid. Couldn't leave Fleet Street behind. I mean, it would be agonies to be on one's own there and to lose London life. I don't want to leave London. I don't want to leave anything behind. Of course, one would be glad to leave the income tax people behind.
Presenter asks
What would you fear the most [on the island]?
Loneliness … I think I could cope with some of the sort of Robinson Crusoe side of it, like building a shelter and that sort of thing, but I'd be down on my knees all the time praying for Man Friday to arrive.
Presenter asks
What did you read [at Balliol College, Oxford]?
I started reading history in emulation of my sister and Veronica Wedgwood, who were up a year ahead of me. But I quickly saw that it would involve one in doing a great deal of reading. I didn't want to do a great deal of reading at that age. And as I talked quite an amount of French and German, I thought, well, languages were the thing. Bailey all disowned me. I mean, they didn't kick me out, but I had to go to another tutor at another college.
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Speaker 1
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.
Presenter
This week, our castaway is the drama and music critic Philip Hope Wallace.
Presenter
What would you be happiest to have left behind?
Presenter
I can't think I'm enjoying life so much. I can't think of anything I'd be happy to leave behind. Splendid. Couldn't leave Fleet Street behind. I mean, it would be agonies to be on one's own there and to lose London life. I don't want to leave London. I don't want to leave anything behind. Of course, one would be glad to leave the income tax people behind. Of course. Have you ever imagined yourself as a solitary castaway? Absolutely. Brought up on Robinson Crusoe. I've always had fantasies of that kind. What would you fear the most?
Philip Hope-Wallace
Of course.
Presenter
Loneliness
Presenter
I think I could cope with some of the sort of Robinson Crusoe side of it, like building a shelter and that sort of thing, but I'd be down on my knees all the time praying for Man Friday to arrive. You're a gregarious man. Oh, a dog.
Presenter
Or parrot, anything. Somebody to talk to, I would have to have. What was your approach to choosing your aid record?
Presenter
Well, the realization is I've got a terrible lot stored up in my mind. I had wonderful parents who insisted on my learning a lot of things by heart, poetry, and I've got a good musical memory, I should say. I mean, I'm nothing of a musician, really, but I have a good memory for music. I can come out of music whistling something. I'm always amazed that so many people go to an opera or concert, and if you challenged them afterwards and say, you know, whistle the last movement or sing us aria from the last act, they couldn't do it at all. But my mind's full of music all the time. It's like a computer. I've got my own gramophone on board. So you can sit down and more or less listen and hum along with the second act of Bohem, for example. Absolutely. Put into the Boheme, particularly, I think. What's the first record you've challenged?
Presenter
Well, I want a tune rather like that, a a good unending tune. I think it is a very magical tune, actually. It's Dupita's song to Semmele in Handel's opera, Where'er You Walk, What a Benediction. And who shall sing it? Uh Richard Lewis.
Philip Hope-Wallace
Who gives shout and the grave?
Philip Hope-Wallace
These were you saved, shall crowd into shape.
Philip Hope-Wallace
Peace where your sit shall crowd in for.
Philip Hope-Wallace
Who gives a warlog?
Presenter
Jupiter's serenade to Semele, where'er you walk. What's your second disc?
Presenter
I think it would be a disc which would be useful in killing four birds with one stone. It's the Chopin episode from Carnival by Schumann, two composers who I absolutely love, Schumann imitating Chopin. And this is also part of one of my most treasured memories in life, which is the Russian ballet, indeed all ballet. And it's also played.
Presenter
In the record that I would select by Claudio Arau, the Chilean pianist.
Presenter
Schumann's Carnival Claudio Arra.
Presenter
What part of the country do you come from?
