Benjamin Luxon

Speaker 10:00

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

Benjamin Luxon0:30

On our desert island this week is the baritone Bentramin Luxem.

Benjamin Luxon0:34

Now, Ben, the first thing we have to establish is that you're not English. No, certainly not. I'm a Cornishman. That's a slightly different

Presenter0:42

different race, or in fact a very different race. Now, from the other side of the Thama, what part of Cornwall? Uh, my home town is Camborne, really, you know, right down in between sort of Truh and Penzance.

Benjamin Luxon0:52

You were educated in Gautam?

Presenter0:53

I went to primary school at home, Campbell, and then went got a scholarship and went to Truro School.

Benjamin Luxon0:59

Yeah.

Benjamin Luxon0:59

Now you have eight disks to choose for your desert island. Did you find that a hard job?

Presenter1:05

Yes, I found it a very hard job.

Presenter1:07

But you'll come up. I find that I'm inclined to, although I my life seems to be totally to do with music, I don't perhaps listen to as much music as I should do and I find it very hard. What's the first one you've got on your list? I would go back to be reminded of my childhood and the endless concerts that I went to as a child and took part in, and I would choose a piece of male voice singing. In this case, it is the Nukie Fisherman's Hymn, a very well known and popular piece at home.

Benjamin Luxon1:07

I find that I'm inclined.

Speaker 11:09

Yeah.

Speaker 21:36

Won't go out to the fishing ground.

Speaker 22:28

The fisherman's life.

Benjamin Luxon2:35

The new Key Fisherman Song, correcting you on the title, sung by the Holman Climax Male Voice Choir. Now you talked of going to many concerts and performing in many concerts in in far off Cornwall, so obviously you come from a musical family.

Presenter2:51

Yes. It was musical in that my father sang. Um he had a wonderful voice, a bass voice and was a sort of amateur singer, as as actually a large percentage of the population was at that time in Cornwall. Were you in the choir? In the church?

Benjamin Luxon3:05

In the church choir?

Presenter3:06

Yes, I was in a church choir, I was in a school choir, and then I became well known as a soloist and did you know, at one stage I remember at about the age of nine.

Presenter3:17

I must have averaged about a concert a week, I think, through the year. There were concerts going on all the time. That's my big sort of memory. That's my main memory from my childhood, is of taking part in endless concerts. And then not only myself as a sort of soloist, but as a choir and as a part of a recitation group and hearing musical sores and male voice choirs and fat contraltos and male sopranos and j just about everything.

Benjamin Luxon3:44

After your school days you did your national service. Was there any music at that point in your life?

Presenter3:50

Not really. Where did you go? Me I w went very simply. First of all, I was stationed in Devon for a year. And then I was moved all the way up to to Wiltshire for my second year. So I was still very much in the West Country. That was all quite by chance.

Presenter4:10

Somewhere along the way I would always find an opportunity to sing, usually in a pub or or with a group of people. I j joined the amateur operatic society when I was in Devon, in Barnstable for a short time. What happened to you when you came out of the service?

Presenter4:28

I was sent off to training college to be a teacher.

Presenter4:32

I had no feelings about that, you know, I I didn't mind at all. I didn't particularly want to be a teacher, I didn't not want to be a teacher. But you became a teacher? Yes, I I did my uh period at training college and then that was at the time that I got the bug for singing properly. I began to realize that

Presenter4:50

Yeah, you know, I would like to sing. How did that come about?

Presenter4:54

Well, Marion Studtholm came to give a recital at the training college and the people running the the concert asked me to sing a few songs in between and and she then asked to see me afterwards and said wanted to know all about me and out of that you know she really said look you must have your voice trained um you should do something about it and that sort of really that was the first thing that really made me think so then I went to the Guild Hall.

Benjamin Luxon5:19

Yeah. Yeah.

Presenter5:20

Yeah.

Benjamin Luxon5:20

Well, that was a very important decision, very important point in your life. So let's break there for your second record.

Presenter5:25

Yeah.

Presenter5:26

The second record would be a piece which reminds me of all that sort of small village life and sort of country life, and that's under Miltwood and Thomas.

Speaker 25:38

She likes the liver, bin.

Presenter5:40

You're to-do, best. It's a brother's.

