Neville Marriner

Speaker 10:00

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

Speaker 10:05

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

Presenter0:30

On our desert island this week is the conductor Neville Mariner.

Presenter0:34

Neville, could you endure loneliness?

Neville Marriner0:35

Dieu.

Presenter0:37

Yes, I think I could. I've uh put up with quite a lot of it in my travels. Apart from that, what b would be the worst thing about a desert island existence? Is there any particular fear or or phobia that it would conjure up? A mosquito.

Neville Marriner0:49

Mosquitoes, I think, is the thing that I I dislike the most. I think I've been bitten by more mosquitoes in open air concerts. Our island is riddled with them. In choosing your eight discs, did you follow any particular plan?

Presenter0:53

Yeah, I agree.

Neville Marriner1:02

I suppose really I planned them from my earliest memories of music making, and just brought em up to date as I went through trying to plan out some sort of programmatic form of life.

Presenter1:16

So where do we start?

Neville Marriner1:18

when I was very young, I think at home, which is uh was in Lincoln and uh I suppose the first music I had was at home with my parents, both of whom were uh musical, amateur musicians. Uh my mother had a very sweet soprano voice, and my father was a pianist and violinist and conducted the local church choir.

Speaker 21:24

Hmm.

Neville Marriner1:44

And so I got used to falling asleep at night, I suppose, with this music going on around me.

Neville Marriner1:51

And then in sort of self-defence they uh gave me a a small violin when I was about five.

Neville Marriner1:58

and I was able to join in. And that, I suppose, was the beginning of of my interest in music. I was unaware of it at the time, I suppose.

Neville Marriner2:07

But there never seemed to be any moment where I didn't know what I was going to do. It was, I think, always assumed after a certain age, after a number of local competitive festivals, that I was going to be a violin player.

Neville Marriner2:23

Well now where do we start? What's your first record?

Neville Marriner2:26

I would think my earliest memories would be of of my father conducting the church choir and inviting such famous people as Isabel Bailey and Harold Williams to come.

Neville Marriner2:41

to Lincoln to be his soloists, for what at that time I remember were incredibly modest fees. But they were very famous people, and I love hearing that sort of music.

Speaker 22:56

Come on, the prayer.

Speaker 23:01

Uh

Speaker 23:04

Lord my God

Speaker 23:10

The spirit of this time return.

Speaker 23:44

Uh

Presenter3:50

Isabel Bailey with Harold Williams in part of What Have I to Do with Thee from Mendelssohn's Elijah.

Presenter3:57

You went to Lincoln School. Was there a lot of music there?

Neville Marriner4:00

Yeah.

Presenter4:00

Yeah.

Neville Marriner4:00

No. It was rather second rate music at s at school.

Neville Marriner4:04

And one always felt a little bit weedy, I think.

Neville Marriner4:07

But being a musician, or being known to be a violin player at school, was no particular distinction and I think in self defence you rather desperately threw yourself into playing games.

Presenter4:17

Now what about these compet

Neville Marriner4:19

Yeah.

Presenter4:20

Yeah.

Neville Marriner4:20

contests or festivals that

Presenter4:21

Yeah.

Neville Marriner4:21

Do you use the computer?

Presenter4:22

Uh

Neville Marriner4:22

Absolutely terrifying, I suppose, in retrospect. They were sort of rituals, competitive rituals, throughout that part of England at that time. In the 1930s, one lined one's children up against each other, and you have these horrific sessions where perhaps twenty children played the same piece over and over again to these desperate people who were sitting having to judge them. And of course, family feuds grew quite intense as the children met in various towns, not only in Lincoln but in Nottingham and in Louth and in Skegness. The judges had to get out of town quickly. Oh, indeed, they did. In fact, they were severely judged themselves, of course, by the local population. Their decisions were always inspected very, very closely.

