Sir Clifford Curzon

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disc's Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy eight, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:30

This week, our castaway is the concert pianist, Sir Clifford Curzon. Sir Clifford, what's been the guiding principle in in choosing your eight records? Nostalgia, great music?

Sir Clifford Curzon0:41

Yeah.

Sir Clifford Curzon0:41

Well, first of all, I've I've tried to imagine myself on this island. People tell me I've taken it much too seriously.

Presenter0:41

Well, first of all, I've

Sir Clifford Curzon0:48

But of course the island has never been described, has it? I've listened to a number of these programmes and I've thought about the island. I've even discussed it with my doctor. But then I discuss everything more or less with him. More or less. And he said, Well, I think the trouble is you think of this island as a cartoon island. And I thought it was a wonderful description. And it's exactly what I do. I think of it, if I think of it at all, as a very small patch of sand with probably a single palm tree and a

Speaker 21:09

And I see

Sir Clifford Curzon1:19

a skull or something or a discarded bikini and surrounded by an an endless tropical ocean. And I don't expect

Sir Clifford Curzon1:30

To be rescued from it?

Sir Clifford Curzon1:32

It's got more palm trees. I shall be planning my escape, but we'll deal with that at the end. And so I try to imagine how it would be.

Presenter1:33

Nevertheless

Sir Clifford Curzon1:41

I would certainly be, I think, um um half

Sir Clifford Curzon1:45

unconscious really after a few hours.

Sir Clifford Curzon1:48

And so I've tried to choose the records.

Sir Clifford Curzon1:51

that I would rather like to hear towards the end of my life. And therefore I should be in this semi-comatose state. And as when I fall asleep at night my mind often goes back to my childhood. It probably will go back to my childhood. And I think I would like to be reminded something to do with a sort of

Sir Clifford Curzon2:09

adding a coder to something. It would be complete, I think, if I was taken back to the very first music that awakened my own musical responses. And that was as a child in my father's house. My uncle was Albert W. Catelby, a very famous composer of the time. Yes. And of course I was supposed to be in bed. Little Clifford was supposed to be in bed, but he never was. He was out sitting on the landing listening to my uncle playing through the well of the stairway of my father's old house.

Presenter2:23

Those are on the kind of

Sir Clifford Curzon2:37

And so I the first music I really heard were these immortal melodies of Catalby, and I think it would be very nice to.

Sir Clifford Curzon2:44

Perhaps to have in a monastery garden, let's say I think that was his most famous piece, as part of my group.

Presenter3:53

Albert W. Catelby himself conducting his own concert orchestra in in a monastery garden.

Sir Clifford Curzon4:00

Even the cover of that music I remember very well, and I think it uh awakened uh other later loves of mine, painting and gardening. I remember the cover with very herbaceous uh cloister garden with monks wandering around chanting and so on, and that was a very important uh thing uh for me too. Yes, uh painting has been very central. Yes, I've collected paintings all my life. And uh

Presenter4:20

Integrated.

Sir Clifford Curzon4:24

I'm an ardent gardener. My gardener might think otherwise. I'm very, very good at telling other people how gardening should be done. That is, after all, a form of gardening. But of course I have to take care of my hands.

Speaker 14:32

Yeah. Uh

Presenter4:32

Yeah.

Sir Clifford Curzon4:39

Now your next record.

Sir Clifford Curzon4:41

Uh for number two, I think I should like to go all the way from Catelby to what I consider to be one of the most perfect works of art.

Sir Clifford Curzon4:49

The Mozart Piano Concerto. That would remind me of wonderful times playing with great orchestras.

Sir Clifford Curzon4:55

And I would in thinking of Mozart's life, it would also remind me of how little.

Sir Clifford Curzon5:01

power suffering had over the greatest geniuses. And so my own suffering would seem less great. For instance, I remember Benjamin Britton saying to me, it must have been during the war after he'd come back from from America, that he had only to think of Mozart.

Sir Clifford Curzon5:20

in order to be happy in any circumstances. And this this remark of his has always remained with me. I thought it was a rather remarkable thing to have said. Indeed. And so I I'm sure I would want uh Mozart, and I would uh

Sir Clifford Curzon5:36

I think the concerto in C, K467, is one of the most perfect works of art, one of the most beautiful pieces ever written. And so I think I would like that. And I would especially like the slow movement, which is one of the most enchanting, I mean I use that word deliberately, one of the most enchanting pieces of music ever written, I think.