Speaker 25:42

Oh, do you hear that, Lily? Yes, ma'am. We're eating puskets. Yes, ma'am. Oh, you cat butcher. It was doctored, mine. Oh, what's that got to do with it? Yesterday we had uh mole. Oh, Lily, Lily. Monday, Otter. Tuesday, shrewd. Oh, go on, Mrs. Bynan. He's the biggest liar in town. Don't you dare say that about Mr. Bynan. Everybody knows it, ma'am. Mr. Bynan never tells a lie.

Speaker 15:59

Ah

Speaker 26:09

Do your benefit.

Benjamin Luxon6:09

No.

Speaker 26:11

And now I'm going out after the Corgis with my little cleaver. Oh, look!

Benjamin Luxon6:18

An excerpt from Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood, the original BBC radio production directed by Douglas Cleverdon.

Benjamin Luxon6:26

Right now, Ben, the Guildhall School of Music, and of course drama. Were you a full time student?

Presenter6:32

No, our teaching course used to be a two-year course then and you had the chance if you wanted to specialize in a particular subject you had the chance of doing a what they called a supplementary year and so I went to the Guild Hall on my supplementary year as a teacher. I determined that during that year I would concentrate all my efforts. It was a very free sort of study year and I concentrated all my efforts on singing and I'd thought that if I had any success then that's what I would do.

Presenter7:01

And if I didn't, then I would just go back to my teaching.

Benjamin Luxon7:04

Uh

Presenter7:04

A lot of

Benjamin Luxon7:04

Success at the school. In fact, you won the gold medal. Yes, eventually. How did you see yourself as a singer, as an operatic baritone, a leader singer?

Presenter7:13

First of all, I went to a man called Walter Gruner. I was sent to him quite by chance. And his great love and great speciality was the German lead. And he immediately heard in me the leader singer, the sort of natural leader singer. And therefore, all my early training was done as a leader singer. And he very wisely gauged my personality. And instead of trying to teach me how to sing, which I actually did quite a good job with naturally, he fed me music. And so therefore, suddenly I was introduced to Hugo Wolf and Brahms and Richard Strauss, Schumann, Beethoven, Schubert, of course. And it was rather like being presented with a huge picture book of wonderful sort of colours and sounds and stories. And I never even was aware of what I was learning as far as singing was concerned because that took all my attention was all that sort of marvelous music. So all my early days were spent as a sort of singer of songs, leader and then songs and some oratorial. What was the first break? What was the first big thing that happened?

Presenter8:27

Difficult to say, really. I think probably a very important break for me was going to Morley College. They used to do operas at Morley College. In fact, a lot of concerts at Morley College. It was a rather important place for me, I remember, in those early days. And they did a performance of Benjamin Britton's Rapa Lucretia, and it received a lot of attention. And that very much seemed to be the sort of music that my voice was suitable for, and that I was suitable for, and had a good success in that. That sort of thing. And then there were a few other concerts which started to just sort of put me on the map.

Presenter9:01

Then I finished at the Guild Hall. I had the gold medal and I was sort of out in the wide world still teaching, still doing the art engagements. And in 1963, the English Opera Group was about to go off on a tour of Russia, taking three of the Britain operas, the chamber operas, and they lost one of their baritones at the last minute, and they had to find a baritone very quickly. Well, obviously, all the sort of the well-established baritones were s engaged, so they had to resort to the lesser known and the and the young baritones. And that sort of came up for me, and I was given that job. Yes, you knew the part and the rape of Lucretia. I knew the rape of Lucretia, and I think Ben and Peter and the people that ran the English Opera Group knew that I knew it. So that was a big advantage to me. And that was how I started. And that began my association with with Ben Britton and the English Opera Group.

Benjamin Luxon9:40

You knew the

Benjamin Luxon9:42

I knew the right would appreciate

Benjamin Luxon9:57

Which seems enough.

Presenter9:58

Yeah.

Benjamin Luxon9:58

Uh

Presenter9:58

But

Benjamin Luxon9:58

Yeah.

Presenter9:58

Yeah.

Benjamin Luxon9:58

Good point.

Presenter9:58

To have a record. What's number three? Well, I'll very obviously now go to Benjamin Britton, and I would like some of that.

Benjamin Luxon9:58

Have a record. What's number three?

Presenter10:07

Music that always reminds me some of his music that reminds me so much of the the sort of whole Suffolk scene of the sea, the coastline, um, that it's very evocative of that. And I go to Peter Grimes for one of the the sea interludes. And this one is Dawn.