Presenter5:00

The judges

Neville Marriner5:12

You took a scholarship to the Royal College of Music. You were very young indeed. I was yes, I was about fourteen at the time, I suppose. In fact, it was due to the music festival in Lincoln that I was offered this scholarship by one of the adjudicators there. He suggested that I went up to the Royal College of Music to play to the then principal, who was Sir Hugh Allen, who was a splendid figure from another century, of course, really. He was certainly a Victorian. Did you go up to London as young as that? Yes, I did. It was the first time I'd been to London. But you went up to work as a student at the school. No. In fact, I was given the scholarship, but then it was suggested that I stayed at school until I'd finished what was then the school certificate, until I was reasonably educated.

Speaker 15:35

Who is this?

Speaker 15:42

Uh

Presenter5:46

No.

Neville Marriner5:56

And then I was allowed to come back and I think I was just sixteen when I came to London.

Presenter6:00

This was just about the time of the outbreak of war just before

Neville Marriner6:03

Yes, it was. It was uh not a good time to come to London. It was nineteen forty, I suppose, when I came. At the college it was business.

Presenter6:09

As as usual.

Neville Marriner6:09

Business as usual, except for one or two interruptions, of course, as there were air raids, and uh we we spent a lot of our time fire watching in the building, of course, which was great fun. You were taking the violin, of course. What was your second subject? I was ostensibly studying the piano. I was really a rotten pianist. I studied composition and I also studied the viola.

Presenter6:31

Let's break here for your second record, what next?

Neville Marriner6:34

Well, I suppose uh reflecting that time in my life, when I first came to Royal College of Music, my teacher was Willie Reid, WH Reid, who was the concert master, the leader of the London Symphony Orchestra, and a great personal friend of Elgar.

Neville Marriner6:50

And I think it's it's really Willie Reid who wrote most of the difficult parts of the Elgar Violin concerto. But the great exponent of the concerto was someone who taught me a little later at the Royal College of Music, and that was Albert Sammonds, and it's his performance I'd like.

Speaker 26:55

Yeah.

Presenter8:04

Part of the first movement of the Elgar Violin Concerto, Albert Salmons with the new Queens Hall Orchestra conducted by Sir Henry Wood.

Presenter8:12

Oh, quite soon, of course, you were.

Presenter8:14

Called up into the army. What did they give you to do then?

Neville Marriner8:18

Oh, well, I originally went into the infantry.

Neville Marriner8:21

where I went through the usual basic training, but I tried to short cut that misery and joined a particular unit which certainly gave me one or two surprises, but very fortunately put me into a military hospital after two and a half years in the army.

Neville Marriner8:36

So after about five months in a military hospital I was sent back to the Royal College of Music. Had you been able to keep your music going while you were in uniform? No, uh not really. The army at that particular stage of the war was not um encouraging the arts too much.

Neville Marriner8:53

And so I was really more fortunate than most, I think, by finishing up in the hospital. I was certainly discharged from the army much quicker than most of my contemporaries.

Presenter9:03

So back to the Royal College, where you were awarded a gold medal.

Presenter9:07

While at college, had you any student jobs to do to to make pocket money? Were you playing in cafes and that all?

Neville Marriner9:13

Oh, yes. That was a golden time, of course, for students, because the hard core of the the English music profession was still tucked away in various parts of the military forces.

Neville Marriner9:24

And so we used to freelance with the symphony orchestras a great deal. We certainly played in cafes, and you would play for anything that would would pay you. And of course unions really didn't supervise you in any way in those days, so you took what you could get.

Speaker 19:24

So

Speaker 19:27

Great.

Neville Marriner9:40

What happened when you left the Royal College?

Neville Marriner9:43

Well, the war had ended and as usual as a student you think that perhaps the grass is greener somewhere else. And I always had a feeling that perhaps I had not experienced the full academic uh potential of uh the London teaching institutions and I thought I would try Paris. And so I went across uh to study with uh Benedetti at the Conservatoire in in Paris there. How long did you stay in Paris? Uh I was there nearly a year.

Neville Marriner10:11

And I learned a great deal, I think. I learned perhaps that the

Neville Marriner10:16

Conservatoire method of teaching is much more interested in perfectionism as far as instrumental performance is concerned. It is not a very Catholic musical education there, rather narrow, in fact. I think in general terms you have a better education at the English institutions. In specific terms you perhaps become a better instrumentalist if you go to one of the foreign institutions.