Speaker 25:59

Yeah.

Presenter7:05

Arthur Schnabel in the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 21, K467, the slow movement.

Presenter7:12

You're in Londoner, aren't you, Sir Clifford? Yes, I was born in London.

Presenter7:16

At what age did you take to the piano, and and was it your idea, or or were you put to it?

Sir Clifford Curzon7:21

Well, I think I was put to it. My father was a business man, and so I was put to it because my uncle had made so much money.

Sir Clifford Curzon7:28

And he thought, I think, that little Clifford would also make a lot of money. Well, it took a bit longer for me to make a lot of money.

Presenter7:28

And he thought of

Presenter7:34

As a child you had all these hours of practice. How did you feel about that when the other boys were out playing?

Sir Clifford Curzon7:34

Try

Sir Clifford Curzon7:37

Yeah.

Sir Clifford Curzon7:39

Well, I resented it, I think. Yes, I remember sort of my brother and sister being on holiday at Brighton, and I was at the back of the barber shop where there was a piano doing my practice. And that didn't appeal to me at all. When did it really appear? But I don't think I was intended to be a long-haired musician. I mean, there's quite a lot of evidence to the contrary now, isn't there really? Um but I think my father thought I would write.

Presenter7:51

But I don't

Sir Clifford Curzon8:01

some more monastery gardens. And I didn't, I think just to annoy he did send me to the Royal Academy of Music at a very early age, and I think to annoy him I just went longhair, that's all.

Presenter8:10

You were the youngest pupil that ever accepted it, mm-hmm. I believe so. In the in the in the

Sir Clifford Curzon8:15

The senior school.

Presenter8:15

Yeah. You began to mop up every prize in the w

Sir Clifford Curzon8:19

ward there was inside.

Sir Clifford Curzon8:20

Well, I wasn't the supreme opera app, but I did g I got them all eventually.

Sir Clifford Curzon8:26

What was your second subject?

Presenter8:26

Second software.

Sir Clifford Curzon8:27

My second subject well, I started to play the violin at school. Hm. So the th th violin was my first subject, really. And I switched, but I made the most excruciating noises on that instrument and c could hardly even tune it, and so I moved over to the piano. Do you remember your first professional appearance?

Sir Clifford Curzon8:44

My mother used to talk about it because she said I played the violin, and then I came on and played the piano, and then I came on and recited something.

Sir Clifford Curzon8:51

And that was quite a lot for a small channel. And I remember, and I always, when I read about Charlie Chaplin, I always remember, I know he was born in Kennington. And I remember that my first appearance for a pound was in a very, very cold church in Kennington. Yes. And you did all those three things? And I did all three things, yes. Six and eightpence each. Yes, that sounds like a solicitor's fee, doesn't it? Well, now we've got your...

Presenter9:17

Your server.

Sir Clifford Curzon9:17

Your third record was

Presenter9:18

Uh

Sir Clifford Curzon9:18

Yeah.

Presenter9:18

That should be

Sir Clifford Curzon9:19

Yeah.

Sir Clifford Curzon9:20

Well, I'd no intention of using this programme, of course, as a platform for my own recordings, no matter how artfully I might have been able to introduce them. But I think I would like one, an extremely short one, I hope, of my own, because

Sir Clifford Curzon9:35

It would remind me in those terrible circumstances of being on this little bit of sand out there. It would have reminded me that I had in my life time reached a stage where I had been able to twiddle my fingers pretty brightly. So I tha I think perhaps to put on a recording of something that

Sir Clifford Curzon9:52

That wouldn't perhaps be so associated with my name in my later years. My later repertoire, let's put it that way, and I think perhaps um the Dance of the Gnomes or Nomen Ragen of Liszt would rather well represent the middle of my career.

Presenter11:06

Lists Norman Ragen, your own recording.

Presenter11:10

You were only sixteen, I believe, when you made your first appearance at a prom. W was that a a big milestone for you?

Sir Clifford Curzon11:16

Oh yes, of course. I was one of the three pianos in the you know, three piano concerto by Bach. Yes. Well it was a milestone because I met Sir Henry Wood through this engagement and because I was a student at the Academy and we were chosen to to play this and after all I owe everything to Sir Henry Wood. He was a great figure. He took me around with him and was so helpful and he gave me engagements whenever he could and he told me about the great pianists of the past and he was so kind, you know, take insignificant little

Sir Clifford Curzon11:47

student, if we had a concert in Wales or somewhere, he would always take me out to supper afterwards and introduce me to Rhine wine, which he liked very much. No, my debt to him is simply not to be calculated at all.