Benjamin Luxon11:25

Dawn, the first of the four C interludes from Benjamin Britton's Peter Grimes, Andre Preven conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. Now you stayed with the English Opera Group and did a number of productions, didn't you?

Presenter11:38

Yes. For a long time, for about the first six or seven years, I suppose, my life really revolved very much around the English opera group. They did an awful lot of work in those days. These were the days of the church operas, when the church operas were first written, and we toured round the world with the church operas. Went to all sorts of places. We went throughout Europe to Canada, to Australia. And apart from the sort of the run of operas, all the chamber operas, Midsummer Night's Dream was a big new production. Then we did things like the Purcell King Arthur.

Benjamin Luxon11:38

Yeah.

Presenter12:18

And there was a whole it was a very, very busy time. That all culminated in Owen Wingrave, I would say. Oh yes, that was the opera which

Benjamin Luxon12:25

Oh yes, that was

Benjamin Luxon12:27

Britain wrote specially for television.

Presenter12:29

Yes, that's right.

Benjamin Luxon12:30

And you played Owen on the box, and you also played it again in the stage version.

Presenter12:36

Yes, we also then took it to Covent Garden, which I think was a great relief for us all because we had a chance to actually get it on the stage. Um I remember when we televised it, of course, we never had a chance to run it through. It was all done out of sequence, so it was r very um it was a very hard task, I remember recording on Wingrave.

Presenter12:57

That was your first appearance at The Garden, was it? No, I'd appeared before that, again with a contemporary composer. This was Peter Maxwell Davis, with Taverner. That was my first appearance at The Covenant Garden. That was a wonderful part, too. A strange piece.

Benjamin Luxon13:13

And since then you you've been in the Gotten Garden season every year? Um pretty well, yes. Yes. And of course you've done a great deal of television since that Owen Wingrave debut. Last Christmas, for example, it seemed that you were never off the box. I mean the whole thing was a Luxem festival and very nice too. Oh I enjoyed that. You had in fact started on television in the in the West Country. You just wandered into the station one day, didn't you?

Presenter13:24

Yeah.

Presenter13:31

Hopefully there's a Luxembour festival and very nice too.

Presenter13:41

Yes, I wrote a letter and I received a letter back saying, Well, if you are in the vicinity, why don't you come in and see us? And I went in, I saw a very nice man, called Mr. Lewinhack, I remember.

Presenter13:53

He said, Well, this is your letter. He said, Yeah, it's very interesting. He said, Are you as good as you say you are? And I said, Yes. He said, All right, go down to studio, whatever it is, and um that's it, you're on. So they gave me a set. They made up a there was a I remember a gate and a couple of bales of hay, a few little bushes and shrubs. They put me in a a Czech shirt to sing. And I sang yes, and I sang the floral dance.

Benjamin Luxon14:13

Allies.

Benjamin Luxon14:16

So it began. Leaning on the gate. Yes. Oh, good for Mr. Luhenhack. I mean, this was fine. You didn't have an audition or anything.

Presenter14:23

No, no, he t I think he took a terrible chance. Maybe it wasn't a chance, I don't know, that was a normal procedure, but

Benjamin Luxon14:26

Wasn't the chart.

Presenter14:29

Right, some more music. Another record. From my earliest days of study, Schubert probably has emerged as my own particular musical god. That's a very sweeping statement, but he has a very special place for me. So I would have some Schubert. And I would like the beginning of the adagio from the string quintet in C major.

Benjamin Luxon14:29

Write some more music.

Benjamin Luxon15:56

The opening of the Adaggio.

Benjamin Luxon15:58

Of the Franz Schubert string quintet in C major, the Amadeira string quartet with William Pleith.

Benjamin Luxon16:05

You're also interested in folk singing.

Presenter16:07

Oh, yes. I always have been, but now I'm finding I have the opportunity to actually to actually put it into practice. It's always been my desire. You know, I've envied um sort of not pop singers so much, but folk singers and a lot of sort of uh people that sing lighter music.

Presenter16:22

But particularly folk I've envied them in their sort of freedom. You know, they do not have to stand up and sing

Presenter16:29

The right notes in the right time, singing to people and critics who know the right notes and who know very often much more about the work than one does oneself. And therefore, you are really under a great deal of scrutiny most of the time as a sort of classical singer of opera or concerts or recitals or whatever. I've always longed to be able to get up on a platform and to be able to talk freely, to be able to sing at any pitch I wanted to. If I felt tired, I could sing low, and if I wanted to, I could sing high, and if I wanted to, I could change the damn rhythms, and if I wanted to, I could change the words. I mean, I so now I'm actually being able to put that into practice, and it's wonderful.