Presenter
Well, I was born in Wimbledon. My father's family came from Northumberland, and there was a rather cosmopolitan background to my mother's family. She had friends in Brussels and that sort of thing, and her mother had lived abroad much because my maternal grandfather had been in India in the Madras Army. And in those days, family, young families and wives didn't go out to India, so she was on her own. It was much cheaper to live in places like Brussels or Bordiguera and so on. Yes. So you got abroad quite a lot as a youngster? Yes, quite a lot as a youngster. I can remember going, for example, to my first opera from a house in Brussels where mother's great friend lived, a Belgian lady, house smelling of wax polish and gingerbread being cooked in the kitchen. And off we went to Saint-Gudul to hear the opera singers. We were allowed to sing in mass in those days, and then to Carmen in the afternoon, front seats. Your first carmen is a big bang, you know. Oh, indeed.
Presenter
You went up to Balliol College, Oxford. What did you read?
Presenter
I started reading history in emulation of my sister and Veronica Wedgwood, who were up a year ahead of me. But I quickly saw that it would involve one in doing a great deal of reading. I didn't want to do a great deal of reading at that age. And as I talked quite an amount of French and German, I thought, well, languages were the thing. Bailey all disowned me. I mean, they didn't kick me out, but I had to go to another tutor at another college. What do you intend to use these languages for? I have no idea, and I've never used them really, except for my own enjoyment. I did nothing with them in the war. I could have, but I sat in the air ministry all through the war with Ben Travers. That was the best thing that ever happened to anybody in a war. What did you do when you came down?
Presenter
I sank like a stone, really. The first job I had was at Radio Normandy at Faicorn on the cliffs between Dieppe and Le Havre. It wasn't a great success. I wasn't a great success. It was an interesting experience, in a way. Yes, I'm sure it was. And then I came back to London and I tried to live by giving French lessons and one thing and another. And then I stumbled into the Gaslight and Coke Company. Doing what? Selling gas files from door to door. Successfully? No, but no more unsuccessfully than anybody else. Thrown out of places. It was a very good experience, I now see. At the end of which, a strange thing, I blundered my foot into Fleet Street. I was being sacked by the Gaslight and Coke Company. And the chap who was sacking me said, why were you here anyhow? What do you want to do? And I said, I know a bit about music and a bit about French and German. And he rang up somebody on a paper in Fleet Street. And by one of those accidents, they terribly wanted somebody who would review a German play. With my heartbeating, I got it. Yes. And since then, with the exception of that spell in the air ministry, you have been a critic for one publication or another.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Presenter
Yes, that is that is so, yes. Let's break off for record number three.
Presenter
I think uh something would always lift my heart.
Presenter
The Trout Quintet by Schubert. I can remember listening to it after an air raid and feeling completely cured. It was one of those Mara Hess concerts in the war at the National Gallery. Marvellous lifting stuff. She is not playing it on this record, is she? No, it's Curzon.
Presenter
Part of the fourth movement of Schubert's piano quintet in A major, the Trout, Clifford Curzon, and members of the Vienna Octet.
Presenter
Now most of your criticism has been on The Guardian.
Presenter
Is daily criticism not very wearing? As far as drama is concerned, surely very little time for consideration.
Presenter
Oh, that's true. You have to hop into a telephone box sometimes and do it right off the cuff. But it's not wearying unless it's bad. The only thing is that you get perhaps you get bored with something slightly earlier than other members of the audience. But of course, if it's good, you just love it. I go again and again. People sometimes say, How can you go to your three hundreds car men or whatever it is? And I don't weary of these things at all. It's a very good test, you know, of both of yourself and a masterpiece if you can go week in, week out to some sort of minor masterpiece, let's say something like Rigoletto or. Yes. But is there not a temptation, if your article has got to be in by deadline, to shape that article in your mind quite early in the evening?
Presenter
No, while the performance is going on, you somehow learn to sort of write it in your head while it's going on. I don't like pre-cooked criticism. I suspect pre-cooked criticism. Do you go to the office to write it, or do you telephone it? I go to the office if I can, if there's time. Otherwise, one has to telephone it, and telephoning it, of course, involves you in the most extraordinary accidents. Yes, I can imagine. Any particular one that comes to mind. Oh, but dozens of them. Things like Merchant of Venice, Shylock comes out a Skylark all the way through. It makes a slight difference. Looking back, is there any one constructive contribution that stands out in your mind? Any battle you fought for the cause of a play or an idea?
