Mark Elder

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

Speaker 30:05

For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1980, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Mark Elder0:30

Our castaway this week is the music director of the English National Opera, Mark Elder.

Mark Elder0:36

We're giving you eight discs, Mark. Would you prefer to have scores?

Presenter0:40

Yes, I suppose in a way I would. But you didn't give me the choice before the programme started, really.

Mark Elder0:44

Really? I do also uh don't broadcast terribly well.

Presenter0:45

I know, I know.

Presenter0:49

No, I quite accept that. But if I were alone for a long time, Scores would be a real companion.

Mark Elder0:55

Eight perfect performances as far as you're concerned.

Mark Elder1:01

It's too

Presenter1:03

What's the first disc you've chosen?

Presenter1:05

Well, I thought that the first disc might be a Mozart piano concerto. Mozart's music has always been very close to me, and the piano concertos, in their different ways, make a link between purely instrumental music and the opera house.

Presenter1:19

And so often the piano comes across as an operatic character. Mozart seems to speak very personally through the medium of the piano, and the one I've chosen is is one of my great favourites, the seventeenth piano concerto in G major.

Mark Elder2:32

Part of the first movement on Mozart's piano concerto number seventeen in G,

Mark Elder2:37

Alfred Brundel, with the Academy of Saint Martin in the fields directed by Neville Mariner.

Presenter2:42

Now, you're a Londoner, Mark.

Presenter2:44

Yes, I was brought up in London, although in fact I was born in Northumberland. Do you come from a large family? Huge. I'm one of six children. I was the the first boy, but the second child. A lot of music in the family? Almost none.

Presenter2:57

My father is a dentist, and his enthusiasms are are not with the arts.

Presenter3:03

Uh he's a great professional man and uh he enjoys golf and uh wine. That's something I share with him, certainly.

Presenter3:12

No. I wanted to learn the piano when I was about five or six.

Presenter3:16

And it was really the chance to go to a prep school that was also a choir school that really developed the musical side of me.

Mark Elder3:23

This was the Canterbury Cathedral Quasco.

Presenter3:26

Yes, I think my parents saw an advert in the paper one day that they were doing voice trials and um they thought they'd risk it. Did you become a soloist? Not just music, but um the experience of singing in public from an early age is a great uh discipline and often very exciting. Yes, and a great responsibility too. Yes, indeed.

Mark Elder3:53

Yeah.

Mark Elder3:55

Then

Mark Elder3:56

Your voice having duly broken to Bryanston, is that a school with a good music?

Presenter4:00

Yeah.

Presenter4:01

Yes, my voice broke once I'd got to Branston, actually.

Presenter4:04

Branston is a very musical school, there's no doubt about it. It provides great opportunities for all sorts of talents and interests.

Mark Elder4:12

Hmm.

Presenter4:12

And I certainly developed as a musician there quite considerably. I played the bassoon, I suppose, there a bit. Was the bassoon your choice, or did they just have a spare one about? Um I started playing the bassoon actually while I was still at Canterbury, at the choir school.

Mark Elder4:18

Was the Brazilian?

Presenter4:26

I remember when I first got it it was actually taller than I was.

Presenter4:29

And there was some doubt as to whether I would be able to lift it. And I'm a left-handed person. I remember picking it up and putting it the wrong way round, you know, slanting it across my body the wrong way, and hoping that perhaps, well, if they do left-handed golf clubs and left-handed violins, they might manage a left-handed bassoon. But of course, that's uh quite out of the question, although I expect physically it is possible. But I got it the right way round in the end.

Mark Elder4:49

And as well as the school orchestra, you also doubled in the National Youth Orchestra.

Presenter4:54

Yes, that's right. When I'd been at Reinston for a couple of years, I think two or three years, I got into the National Youth Orchestra and I was with them for a couple of years.

Mark Elder5:01

Had you decided by now that music was to be your profession?

Presenter5:06

I think I decided that when I was about thirteen.

Presenter5:10

My father said to me one night that he thought that perhaps I ought to go into the church.

Presenter5:15

and I think the religious training that I had got at Canterbury very much appealed to him.

Presenter5:20

He is a deeply religious man himself.

Presenter5:23

And it was then that as I realized I'd got to rebuff the suggestion that I realized that I'd got to be a musician. I had never articulated it before, and I didn't still quite understand what it would involve.

Presenter5:33

But I did feel about that time that it was going to be essential for me to be a musician.