Presenter11:59

You went on for two or three years giving concerts of of some distinction. Then you decided, in your own mind, that you still didn't feel ready.

Sir Clifford Curzon12:08

Well, I I doubt whether I ever felt I was ready, certainly. We're a very funny sort of artist who thinks he's ready, but uh I know what you mean. But I just happened suddenly.

Sir Clifford Curzon12:19

I don't know what took me to the hall, because I hadn't really heard of him before. I suddenly heard Schnabel in a small hall, the grocery in Steinweg. It was half empty.

Sir Clifford Curzon12:30

And uh

Sir Clifford Curzon12:32

I thought I had never heard anything so marvellous and there was only one thing to do. I didn't like would that the only thing to do was to start life again in Berlin. So I gave up everything. I was already a sub professor, I think, at the Royal Academy.

Sir Clifford Curzon12:42

And gave up everything and went and lived in Berlin for two years. Study with him. So there and in that way I started life again.

Presenter12:50

It would seem to have been a wise decision because there has been since then 50 years of great success and achievement.

Sir Clifford Curzon12:59

There have been lots of new beginnings. I think that's what the artist's life is about, you know.

Sir Clifford Curzon13:04

But uh that that was uh th the most important new beginning of my life, certainly.

Sir Clifford Curzon13:09

Let's have another record. What should we

Presenter13:09

This is

Presenter13:10

We have now number four we've got to.

Sir Clifford Curzon13:13

Well, now let me see. Number four.

Sir Clifford Curzon13:15

Well, I certainly I'm quite ready indeed, I shall by then be longing for that most beautiful of sounds, the human voice.

Sir Clifford Curzon13:24

And if a beautiful human voice could be combined with some music that evokes

Sir Clifford Curzon13:30

A beautiful landscape. I've had quite enough of the sea by now. That would be lovely. And I think the two are combined in a song by Brahms. I must have Brahms anyway. A song by Brahms, a Feld Einsamkeit.

Sir Clifford Curzon13:45

Loneliness in the Fields, or however one would translate it, sung by Elena Gerhardt, whose voice is is always, always in my mind as one of those special

Sir Clifford Curzon13:56

interior models that one has um for sound. If one is is a pianist, you've got to obviously have

Sir Clifford Curzon14:04

the thought of some other kind of musical sound in your mind other than the piano.

Sir Clifford Curzon14:09

So I would j I guess I would choose Feld Einstein Keit Sung by Elena Gerhard.

Presenter15:06

Elena Gerhardt Singing Feldeitamkeit by Brahms.

Presenter15:10

Do you still practice every day?

Sir Clifford Curzon15:13

Yes, I I I still put my hands on the piano every day, I think, unless I'm in a train or something. I've always had at the back of my mind something that Leschatitsky said, the greatest piano teacher of the turn of the century. He said you should if you haven't been able to practise, you should go to the piano at night.

Sir Clifford Curzon15:32

And put your hands on the keyboard and say good night to it.

Speaker 215:35

Sometimes

Sir Clifford Curzon15:35

Sometimes I just say good night to my piano, yes, but in general I'm I'm I'm I'm a a pretty hearty practiser, yes.

Presenter15:41

Apart from the repertoire of Beethoven and Brahms and Cesar Frank and Schumann and Tchaikovsky, we've always taken a great interest in in contemporary music.

Presenter15:51

Yeah.

Sir Clifford Curzon15:51

Yes, earlier on I I played a great deal, a fair amount of it is dedicated to me and so on. Who in particular has composed for you?

Presenter15:57

Who in particular

Sir Clifford Curzon15:59

Well, the second Roslong concerto was really written for me. It's not actually dedicated on the copy, but because it was for the Battle of Britain, what was it? The Festival of Britain. Same thing, yeah. Almost as noisy, almost as noisy, yes. And um Lennox Barclay's lovely piano sonata was written for me, and some of William Alwyn's earlier piano music was written for me, and so on.

Speaker 116:08

Thanks to that.

Speaker 116:10

Uh

Presenter16:10

Almost as nice.

Speaker 116:11

Get him.