Neville Marriner10:40

Record number three.

Neville Marriner10:42

Well, it was very shortly after this time, of having been a student, that I realized that I had to join a symphony orchestra.

Neville Marriner10:53

To keep a mm a livelihood of any description going.

Neville Marriner10:59

I'd um become married.

Neville Marriner11:01

And needed a secure income, and all the freelance work wasn't really providing this for me. So I joined the London Symphony Orchestra.

Neville Marriner11:09

and the principal conductor,

Neville Marriner11:12

of the orchestra very shortly after I joined became a Pierre Monteur.

Neville Marriner11:17

And uh I think that I would like to hear uh one of the performances that we've made under his battle now, and that is of the Romeo and Juliet music, uh, Belio's.

Presenter12:27

Part of the Scene of Love from Romeo and Juliet by Berlioz, Monteur conducting the London Symphony Orchestra.

Presenter12:36

You had done some teaching. You were at Eton for a while, when?

Neville Marriner12:39

Yes, I was. Uh that was another one of the uh the jobs I had during my freelance period, I suppose. It adds to your tapestry of life experience, but um but it was long enough, I think one year was quite long.

Presenter12:53

And then you thought for a while at was it the r

Neville Marriner12:54

Royal College or College. Uh you can't resist being invited to teach at one of the Royal Institutions here because you're called Professor straight away and if you're in your twenties it always seems a sudden elevation. Did you envisage at that time being a concert violinist? Oh, I think so.

Presenter12:55

Yes, I went back.

Neville Marriner13:15

I tussle rather with the teaching institutions here that there seems to be no time at which they tell you uh that you are not going to be a solo violin player. I mean you are left to discover yourself that if you always wanted to be high fits that the place is already filled. I mean that uh the position has been taken. You were fascinated by small ensemble playing.

Neville Marriner13:36

Yes. I think this is the way that uh most good instrumentalists in this country go now, that it is not a time uh of solo career making.

Neville Marriner13:47

And uh most people veer towards chamber music as a way of keeping some uh profile of their own, some personality. You played a lot with Thurston Dodd. Yes, I did. I'd met him during the war w when we were both in hospital, and uh

Neville Marriner14:02

He at that time was a mathematician who had decided uh to give up that career and become a musician after the war. And we we met uh spasmodically for a few years after that, and then decided to make an ensemble together.

Neville Marriner14:15

Another record please.

Neville Marriner14:17

I suppose part of the reason for joining the London Symphony Orchestra was security, and security bred a family, as far as I was concerned.

Neville Marriner14:28

My uh youngest child, who was son.

Neville Marriner14:31

was then able to go to uh King's College, Cambridge as a choral student, as a chorister.

Neville Marriner14:39

And I suppose that these were some of the most memorable musical occasions of our life as a family. My daughter.

Neville Marriner14:48

Was always interested in music, but fortunately uh for me decided not to be a musician. Uh my wife has always been very long suffering about our entire musical experience and has really held us all together as a manager. My son is the only other competitor in the family, and he as a member of this this choir became perhaps slightly more professional than I was at that time. And so I look back on those occasions with a great deal of pleasure. And this is a carol from the King's College Christmas service.

Speaker 215:19

And his glorious arts such as

Speaker 215:26

As is the rose and pages.

Speaker 215:37

There is no rules of such but

Speaker 215:45

As is the rose that bear Jesus.

Presenter16:08

The choir of King's College, Cambridge, directed by David Wilcox, and a fifteenth century carol, There Is No Rose.

Presenter16:17

You stayed a good long time with the London Symphony Orchestra, and in fact you led the second violin. That's right, yes.

Presenter16:25

or next came conducting.

Neville Marriner16:26

Yeah.

Presenter16:26

Yeah.

Neville Marriner16:27

That was really a sort of cross fertilization between the Academy and Pierre Monteu.