Benjamin Luxon17:09

Yeah.

Presenter17:09

Have another record.

Benjamin Luxon17:09

But

Presenter17:11

Well, now I would like to hear one of my favourite singers, and that is Laurence Tibbett.

Presenter17:19

Lawrence Tibbett, for me, there's a quality about the voice, there's a sort of humanity. He was a wonderful artist. There are lots of very early recordings of his which one can't get hold of, which are just wonderful straight from the stage that they met. And he was a prodigious artist and musician, sort of everything, a very complete artist with a wonderful voice. So this is Simoni Boccanegra Verdi.

Speaker 218:17

Um

Speaker 218:23

This party post me

Benjamin Luxon18:42

Laurence Tibbett in an audio from Verdi's Simone Bocanegre, and at the end we heard the voices of Giovanni Martinelli, Rose Bampton, and Robert Nicholson.

Benjamin Luxon18:53

One uh of your occupations which many of your fans greet with joy, your Victorian evenings that you do with Robert Teer. Th those are sheer joy. Yes, those are wonderful forms.

Presenter19:05

form of relaxation.

Benjamin Luxon19:06

And where do you find all the stuff?

Presenter19:08

Well, you know, I have a legacy of it. Again, you know, going back to that wonderful childhood in Cornwall, you know, this is my legacy. I mean, I heard so many of these songs. Funnily enough, people have said to me, my goodness, you can't have heard that song. That was long before your time. But in actual fact, you know, Cornwall is a backwater in that respect. You know, their entire musical diet was the sort of ballads they kept going for a long, long time. And so therefore I know a lot. And now, of course, a lot of people actually send me music. Or at least they suggest. Very often, you know, or one gets very nice letters and people say, do you know such and such a thing? And I suggest that you look with a list of songs. And they either send me music or else I can, you know, go along and research them for myself.

Benjamin Luxon19:59

It is splendid work you're doing,'cause an awful lot of these songs are are virtually lost now, one never hears them.

Presenter20:04

Yes, they're wonderful too. I mean they are great fun. And they require real singing. Oh yes indeed. And a lot of

Presenter20:12

interpreting as well. And again, like folk music for me, you know, I've even d do odd bits of jazz as well. Again, I find this a wonderful

Presenter20:22

Relaxation. Where do you do that?

Presenter20:24

On television, of all things. I mean, why not? Tell me about it. Think big.

Speaker 220:26

Why not? Tell me about it.

Presenter20:30

No, seven years ago in my escapades down with Westwood television I was introduced by a producer friend there who said, Look, there's a lovely little jazz band down here called Rod Mason Jazz Band. Um, why don't you get with them? So I said, Good heavens above you know, I just make a fool of myself Well he said, Well, go on, just

Speaker 120:46

Gone.

Presenter20:48

Have a go. So we got together in a room and we started out with Negro spirituals who thought that was the common ground. The George Melly of Plymouth. Not quite. And so that began, and we've done a few things now on television together, and I hope that we'll actually make a record as well. Right. Well, we can't play that next, so what shall we play?

Presenter21:10

If I'm going to be on my island, I would like to have one piece of music.

Presenter21:15

of myself singing. I've chosen the next piece for a dual purpose really, not just because I think it's the most wonderful thing I've I've recorded, but because I can also hear some Elgar. I would need to take some Elgar with me and if I took Elgar it would be the Dream of Gerantius. So this is the um prophesiciere.

Presenter21:37

Anima Christiana, where the priest comes in in the early part and tells the spirit to go on its way.

Speaker 222:16

Uh

Speaker 222:19

Yeah.

Speaker 222:20

Uh

Speaker 222:21

God loves world.

Benjamin Luxon22:44

An excerpt from Elgar's The Dream of Garantius, Your Own Voice, in a production conducted by Alexander Gibson.

Benjamin Luxon22:52

Now you're based in London nowadays, of course, but you don't choose to live in the centre.

Presenter22:57

No, I realise I'm rather appalled to realise that I've now lived longer in London than I lived in Cornwall. And I've lived all around London, as you know, many people have done.

Presenter23:10

But I've gradually been moving out so that now I've moved out into Hertfordshire. You like a lot of space.