Philip Hope-Wallace
It makes a slight
Presenter
or an artist.
Presenter
Yeah, it's a difficult one. I wouldn't be, I think it would sound very immodest to say that I'd won any battles, but I think perhaps my feelings about certain ways of producing Shakespeare or my feelings for certain kinds of music, say Italian opera of a certain period, have prevailed. I mean, it would have seemed extraordinary to me if we should ever have had a revival of Donizetti's Lucia or Bellini's Norma, two works that I have greatly enjoyed. When I was 20, I couldn't have believed that possible. When I first went up to Oxford, I was challenged. We were all asked as freshmen, what is your favourite composer? Who are your two favourite composers? And greatly daring, I said, Handel and Verdi, amid shrieks of laughter, because Handel was something that your aunt sang at the Albert Hall, and Verdi was something you heard on the hurdy-gurdy. That all changed. Not through me, through Toscanini, probably. But you have fought for the romantics. Well, yes, yes, true. Let's have record number four. What's that?
Presenter
It's from the prologue to Pagliacci. This is an example of Italian opera of the kind that I like. I know it's not great music, but I think it's marvellously effective music. And I adore the baritone who's singing it, Robert Merrill. Most marvellous voice. For the day I'm bored with this kind of thing, I shall know I'm dead.
Philip Hope-Wallace
Keep and war but turn.
Presenter
Robert Merrill singing part of the prologue to Ipagliacci.
Presenter
What have been your terms of reference with the Guardian, Philip? It must have been very difficult to cover music as well as drama. Well, of course, when I joined The Guardian, they had only a little London office. The printing, the big set-up was in Manchester. We've moved to London since and printed in London. But in those days, it was a little tiny office, and James Bone, and then Evelyn Montagu, C.E. Montague's son as the London editor. And in a way, I mean, I joined them after Lionel Hale as their, and after Alan Dent as their drama critic. But Evelyn Montague at once said, is there anything else you could do? I said, well, of course, I adore opera, you know. And he said, oh, well, it's marvellous. We never have an operatic notice. You must go along, and so on. I've given great latitude. They're marvellous employers, of course. You've done a great deal of work for the BBC through the years. The critics. What about the critics? What about the critics? That was a very difficult job. One broke one's nose in it. That was very uphill work. I found the critics very hard work indeed. Music magazine, of course. That was fun. Twenty-nine years of it. I wasn't on it all that time. Great pleasure and great privilege to be on and highly enjoyable. Let's have record number five. That should be a consoling piece.
Presenter
Uh seinisht Bees, a little uh song from the Obersteiger, sung by one of the great lovely voices and joys of my life, Elizavet Schwartzkov.
Philip Hope-Wallace
Two is our deficiency. Don't you look at me?
Philip Hope-Wallace
Stop.
Philip Hope-Wallace
The poo!
Presenter
Elizabeth Schwartkopf and a song from the operetta Der Obersteiger. Let's go straight on to record number six.
Presenter
Well, I'm very attached to the voice and manner of Charles Traine, and I should like to take a record with me of him singing La Mer.
Speaker 3
Lame?
Speaker 3
Convadoci.
Speaker 3
Le Long, the Golf Clay Ardi Vaufflet, d'Avajon, La Mais.
Speaker 3
Des voice les champions, grab lux.
Speaker 3
La May
Speaker 3
Oh, it's gender detail.
Presenter
The voice of Charles René.
Presenter
Are you an outdoor man? You talked rather blithely early on of building a shelter. You could do that to your reasonable satisfaction.
Presenter
Well, I suppose so, yes. I think uh that holds no terror for me compared to the loneliness, uh the practical side of it, and organizing the food and so on. I think what did you do, bury turtles' eggs in the sand or something like that? You do, I don't.