Neville Marriner16:35

The Academy was something that we'd put together as a sort of form of self-defence against playing in a symphony orchestra. There is a great deal of pleasure in playing symphonic music. Of course, it is a some of the best literature that you're ever going to encounter. But that you do lose your identity slightly in a symphony orchestra. And several of the younger ones of us that had joined at the same time decided that we'd like to have a smaller group where our own personal contribution was more obvious. We had more responsibility.

Neville Marriner17:10

And so the Academy was formed in a very casual

Presenter17:13

Away.

Presenter17:13

Now you called yourself the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields. What was the tie up with the church?

Neville Marriner17:20

Jack Churchill, who was the director of music at Saint Martin in the Fields, was the the keyboard player, the harpsichord player of the Academy.

Neville Marriner17:30

And he invited us to to rehearse there because we had nowhere else to go. And eventually we even gave concerts there. Those were our very first concerts. I think the first one was on Friday the thirteenth of November. Which year was that? Fifty eight, wasn't it? Well, yes, it is fifty eight. I think we've been advertising ourselves as being twenty one years old. It's like taking a year off your age. But it was just that uh we didn't discover that we'd given concerts in nineteen fifty eight until we started trying to assemble all the materials to celebrate this twenty-first birthday. So it's really our twenty-second. It was a a sort of ad hoc group, really. Oh yes, it was. Completely. It was just a a group of friends.

Presenter18:03

It was a

Neville Marriner18:08

There's no money changing hands and and we really had no particular ambitions to make it a permanent institution. It just sort of became, by good fortune, uh successful, I think. And mainly baroque music. Mainly baroque music. And so didn't need a conductor at all. I just used to direct this from the concert master's seat.

Neville Marriner18:29

But um later on, when we decided to expand the repertoire and expand the numbers of the the people playing, geographically it became necessary that they should be able to see what was going on, and I suppose I tentatively waved a bow, a violin bow, to begin with.

Neville Marriner18:46

from a sitting position, and then I suppose I stood and waved a bow.

Neville Marriner18:50

And eventually I put the bow down and used my hands and I was sort of half and half conducting. And then Pierre Monteur said, Neville, why don't you stand up and conduct like a man? and I said, Well, uh

Presenter19:00

Mm-hmm. Uh

Neville Marriner19:01

I can't even conduct a 73 bus, you know. And he said, Well, if you come to my school in America.

Neville Marriner19:06

Take an afternoon off, and I can teach you to conduct, sort of thing.

Neville Marriner19:10

And uh th that's what happened, really. He took you under his wing. Yes, and once I got onto my feet, it's very hard to g sit down again.

Speaker 219:12

Uh

Presenter19:12

He took you one

Neville Marriner19:19

Right.

Neville Marriner19:20

Another record.

Neville Marriner19:23

I suppose among all the people that um one comes to admire as musicians when you're working with them closely, many of them become your friends, and it's very hard out of all the the number of friends that we have to single

Neville Marriner19:37

any one particular person. But a very close friend of both mine and and my wife's is Janet Baker, and I suppose Janet gave me more thrills per bar in the early days when I first heard her voice than anyone. So because she was the beginning of this excitement, I would choose one of her records, and I think probably it's heritzade by Ravel.

Speaker 120:36

Yeah.

Speaker 220:41

Um

Presenter20:58

Janet Baker singing the opening of Azi, the first song in Rabel's Sheherazade. Now, the Academy of Saint Martin in the Field, how many discs have you now made with the Academy?

Presenter21:11

Yeah.

Neville Marriner21:11

Oh dear.

Neville Marriner21:12

Well, more than two hundred, I would say, but it's hard to estimate because they keep revamping them with different covers and different couplings of old performances. That's about that's quick mathematics, about one a month since you started. I suppose it is, yes.

Speaker 121:28

It's

Neville Marriner21:29

Well, there have been years when we've made as many as twenty two, I know, in one year. In fact,

Neville Marriner21:34

But last year I think they released twenty-nine records that we'd made.