Mark Elder5:38

And then you won a music scholarship to Cambridge.

Presenter5:41

Yes, I did. I went to Corpus, the smallest college in Cambridge, and I'm not a very academic person, and I suspect that their faith in me as an academic by giving me this music scholarship was probably slightly unfounded, and I suspect I let them down a little bit academically. But Cambridge was a very important time for me, and I think for all of us who are up there.

Presenter6:01

as a time of of exploration and discovery.

Presenter6:04

Let's have your second record. What's that to be?

Presenter6:06

I thought that I would like to be able to take with me a record that would have music that was exclusively from the time when I was a chorister.

Presenter6:15

There is so much great rich music in the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth centuries.

Presenter6:21

And the record I've chosen.

Presenter6:23

is an anthem by Gibbons.

Presenter6:25

He was a very fine composer, and this little anthem is called Almighty and Everlasting God, and it comes from a record performed by the Clerks of Oxenford.

Speaker 46:47

Dost the Lord's Dream Lost in God.

Speaker 46:54

Those here for sleep or tears.

Speaker 47:16

I saw it worse.

Speaker 47:22

I be cool and desired.

Mark Elder7:33

An anthem by Orlando Gibbons, Almighty and Everlasting God, by the Clerks of Oxenford. Now, your musical activities in Cambridge, was it there that you conducted for the first time?

Presenter7:44

Just about. I had actually conducted, just before I left Bryanston, um not a very auspicious uh first work to conduct, because it was funeral music.

Presenter7:54

that Hindemit wrote for the late king, I think.

Mark Elder7:56

Mm-hmm.

Presenter7:57

And uh that was the first time that I'd had the experience of of joining up different people together in music.

Presenter8:03

And at Cambridge there there is a lot of music that goes on, and in each generation

Presenter8:08

The university needs uh a few people who are willing to try their arm at conducting, as it were.

Mark Elder8:14

There was an undergraduate performance of Scarletti's The Triumph of Honour, on which you worked with a friend whose ideas fit very closely with your own, with whom you have continued to work from time to time.

Presenter8:23

Yes, that friend and colleague was David Pountney, and we've known each other a long time, and we went up to Cambridge at the same time, and through his uh insistence and determination we decided that we'd try and put this little opera on at the A D C Theatre, the undergraduate dramatic theatre in in Cambridge, which was something I think that had not been done before.

Presenter8:44

And it was a bit of a risk, but the experience of putting that work together with him and exploring it and dreaming it up, really, and finding a cast, some undergraduates, some local people, was one of the happiest of my life, actually. It was a terrific experience.

Presenter8:59

What happened to you when you came down?

Presenter9:02

Well, during my third year at Cambridge I had the opportunity to go and work on the music staff of the Wexford Festival.

Presenter9:08

which was a fire and water experience of the first order. Wexford is not really a town, you see, that is geared to professional music making. But it does have this tiny little theatre. That was my first experience of the profession, really, my first job.

Presenter9:22

and when I came down from Cambridge I went there for a second year.

Presenter9:26

and a few months after that I went to join the music staff at Glindbourne.

Presenter9:31

In those days the personnel for Wexford and Glimborn were rather connected by the fact that the artistic director at Wexford was Brian Dickey, who was also at Glimborn.

Presenter9:39

And also at that time I started to work a little bit for the BBC.

Presenter9:43

Bit of accompanying.

Presenter9:44

Continue our work.

Presenter9:46

And uh it was really as a freelance player for my for my first year, as a coach and as an accompanist.

Presenter9:53

Your third record, please, Mark.

Presenter9:55

Well, at about this time my interest and love for Verdi's music started while I was at university, and one of the pieces that I first found by Verdi was his last opera, Foldstaff.

Presenter10:05

And I'd like to play a little section from the second scene.

Presenter10:10

where the two young lovers are meeting together and snatching from the chaos of the adults around them a brief moment of tenderness together. The singers on this distinguished performance that is conducted by Carrianne are Luigi Alfa and Anna

Speaker 410:24

Torgona salto, torna la go finish bar.

Speaker 410:44

Bring quite a beautiful man.

Speaker 410:48

Warmo, warm.

Speaker 410:51

The Spectre Mario.

Speaker 410:58

Arch away.

Speaker 411:03

Right.

Speaker 411:11

Uh

Speaker 411:19

We are so far.

Mark Elder11:24

part of the second scene of their D's Falstaff.