Sir Clifford Curzon16:21

Uh

Presenter16:21

Do you ever have problems? This is something that always occurred to me in the concert hall. Do you always have absolute rapport with the conductor when you are doing concerto works?

Sir Clifford Curzon16:31

No, not necessarily. It's wonderful when you do have. On the other hand, it's sometimes rather s stimulating.

Speaker 116:36

Uh

Sir Clifford Curzon16:38

To have a little scrap when there's quite a bit of scrapping going on in the back. And I think you must believe that you're both ultimately going to behave like gentlemen. Yes, you're not going to throw the score at one another on the platform or anything like that. But sometimes it's quite stimulating, and I've yet to play with any conductor from whom I didn't learn something. Yes. However young or.

Speaker 116:38

Crap.

Sir Clifford Curzon16:59

In his dotage or whatever. There's all there's always something to be learned. I've never heard a piano recital from which I didn't learn. From the veriest beginner I can learn something all the time.

Speaker 117:02

Yeah, that's true.

Sir Clifford Curzon17:09

Record number five. What have we got now?

Sir Clifford Curzon17:12

Well, you know, playing the Gerhardt record brought to mind the sound of the pianist who, I think, has reproduced most successfully that kind of wonderful sound, and that was Paderewski.

Speaker 117:21

Yeah.

Sir Clifford Curzon17:27

And he was a wonderful player of Schumann. I can still remember how he played certain phrases fifty years later, I can remember that. And as I must have Schumann, after all he was the most how can one describe him, the most comforting and consoling of composers, I would like to have a recording of Paderewski playing Schumann. There's Arbens of Schumann. I'm sure it's a very old recording and so on, but I think if you listen carefully you can still hear that this was a quite exceptional sound.

Presenter19:01

Padereski playing one of the Schumann Fontezie Stucker Des Arbens. And it was recorded, I see, on the label in London in June 1912. Yes, uh it's a really a voice from the past, isn't it? Indeed. You love playing chamber music, don't you? You guessed very frequently with the Amadeiras quartet. Yes. And you formed your own piano quartet for a while.

Sir Clifford Curzon19:24

Well, I didn't form it. It was in the sad period when when Schnabel died.

Sir Clifford Curzon19:30

And he had been part of a very distinguished quartet with Siggetti the violinist, Primrose the viola and Fournier the cellist and they were giving a whole series of recitals and so I took over from my great and revered teacher. It was I think one of the greatest honours I've ever received and then we did play a lot of chamber music at the Edinburgh Festival and in London I remember we played for some charity. I think part of Devon was badly flooded and we gave a concert in the festival hall and we played all three Brahms piano quartets in one evening. I think it went up till midnight or something. And enjoyed yourself hugely. Enjoyed yourself. Yes, I of course love to play chamber music. I mean I don't feel there's any difference between playing chamber music and any other kind of music. And it was Schnabel who pointed out, with the usual sort of paradox that he loved, he said when you play solo you should play more chamber music, which he meant you should pay more attention to inner voices and basses and

Presenter20:06

John

Sir Clifford Curzon20:25

Play with

Sir Clifford Curzon20:27

Well, play it like chamber music. Just a splendid way of putting it. Yes, and I think you can hear it in his playing all the time.

Sir Clifford Curzon20:33

Number six, watch that.

Sir Clifford Curzon20:35

Well, for the next two recordings I should like to have reminders of my two greatest teachers, the two greatest artists among my teachers, and they were both uh great uh pioneer spirits.

Sir Clifford Curzon20:49

So for number six, I would take Vanderlandowska, who after all

Sir Clifford Curzon20:56

At that time the harpsichord was a very much neglected instrument, and her magisterial playing of it certainly brought it to the forefront of our musical all our musical lives again. And I don't think I know anything more stirring than her performance of the great Passecale of Couperin.

Sir Clifford Curzon21:16

And I think I would like to have that. It would also it would also remind me of the long, long hours of laborious but absolutely invaluable study that I had with her in her house in on the outskirts of Paris. I think I I I dropped out of the musical world also for a period to study with her for about a year, six months or a year.

Sir Clifford Curzon21:36

and she really taught me how to work.

Sir Clifford Curzon21:40

And and those are the people to whom one owes most, I think, because knowing how to work brings you freedom.

Presenter22:47

Vanderlandowska playing the couperin basicalia.

Presenter22:51

Now you've talked about your gardening, Sir Clifford. I see that you list swimming as another of your favourite occupations. Both these skills will be very useful on your desert island.