Neville Marriner21:39

But uh some of these I'm sure are revamps. And many tours, of course. Yes, endless touring. I think one of the problems that the Academy has is that it could work every day of the year in some part of the world. And originally when we started because it was for pleasure and we wanted to try and keep the the entire feeling of the group

Neville Marriner22:02

Alive and alert, we thought that four or five months of of the year would be quite enough for us to work together.

Neville Marriner22:09

What has happened is that due to certain economic pressures as well as as artistic pressures, we've had to work more and more, I think. Now that I work much less with them, they are free to travel around the world as much as they like, and we really only meet to make gramophone records.

Presenter22:25

You've also taken over for various periods uh similar chamber orchestras overseas, Los Angeles, for example.

Neville Marriner22:31

Yes, that was a a a bonus, really, because that was the time when I first began to put the violin away. I didn't take my violin to America at all, and for the ten years I was with that orchestra I only conducted them.

Presenter22:44

Well, now you decided that the chamber music scene really wasn't big enough. You went for the big orchestras. Where did you start?

Presenter22:51

Yeah.

Neville Marriner22:51

It started uh with I think it was probably the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the first people to say, Would I come along to Tanglewood and do some of their chamber orchestral concerts there.

Neville Marriner23:03

And as a quid pro quo, I said yes, I would, but uh I would also like to do a symphonic concert at the same time.

Neville Marriner23:11

And so the first break into symphonic concerts came there, and then I think it was the New York Philharmonic after that. And gradually the the career really started in America.

Presenter23:22

Uh

Neville Marriner23:22

Yes, you've been very closely associated with

Presenter23:24

Ripper, Minnesota or

Neville Marriner23:24

Well now I've been uh appointed their music director, yes, which means that I'm the boss of that orchestra. So at the moment you're a regular Uh

Presenter23:33

Attender at London Airport.

Neville Marriner23:35

I'm afraid so. Yes, indeed.

Neville Marriner23:37

Another record. Well, uh I suppose one of the people I admired most when I was a player and since I've been a conductor is George Zell. I think what he did for the Cleveland Orchestra is what every conductor would like to do for his own orchestra, and that is turn them from a a national institution into an international instrument.

Neville Marriner23:59

And I think I would choose his performance of one of the Schumann symphonies, maybe the fourth symphony.

Presenter24:57

Part of the fourth movement of Schumann's fourth symphony, George Searle conducting the Cleveland Orchestra. Now for the first time you're working in opera.

Neville Marriner25:07

Yes, it's um a great temptation, I think, for all conductors to get involved in in music theatre. How did it start? It started first of all when I was invited to conduct a Boheme at um Manchester, the Royal Northern School of Music.

Neville Marriner25:25

The director of the the school there.

Neville Marriner25:28

persuaded me at one Cheltenham festival that that would be a good idea. And I said, well, I'm really too old for that sort of thing. No one will ever give me the sort of time I would need to really get to know how an opera works. I would want time to work backstage and I'd want to know about the lighting and I'd want to know about the costumes as well as the music. And he said, well, if we give you the facilities, will you take the time? And so I took nearly three months, about three years ago, to do exactly this. And obviously I got hooked completely by the whole prospect of opera. Very shortly after that, I was invited to do Figaro at the Aix-en-Provence Festival.

Neville Marriner26:10

And that again was a a really idyllic experience because of course Aix-en-Provence in the summer in a very pretty theatre with the Academy in the pit of course, which was a great bonus. Was a a remarkable experience too. Then there followed one or two invitations to do other things, on some of which I've unfortunately not been able to do because I've now become permanently attached to one American orchestra. But uh the prospects for the future, I think uh there's a Chenarenteler at uh the Edinburgh Festival coming up and we're recording the Barber of Seville and uh I'm doing a Peter Grimes in Germany in 83. So all these things uh are piling up. It's just a matter of being somewhat short of time, I'm afraid.

Speaker 126:16

Yeah.

Speaker 126:22

Close.

Presenter26:56

One way or another you're pretty busy.

Neville Marriner26:58

Indeed.