Mark Elder11:28

Right. What happened when the Kleinborn season was over?

Presenter11:32

Well, I was out of work, really. But I had, um, during the Glymorn season been asked to go and audition for Gotten Garden.

Presenter11:40

And I went and auditioned uh later on that year.

Presenter11:44

And they asked me to join for the coming season.

Presenter11:47

So I just had a few months of unemployment, and then I started on the ring with Schulte.

Presenter11:52

And in this course of the eighteen months that I was on the staff at the Opera House,

Presenter11:56

There was a terrific variety of repertoire.

Presenter11:59

and I did a lot of prompting.

Presenter12:02

And this is something that in Italy is a very highly paid and highly skilled job.

Presenter12:07

And in this country it's not so widely accepted or understood, but in Covent Garden less nowadays, I think, but certainly when I was there, there was hardly an opera that wasn't prompted. And it was a great training, a great experience for me as a way to get to know unfamiliar pieces.

Presenter12:23

For instance, in my year there I prompted Rosencavalier, Salome, and Arabella, works now that I've conducted.

Mark Elder12:28

What

Presenter12:30

But ten years ago I knew nothing of them, and it was a great chance to unfold these scores and to explore a little bit what was in them.

Mark Elder12:37

You went to a conducting seminar in Liverpool held by Sir Charles Groves, which was very useful to you.

Presenter12:43

Yes, it was. In fact, it was the first time that I'd conducted a professional orchestra. And very terrifying it was, too. There were four of us altogether, and we all got on quite well.

Presenter12:51

which was a help because the strain on us all during that fortnight was considerable.

Mark Elder12:55

Was it there that uh you met Edward Dunt?

Presenter12:58

No. I met Edward Downes actually at my audition for Covent Garden. He was there on the panel.

Presenter13:04

It was he who suggested you went to Australia with him.

Presenter13:07

Yes, it was, actually.

Presenter13:09

While we were working together at Covent Garden, I think it was on Rigoletto.

Presenter13:13

one morning at the the London Welsh Centre, funnily enough, he said to me that he'd just taken up a post as the musical director of the Australian Opera Company, and that he was looking for one or two young people who would have a go at emigrating for a bit and going to work in Australia, and he wanted me to think about it.

Presenter13:31

And he said that he could promise me conducting experience out there, which was something that operatically is very hard to come by in London, since there are so few chances, and in the whole of England, of course, not many opera houses.

Presenter13:42

And I remember thinking very hard about it, and trying to weigh up what I would be missing by going, and was this a wise step? And this is really extraordinary to think of it in this way when one looks back, because there was no question that it was a marvellous thing to have done, and I am very grateful to Ted that he gave me that opportunity.

Mark Elder13:59

Those were the very early days of of the Sydney Opera.

Presenter14:02

Yes, in fact, I I was there when it opened and and I conducted the the second performance. Ted did the first night, that was War and Peace, and and I did T Verdis Nabuka on the second night. And the experience that he gave me there was was really unparalleled. I couldn't have got it anywhere else in the world.

Mark Elder14:16

The opera house working properly when when you started a lot of difficulties with it.

Presenter14:19

No, it was a lot of

Presenter14:21

They had announced when it was going to open, this famous white elephant on the harbour there, and I think the attraction for Ted going there at all was the fact that he would lead the company in their first season there. But when that first season was was not at all clear. And I remember a taxi driver in Sydney driving me past it one day, and he said

Presenter14:38

You know, you sound like a pommy, what are you here for? and I said, Well, uh, I've come actually to work in that building over there. He said, You gotta be jerking, mate, that'll never open, they'll never finish that. They've been building that for sixteen or seventeen years. You better go home And the whole atmosphere in Sydney was a feeling that that this scar had been on their horizon. It used to be a tramshed, that particular part of the harbour, and they gradually put up this extraordinary looking building.

Presenter15:02

And nobody w really believed that it would ever be finished. But it was, and the the opening was postponed by another nine months, and the Queen came out to make an official opening, and uh it was really a terrific occasion, actually. And it is a lovely building. How long did you stay?

Presenter15:16

I was there for two and a quarter years and I missed a lot of things about Europe, and by the time I came home I was really looking forward to seeing Europe again.

Presenter15:25

But the experience that I got there and the friends that I made there

Presenter15:28

Um really very important to me. You elected to come back from Australia by sea.