Presenter
What about food? I mean, can you cultivate, can you fish?
Presenter
Would you try to escape?
Presenter
Sir, I'd try to escape as soon as I possibly could. Any chance of escape, uh, straight back to Fleet Street, if you please. How good would you be at escaping? Do you know anything about small boats, about navigation? I can swim. No, I don't know anything about navigation at all. I shouldn't try swimming. I really shouldn't. Let's have record number seven.
Presenter
Well, I know what I would need, and that is a lullaby, because I think getting to sleep all on your own with your own concerns would be tiresome. So can we have the the lullaby, the vegan lead of Richard Strauss, and especially sung by somebody with another marvellous voice, Lisa De La Casa?
Philip Hope-Wallace
Boy.
Philip Hope-Wallace
Oh, here's a server.
Presenter
These are Della Casa singing The Vegan Lead by Richard Struggs. Now we come to your last record. What's that?
Presenter
But I would want something which would re-spur or re-inspire my religious sense, which was very strong when I was young.
Presenter
And I would like something which would make me fall on my knees, I think.
Presenter
And I can't think of anything which combines more marvellously a sense of religious fervor and the excitement and joy of opera that I've had than this moment from the Requiem of Verdi salvame fonds beatatis.
Presenter
An excerpt from Verde's Requiem Mass conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini.
Presenter
If you would take just one disk, which would it be?
Presenter
I think it would be that requiem, yes.
Presenter
And a luxury to take to the island with you?
Presenter
No, that's awfully difficult i if it counts as a laxity. I think um
Presenter
A perfectly beautifully
Presenter
carved ivory set of chess men and a chessboard would be very good value because you could play chess with yourself or the parrot. I guess that may take time. And one book apart from that little list of the Bible, the Shakespeare and big encyclopedias.
Presenter
There is something huge and deep and boring that I have never really explored to the full. Though I know bits of it and love bits of it, I should like to know the whole thing. I would take Goethe's Faust in German both parts. Right. And thank you, Philip Hope Wallace, for letting us hear your Desert Island disc. Well, thank you. Goodbye, everyone.
Presenter asks
What did you do when you came down [from Oxford]?
I sank like a stone, really. The first job I had was at Radio Normandy at Faicorn on the cliffs between Dieppe and Le Havre. It wasn't a great success. I wasn't a great success. It was an interesting experience, in a way. Yes, I'm sure it was. And then I came back to London and I tried to live by giving French lessons and one thing and another. And then I stumbled into the Gaslight and Coke Company.
Presenter asks
Is daily criticism not very wearing? As far as drama is concerned, surely very little time for consideration.
Oh, that's true. You have to hop into a telephone box sometimes and do it right off the cuff. But it's not wearying unless it's bad. The only thing is that you get perhaps you get bored with something slightly earlier than other members of the audience. But of course, if it's good, you just love it. I go again and again.
Presenter asks
Looking back, is there any one constructive contribution that stands out in your mind? Any battle you fought for the cause of a play or an idea or an artist?
I wouldn't be, I think it would sound very immodest to say that I'd won any battles, but I think perhaps my feelings about certain ways of producing Shakespeare or my feelings for certain kinds of music, say Italian opera of a certain period, have prevailed. I mean, it would have seemed extraordinary to me if we should ever have had a revival of Donizetti's Lucia or Bellini's Norma, two works that I have greatly enjoyed. When I was 20, I couldn't have believed that possible.
“my mind's full of music all the time. It's like a computer. I've got my own gramophone on board.”
“while the performance is going on, you somehow learn to sort of write it in your head while it's going on. I don't like pre-cooked criticism. I suspect pre-cooked criticism.”
“When I first went up to Oxford, I was challenged. We were all asked as freshmen, what is your favourite composer? Who are your two favourite composers? And greatly daring, I said, Handel and Verdi, amid shrieks of laughter, because Handel was something that your aunt sang at the Albert Hall, and Verdi was something you heard on the hurdy-gurdy. That all changed.”