Presenter27:00

We've got to record number seven.

Neville Marriner27:03

I think one of the results of living in Los Angeles for about ten years, on and off, uh was that I developed a great taste for the sound that their um string players made.

Neville Marriner27:20

And although I won't play records of my orchestra there, I would like to play the Hollywood string quartet version, or the Hollywood string sextet version, of the Schoenberg Verkletenach.

Neville Marriner27:33

I think this is a piece I'd known long before I'd lived there, and one of the beauties of this was that Paul Schur, who's a member of the quartet, was my concert master in the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.

Presenter28:37

The Augmented Hollywood String Quartet, Schoenberg's Transfigured Night. Now the trouble with violinists, Neville, so far as Desert Islands uh are concerned, is that they've always taken such care of their hands and aren't much good at practical jobs. How do you think you would make artists as a castaway?

Neville Marriner28:54

Well, I love practical jobs. I really do like knocking holes in walls and and putting nails in. Splendid. Could you build a hut, then?

Neville Marriner29:02

If the materials were right, I could. I'd probably have to tie it together there, I suppose, but uh Very likely. There's no need to knock any holes in walls. Any good at fishing?

Presenter29:08

Was

Neville Marriner29:11

No, very unsuccessful. Even uh when my children were pulling things from the deep, I was always the one with the empty line.

Neville Marriner29:20

Shaming. A small craft? Do you know anything about them? I know enough to uh probably point it in one direction and keep it in that direction, I think. I would not be terribly skilful. Would you try and escape?

Neville Marriner29:32

No, not really. I think I'm too idle.

Presenter29:37

You sound a little cautious, too, and I don't blame you.

Presenter29:41

You haven't chosen any of your own disks over.

Neville Marriner29:44

No I know roughly what they sound like.

Neville Marriner29:48

And I'm not sure that they would continue to give me pleasure over a long period of time.

Presenter29:54

What is your last one number?

Neville Marriner29:56

But

Presenter29:56

Yeah.

Neville Marriner29:56

Yeah.

Presenter29:56

Yeah.

Neville Marriner29:57

I suppose one of the most perfect instrumentalists perhaps the most perfect instrumentalist in the world is Jascha Heifitz, and I don't think I would want to be without some of his music making anyway.

Neville Marriner30:12

I got to know him quite well in Los Angeles, more on a table tennis playing basis than a violin playing basis. But I think perhaps more than anyone else I would like to have been him. To have this extraordinary exalted feeling of making that sort of noise on an instrument must be a quite unique experience. I mean he mu must be separated from the rest of the world. And in fact I believe he is. I don't think it's made him terribly happy.

Neville Marriner30:41

But I'm not sure that it isn't worth it if you can play as well as this. I'd like him to play some of the Walton concerto.

Presenter31:47

The opening of Walton's concerto for violin and orchestra, Jascha Heifitz with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by the composer. If you could take only one disc out of the eight you've given us, which.

Neville Marriner31:59

I think it would be the one of King's College, Cambridge. I think those were the happiest family experiences we've had.

Presenter32:05

The cattle.

Presenter32:07

And one luxury to take to the island, any one thing you like, but nothing of any practical use.

Neville Marriner32:12

Hmm.

Presenter32:12

A family doesn't count.

Neville Marriner32:14

It happened.

Neville Marriner32:15

It has to be inanimate.

Neville Marriner32:19

Well, I suppose then

Neville Marriner32:21

It would have to be the violin. That would be the most absorbing thing that I could think of, not having played it for uh so many years now, that I think I've got quite a lot of work to do before

Neville Marriner32:32

Rheumatism sets in.

Presenter32:34

Well, we'll give you a spare, two violins, and one book, apart from the Bible and Shakespeare, which are already on the

Neville Marriner32:40

Yes, I thought about this and I really think that Life on Earth would be a very good book to take with me there. I think I could find out what it was all about on a desert island.

Presenter32:50

With David's book in the middle of the middle.

Presenter32:53

And thank you, Neville Mariner, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. It was a great pleasure. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 133:06

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