Presenter15:33

Yes, I did. It was a slightly unknown quantity when we planned it, and at the time it seemed that it would be the last chance that we would ever have to actually do that trip because one needed the time, and it took six weeks.

Mark Elder15:50

It also gave you the chance to study some rather tricky scores.

Presenter15:50

It ought to

Presenter15:54

Yes, yes, that was really quite an experience. I had to learn Henze's opera The Basserids, and that was going to be the first piece I conducted when I came back to London.

Presenter16:03

and they promised me, as publishers always do,

Presenter16:07

that the score would be in Sydney before I got the boat. But it never turned up, and I shall never forget working only from the vocal score.

Presenter16:15

Fortunately, it was an excellent vocal score. I used to work every morning in the dance floor of the ship, because nobody used to come in the morning. They it was always the morning after the night before, if you see what I mean. And there'd be no one else around. But the air conditioning would be on. So you'd be in the middle of the Pacific, in in tropical heat outside, and I'd be sitting there in my T-shirt and shorts, shivering away on this dance floor, working at a dance piano. And I remember the dance the Neapolitan dance band who were on the ship with us were very interested and friendly, but I think they thought I was a little bit nuts, struggling away at all these thirteen-part discords in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Mark Elder16:46

Another record. We've got to number four. What's that?

Presenter16:50

One of the composers who I feel on a desert island I really couldn't live without is Dvorak.

Presenter16:55

I find his music to be really fresh and unpretentious, and right from the heart, and one of my most favourite pieces of his is one of the three overtures that he wrote together as a group, and it's called In Nature's Realm.

Mark Elder18:07

An excerpt from the Vochak Overture in Nature's Realm, the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Carol Ancel.

Mark Elder18:15

So you conducted the Basserids at the Coliseum. You had been offered a post as staff conductor by the English National Opera.

Presenter18:23

Yes, uh the music director then was Sir Charles McCarris, and even before I had actually done a performance in Australia, there had been talk and discussions about that I should come back to London after my time in Australia to join the Coliseum Company.

Presenter18:38

And this was a a terrific boost to me at that time, because I had no real strong idea that I would actually be a conductor for my career.

Presenter18:48

One of the great advantages of going to Australia was to find out whether or not I could do it.

Presenter18:52

And to know that I had a job to come back to was was an enormous help. How many productions had you done out there?

Presenter18:59

I think I did nine or ten different operas and a hundred and sixty five performances.

Presenter19:04

Which productions do you remember?

Mark Elder19:06

at the Colosseum from your earlier days there, with particular affection.

Presenter19:11

Well, I remember the Bassrids with great affection and interest. Henser came to produce it and conduct it himself.

Presenter19:18

which meant that the two people who were going to assist him, on the stage and in the pit, as it were, were going to be very much involved with it, because he actually couldn't be everywhere at once.

Presenter19:26

and he had agreed that I should conduct the last two performances.

Presenter19:30

It's an enormous work, written for an enormous orchestra, and it was a baptism by fire, really.

Presenter19:35

But uh I did a performance and um then the company went on strike.

Presenter19:39

So I shall always remember the Batrids, and all the rumours about the fact that it was my performance that closed the company are untrue. But that was certainly a very interesting and unusual piece to start off in London with.

Presenter19:53

The other pieces that I've uh I remember greatly are uh the production I did of Salome.

Mark Elder19:57

Uh Yeah.

Presenter19:58

I took that over at rather short notice. Yes, I did. Sir Charles McKeris himself was going to conduct it, and he's a very busy man, and I think he decided about three months before the performances that he really couldn't cope.

Presenter20:09

that he'd got uh rather too many other engagements, and um very generously he he asked me to do it.

Presenter20:16

As it turned out, it was a very important production for me because it introduced me to Joachim Hertz, who is now the intendant of the Kongische Uber in East Berlin. And at that time I admired him enormously, and I think what he did for Salome was really tremendous, and it was a very exciting time. He's a very demanding man, and as a result of that production, he invited me to go and work with him again in East Berlin itself.

Mark Elder20:41

You were rather specializing in in modern German opera at that time. I mean, inadvertently, I presume.

Presenter20:47

Totally, yes, because really I enjoy working on Strauss's music. But for me, Verdi and Wagner come on the ladder before Strauss.

Presenter20:56

Record number five.

Presenter20:57

Well, this is by way of a contrast. One of the the records that I have, and I've played, I think, almost more than any other.