Presenter23:15

Yes, I like the country. And Harvardshire is very beautiful. It's not Cornwall, but how many children.

Benjamin Luxon23:22

How many children do you have, Ben? Three children. Yes. And your wife is a singer, too.

Presenter23:26

Yes, yes, she was a singer. We met with the English opera group, actually, while on that uh Russian tour.

Benjamin Luxon23:32

I'm told you once took a week off to saw five tons of firewood just because you felt like sawing some firewood.

Presenter23:38

Oh no, it wasn't because I felt it was very you know, I don't I'm not so indulgent. It was so self-indulgent. It was for very specific purposes that I got so tired of my oil bills that I decided that I was going to move on to a form of wood central heating. So I had the chance of some very large elm trees that had to come down. So I I took off about a week and a half to get them down. And of course it's also that I love to you know, every so often I feel the need to just get out and work physically and I don't really care what it is as long as it's just sort of good hard physical

Benjamin Luxon24:13

Thank you for giving you a Marvellous chance now on this island. You've got all the physical work you like in the middle of the morning. Oh, yes, and I look forward to that very much. Would you try to escape?

Presenter24:20

Yeah.

Presenter24:22

No, not for some time, I would think. I could do with the piece and and being alone, I think, for a good deal of time. I don't know how long. I think eventually I would start to want to escape. Another record. This is a sort of um, in a way, a non-personal record that I would like to have some music that reminded me very specifically of an age. And not only an age just in music, but an age in history and an age in architecture. And I always get that very strongly from sort of sixteenth century music. And I would like one of those this is this wonderful forty part motet by Thomas Talis called Spim in Allium.

Benjamin Luxon26:09

The Thomas Tallis forty part motet Spearmin Allium recorded by the Cambridge University Musical Society chorus.

Benjamin Luxon26:16

And that brings us to your last record.

Presenter26:19

I would also like to have a little humour on my island as well, and I would then choose this Peter Yusinoff version of a Mozart opera. I think what I enjoy about this too is that having heard something like this, I mean you can't really take yourself seriously as an opera singer, it really is not on.

Speaker 226:40

No, I stop anything I stop

Speaker 226:43

For every member beyond

Speaker 226:53

Bail, baby, bail, bail.

Speaker 226:56

Lala Movinjo del Shiromano, Kodimino, Kodimino.

Speaker 127:01

Emo!

Speaker 127:02

Only

Speaker 227:04

Jenny Old Blight

Benjamin Luxon27:10

Some Mock Mozart by Peter Yustinoff. If you could take only one disc of that 8-ben, which would it be?

Presenter27:17

I think without any doubt I would take the Elgar, the dreamer Jontius, right.

Benjamin Luxon27:24

And you're entitled to have one luxury with you, just one thing, purely for the senses.

Presenter27:27

Just one

Presenter27:29

Well a luxury and this would be a luxury and has nothing to do with um future professional plans. I would take a piano because I would love and providing I could have a large selection of all sorts of music. Would that be possible? Oh, we'll find a way to be some in the stool, some of it stuffed on the top. It would be an upright piano incident. Oh, that's fine. That's all I'm fit for. And uh then I would you know it would give me an opportunity to learn all sorts of things about music and play something which I don't do very well. And you're entitled to have one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare on the island? Wow, one book. Well, if I could cheat, I would like the sort of amalgamated works of Idris Shah. Don't know if you know them at all. Of who? Idris Shah. I don't know them, tell me about them. Ah, tell you about them. Well, that would be a ve that would take a whole nother programme.

Benjamin Luxon27:46

Yeah.

Benjamin Luxon27:48

Obviously.

Benjamin Luxon28:01

Yeah.

Benjamin Luxon28:04

Well

Benjamin Luxon28:15

Don't

Presenter28:19

They're sort of stories. I would say there were all sorts of stories which originate from the East, from Afghanistan, from Persia, from India, from Arab countries. And they're sort of teaching stories. Psycho psychological stories. How about that? And with lots of humour and princes and princesses and all sorts of it's couched in very interesting terms. And his name again?

Speaker 128:30

My current

Benjamin Luxon28:32

And the network.

Speaker 128:33

Uh

Benjamin Luxon28:40

Idris Schae. Idris Scha. Right. And thank you, Benjamin Luxon, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Presenter28:47

Thank you very much, Roy. It's been a pleasure.

Benjamin Luxon28:48

Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 128:57

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