Presenter23:02

Well, my swimming wouldn't help me at all, because it's just a gentle breaststroke. Well, you could cultivate, at any rate, have you ever done any fishing?

Sir Clifford Curzon23:08

No, I can't follow fishing through to its end, you see. It's all very lovely to throw out a line and and and and and tickle along like that. Uh but then when you've got to deal with the dirty work at the end, I can't get sorted. I can't uh that's that's not my my way.

Presenter23:08

No, I

Presenter23:13

Yeah.

Presenter23:17

I get

Sir Clifford Curzon23:22

Would you try to escape? Yes, but not in the way you think.

Sir Clifford Curzon23:26

I'm not in the way you think I would. I see. And I'm afraid that does bring me to one of your later questions, uh the my way of escape.

Sir Clifford Curzon23:35

Do you mind if I answer that a little later in the program? What I'd like to do is get rid of my records first of all. All right, so.

Presenter23:37

The little later in the

Presenter23:39

There were

Speaker 123:39

Uh

Presenter23:41

All right. Until next.

Sir Clifford Curzon23:43

Well, the the other great teacher, of course, was Schnabel of the two, I said, who were great pioneer spirits, and of course, in Schnabel's case, uh he was a pioneer in the performing of all the works of Schubert.

Sir Clifford Curzon23:55

I I think he introduced them even to the great Leschetitsky. I think Leschatitsky was quite surprised at some of the things the boy he was only a young boy. He was with Leschetitsky from the age of nine till fifteen, and I got

Sir Clifford Curzon24:08

Somewhere in my archives I've got a programme of Schnabel's first appearance in Vienna. He was fifteen, and on it you will find the posthumous A major sonata of Schubert. And it's rather touching in a way to think of this boy understanding the already at that age the unbelievable beauties of these late Schubert works and at the same time still playing rough.

Sir Clifford Curzon24:33

So I would certainly take the A major sonata with me, because it was that sonata, you may remember, which I heard in the Grotrin Steinwich Hall, which sent me to Berlin for two years.

Speaker 124:33

So I

Presenter25:57

Schnabel playing the scherzo from Schubert's posthumous A major sonata. And that brings you to your last record.

Sir Clifford Curzon26:05

Well, I can't think of number eight without thinking of it as my last record. That's the one I'm going to put on last.

Sir Clifford Curzon26:12

And I suppose it'll sound terribly sentimental, but it's something that I would like to be reminded of right with the last breath to the very end, and that is of all-conquering love, love stronger than death, as I think Wagner understood it. And so I I for my last record, I would like the Lieberstoad of Wagner.

Presenter27:37

Kirsten Plagstadt singing the Lieber Stod from Tristan and Isolde with Wilhelm Furtwängler conducting. If you could take just one disc instead of the eight.

Presenter27:49

Well, it would be awfully difficult to choose, but I think I would have to go back to Mozart. K four six seven. Yes.

Presenter27:55

And one luxury to have with you anything you like that's of no practical use.

Sir Clifford Curzon27:59

Yeah.

Sir Clifford Curzon28:01

Well, I can think of the one thing that I would want to take with me, and I don't know that I would describe it as a luxury. Well, I would want a pill to put me firmly to sleep,

Sir Clifford Curzon28:10

For ever when I'd had

Sir Clifford Curzon28:12

Enough.

Sir Clifford Curzon28:14

and that I would, with this pill, be absolutely certain of not waking, and I probably would put the Lebes toad on the gramophone and take the pill, and that's the end of my Desert Island.

Sir Clifford Curzon28:26

Yeah.

Presenter28:26

Now before that unhappy event,

Presenter28:28

you would have one book to read.

Sir Clifford Curzon28:31

I think I would probably choose a good Victorian novel, the the kind that one can read over and over again. I might, I think, perhaps choose something like George Eliot's Middlemarch. Yes. I happen to admire her very greatly. It's full of wisdom on human affairs, full of understanding of

Sir Clifford Curzon28:52

Human frailty

Sir Clifford Curzon28:54

Yes, I think it's a very comprehensive affair, a a novel of that of that quality. In fact, there isn't any other novel quite like that. I think I probably would choose George Elliott.

Presenter29:03

George Eliot. George Eliot's Middlemarch. Yes. And thank you, Sir Clifford Curzon, for letting us hear your Desert Island Disc. Thank you very much, Mr. Cameron. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 129:19

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