Presenter21:05

Are some Fred Aster songs, and I think Fred Astaire is one of the great performing personalities of the century.

Presenter21:11

And although his reputation is primarily based on his quite extraordinary talent as a dancer,

Presenter21:18

His records of his songs that come from his films I think are are also a great testament to another facet of his art.

Presenter21:26

And so the one I've chosen

Presenter21:28

Is only a taste, but for me it's a very important taste of his work. It's called I Used to be Colourblind.

Speaker 421:34

I used to be colorblind, but I met you, and now I find There's green in the grass, there's gold in the moon, there's blue in the skies, that semicircle that was always hanging about.

Speaker 421:52

It's not a storm cloud, it's a rainbow, And you brought the colours out.

Mark Elder22:00

Fred Astair. Now, with effect from the beginning of this year, at a very early age, Mark, you took over the English National as Music Director, a big job in a big theatre.

Mark Elder22:12

and the vast amount of work, I should think.

Presenter22:13

Yes, it is.

Mark Elder22:14

There were fears that your approach was going to be rather avant-garde for general taste. There was your friendship with Hertz.

Mark Elder22:22

uh your predilection for Hensa and other moderns and uh

Mark Elder22:26

Well, the name of David Pountney was quoted again. But in fact, these fears have not been justified.

Presenter22:33

Well, I didn't know that. Avant garde, eh? Hm Well, my musical and dramatic sympathies, I hope, have always been wide and Catholic, and I never envisaged that I would be turning the Coliseum into nothing written before nineteen hundred and thirty, as it were.

Presenter22:50

But I think one of the achievements of Lord Harwood's regime in the Coliseum is that he has actually got a very wide repertoire for the company, and he has introduced onto the stage pieces that haven't been seen before in London and that have had a public success.

Presenter23:05

I do think that I want the company to develop more as a theatre company.

Presenter23:09

What I would like to happen for the company is that people, the audience, come to the Coliseum never quite sure what type of entertainment they're going to be given.

Presenter23:16

though the way we present even Horiel chestnuts should never be taken for granted.

Presenter23:22

I don't know whether this is avant-garde or not, but I think that as a nation we have a long way to go in the way that we present opera.

Mark Elder23:29

Yes.

Presenter23:29

I would like to break a few of the barriers down.

Mark Elder23:31

and keep the excitement going.

Presenter23:33

Oh sure, yeah.

Mark Elder23:34

Yes. What other excitements have you got for us at the Coliseum?

Presenter23:38

Well, we're just about to launch into a new production of Boris Gudnov that the company hasn't done for years. The next season's plans are still not absolutely finalised, but I'm sure that we will be doing a new production of Tristan and Isolde with Reggie Goodall. This is something that we've all been looking forward to for some time, and it's something that he's been preparing himself, of course, for not only in Wales with his own performances there, but at the Coliseum already. And this is something that I'm very pleased should happen as part of my regime, certainly.

Presenter24:09

Record number six.

Presenter24:12

Well record number six.

Presenter24:13

Is Einheldenlemen by Richard Strauss?

Presenter24:17

I very much admire Kempe as a conductor.

Presenter24:21

I always have done. And I've chosen a little section from this work in the middle of the love scene.

Presenter24:26

I've always enjoyed working on Strauss's music. He's a marvellous chef. He serves up his musical ideas in with such exquisite refinement. And he's a master of writing for the orchestra.

Mark Elder25:33

An excerpt from Richard Streisse's A Hero's Life, Rudolph Kempe conducting the Dresden Orchestra.

Mark Elder25:40

Let's go straight into your seventh record.

Presenter25:43

Well, I had imagined that in the course of an extended stay on a desert island I would need one piece of chamber music.

Presenter25:50

I find listening to chamber music a great relaxation. It is so different from the music that I spend my morning and evening actually working on and conducting and thinking about.

Presenter26:00

It provides such a contrast, and I think one of the finest pieces of chamber music, and a piece that is very dear to me, is Schubert's C major string quintet.

Presenter26:10

I'd like to play a little bit from the first movement, and it's in a performance that I think is particularly interesting and unusual in that it contains Casalles, Tortelier, Isaac Stern among the team that go to make it up.

Mark Elder27:07

The opening of the Schubert String Quintet in C major. Now, Mark, you had a long time in Australia. Did you get up on the Barrier Reef, or go walk about, or gain any experience that would be useful to a castaway?

Presenter27:22

Yes, I suppose I have, actually, in the nick of time. This last summer I I had a holiday on the Barrier Reef. Did you? On my way to Sydney. And I've also had a holiday on Bali, which I don't expect any of your desert islands would contain as much richness and culture. I I imagine you're anticipating a more ascetic

Presenter27:40

A location. Oh, very. Yes, I suspected so. But could you rig up a shelter?

Presenter27:46

I am very nervous about the prospect of being isolated like this. I don't feel I have many techniques immediately at hand. I suppose if I had to rig up a shelter I would find a way to do it. I had always imagined that it would depend on the vegetation.

Mark Elder28:01

Yeah.

Presenter28:01

But I think I could rig up a shelter all right. What about food?

Presenter28:07

Much harder.

Presenter28:09

I had always imagined that I'd be no good at killing any of the the local wild animals and roasting them, but that I might be all right at risking some of the fruit and veg that one might find.

Mark Elder28:19

So you you'll be a vegetarian, you think?

Presenter28:22

I rather suspect I might. Would you try to escape? I wouldn't try to escape, and I would hope that I would keep myself going in the belief that that perhaps one day if I could arrange a smoke signal that somebody might actually uh spot it.

Mark Elder28:34

Right.

Mark Elder28:36

Let's get back to music. We've been talking about your big productions at the Coliseum.

Mark Elder28:41

But forgetting that you are now a principal guest conductor of

Mark Elder28:44

London Mozart players who also like music on a smaller scale.

Presenter28:48

Yes, I find the the contrast between the the grander works of the Opera House and the the the symphonies of Schubert and Haydn and Mozart a marvellous uh balance of diet, musical diet, and uh I particularly enjoy working with the London Mozart players. They've uh had a long and distinguished career as a chamber orchestra in this country, and uh I'm very grateful for the opportunity to develop that side of music.

Mark Elder29:11

Now next year you're making your debut in Bayreuth.

Presenter29:14

Yes, this is indeed a very daunting experience. The one thing that I have to hang on to is the fact that I have conducted Meistersinger a number of times in Australia, and I hope that the working atmosphere at Bayreuth will enable me to feel at home. I've been there a couple of times already to get to know people. And I must say Wolfgang Wagner, who is going to produce this new production, is a wonderful man, even if his type of German dialect is incredibly difficult to understand. I have to be very patient. And Meistersinger itself has long been a favourite of mine. I adore it, and I think particularly the second act is one of his most original and outstanding creations. And I think really that my last record must be a part of that.

Speaker 430:08

Home sets the heel, ein weino housti bunk to meel.

Presenter30:12

I know how steep I'm

Speaker 430:18

Built me to creams the hoard thou shalt.

Speaker 430:27

Those cease to meet undelabend Golly believe

Speaker 430:36

And here are me.

Speaker 430:40

Our story turned out in shrines and talked.

Presenter30:44

Uh

Speaker 430:45

Gell em again, so

Mark Elder30:54

An excerpt from the second act of Wagner's The Mastersingers of Nuremberg, conducted by Rudolf Kempe.

Mark Elder31:01

Now if you could take only one disk instead of the eight you've chosen, which would it be?

Presenter31:07

Well, I can only conclude that the pain of having to take one from this list of eight is so great that it's easier, and I think time has shown this to me,

Presenter31:19

If I take the Frederick.

Mark Elder31:21

The Fred Aster, right.

Mark Elder31:23

And one luxury to take to the island with you nothing of any practical use.

Presenter31:27

Well, since I assume that you're not going to allow me to take my wife, be in in that she would be too practical.

Presenter31:33

and I can assure you mine would be.

Presenter31:35

I suppose what I would like to take is a very tender memory of her.

Presenter31:41

And that would be her trifle, her Sherry trifle.

Mark Elder31:43

Yeah.

Presenter31:43

Yeah.

Mark Elder31:44

All right, we'll arrange some kind of uh solar-powered freezer and you can fill it up, the biggest freezer we can manage. Last a long time. Promise, promise it would have to.

Mark Elder31:55

And one book apart from the Bible and Shakspere.

Presenter31:58

Well, I think of the the books that I've not many books that I've read and loved I think the one that that I would love to have with me is Tolstoy's War and Peace.

Mark Elder32:07

Right. And thank you, Mark Elder, for letting us hear your Desert Island Disc.

Presenter32:11

Well, thank you, Roy, very much for inviting me.

Mark Elder32:14

See you there. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 332:22

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