Eric Shilling

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young and this is a download from the Desert Island Discs archive. This edition may be slightly different from what was actually broadcast, but it's the only version we have. It comes from the British Library's radio collection. It was archived without the music, so although the Castaways choices are introduced, they're not part of this recording. Full details can be found on the Castaways page on the Desert Island Discs website.

Speaker 10:26

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty one.

Speaker 10:30

And the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Speaker 20:33

This year the English National Opera Company celebrates its fiftieth birthday, and I'm glad to welcome ashore one of the principal singers in the company, who has been with them for quite a few years. It's Eric Schilling.

Eric Shilling0:44

Eric, you're a Londoner, is that? Absolutely, yes, born and bred in East London, you know, Cockney parents and so on. You went to school there? Yes, I did. My education was very simple, nothing very grand and glorious. I did go to the local high school and there, in fact, I found myself in the early days, at any rate, in the same class as Frank Muir, which might be of interest to some people. Did he wear a pink bow tie in those days? No, I'm afraid he didn't. Although I do remember he was a very literary young man even then. I believe he wrote a play in the first year at the secondary school as it was then. Did you grow up to hear a lot of music? In fact, I did, although it was not very what you might call classical music.

Speaker 10:49

And

Speaker 11:09

Which uh might be of interest to some people.

Eric Shilling1:34

My family background wasn't completely unmusical. My sister used to play the piano, but uh my chief musical influence, I suppose, in a way, was my old father, who

Eric Shilling1:47

Was a compulsive singer. He sang about the house all day long, when he was at home cleaning his boots or painting the shed and so on. And

Eric Shilling1:58

He was a great attender at the music hall and when he was on holiday at the seaside at the Pierots, and it's amazing the number of things he learned.

Eric Shilling2:08

Merely by attending there. I mean, after all, there was no radio or anything of that sort in those days, and the only way he could possibly learn them was by attendance. And he had a whole lot of musical and seaside concert party songs. And in fact, every Christmas, up until he died, which was not so many years ago, one of our chief joys of Christmas was his recital of his repertoire. Everybody joined in all the choruses and so on. It was really something. Yeah.

Speaker 22:42

to remember. And you've chosen a record.

Eric Shilling2:44

Well, yes, I would very much like to have one of his old music hall songs. Could I have Why Can't We Have the Sea in London? which was sung by Billy Williams.

Speaker 22:44

Well yes I would

Speaker 22:59

The voice of Billy Williams.

Speaker 23:01

As a boy, what did you want to be, Eric?

Eric Shilling3:04

Well, I was quite perplexed. I really didn't know what I wanted to be. In fact, uh, up until the time I left school, I still was very undecided. I had some artistic ability. I I could draw very well. And perhaps it's significant that when I first left school, I went into an office where I was responsible for publicity and that sort of thing, and uh photographs and display arrangements and so on.

Speaker 23:34

Thorn

Eric Shilling3:34

Yeah.

Speaker 23:34

What sort of office was it?

Eric Shilling3:35

What

Speaker 23:35

Well selling

Eric Shilling3:35

Well selling. That was a company which made typewriter ribbons and carbon paper and so on. But I wasn't with them for very long. It sounds rather like today in the recession and so on. I soon got the sack as we used to call it in those days. I was dismissed. And after a short period of unemployment, I found myself working in accountancy for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. That sounds pretty prosperous. Well, yes, it was. And of course, when I left it to do singing, everybody criticised me and said, well, whatever you're doing with an unreliable profession like that when you could be in oil. What inspired that change?

Speaker 13:53

But in those

Speaker 24:05

That sounds good.

Eric Shilling4:19

Uninhibited singing, if I may put it that way, was rather a family tradition, and I carried that with me into the office and occasionally was singing there, which soon got me into trouble. But at least a fellow pen-pusher proved to be a piano and singing student at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and he soon persuaded me that I ought to try my luck with a few lessons there. So along I went and started singing lessons. Now, to the office one day, there was a group of us who used to meet for various talks and so on, and Joan Cross, the celebrated soprano, came along, gave us a talk about

Speaker 25:05

You do that?

Eric Shilling5:06

opera and in particular Sadler's Wells. And subsequently we that that group we went to Saddler's Wells

Eric Shilling5:16

On a Saturday we went in the Saturday afternoon to look round the theatre. Uh I can remember seeing the wardrobe, all the marvellous costumes and the props. And I also remember going up in the flies and gazing down on the stage and seeing the matinee performance which was the ballet, The Nutcracker.

Eric Shilling5:40

In the evening we actually went to the performance, which was The Marriage of Figaro, and this was in fact the first opera performance I'd ever seen in my life, and I found it absolutely stunning.

Speaker 25:55

Um

Eric Shilling5:57

And of course I was literally hooked on opera, and every Friday night, after office hours, along I would go and get in the queue and go to Saddlers Wells in the Gods

Eric Shilling6:13

for ninepence.

Speaker 26:15

Ninepence a bunch, yes. Three and a half p for today standard.

Eric Shilling6:16

We've got here.

Eric Shilling6:18

Yeah, so

Eric Shilling6:21

Yes. And um well quite frankly, if I may choose my next record, what I would love it to be is The Marriage of Figaro, because that really is my favourite opera. And the part I would like to choose for more than one reason, partly because it's The Marriage of Figaro.

Speaker 26:28

Yeah.

Eric Shilling6:44

But also because my wife, Edica Johns, and I used to do school's recitals. We did about five hundred of them, an introduction to opera.

Eric Shilling6:55

And we used to do a whole lot of excerpts from Mary Jefficro, and the one which I would like to choose because of that is the song she used to sing.

Eric Shilling7:05

which is Devieni non ta da, which occurs in the last act. And I like the recording of Ellie Emmerling singing it.

Speaker 27:19

Elie Ameling singing De Vienne from Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro.

Speaker 27:25

Eric, you were taking these odd lessons at the Guildhall. What was the next step after that? Well, I got a scholar.

Eric Shilling7:31

from there to the Royal College of Music.

Eric Shilling7:37

And of course I went into the offerer department there.

Speaker 27:42

Yeah.

Eric Shilling7:42

The opera then was in the charge of a marvellous old fellow.

Eric Shilling7:49

I am not sure whether he was German or Austrian. His name was Walter Grunebaum.

Eric Shilling7:54

And he was truly a great coach.

Eric Shilling7:58

He had a very worn out voice and very fractured English, and he always used to call me mister Shillinx.

Eric Shilling8:07

I remember very distinctly on one occasion he said, Mr Shillinks, will you start at the second worse?

Eric Shilling8:15

Anyway, there I made my uh sort of operatic debut in The Marriage of Figro. I did Antonio the Gardener. In fact, you won the Opera Prize at the Committee. Well, I did yes, indeed. I I don't know whether that was a sort of consolation prize, because I never won any other prize at college.

Speaker 28:26

Well, I didn't

Speaker 28:29

Yeah.

Speaker 28:32

In fact, you may

Eric Shilling8:32

You did your debut at Saddler's Wells while you were still a student. Well, yes. Now that was a very interesting thing. A fellow student of mine was going along to do an audition.

Eric Shilling8:42

And my singing teacher said, It won't do you any harm. Why don't you go along and do an audition also? So we made the application, and I went along and did the audition also. And strangely enough, I was accepted and the other student wasn't. And I was delighted to do uh small roles. Uh I started off doing Marolo, who is a courtier in Rigoletto, and I did Shona.

Speaker 19:10

Yeah.

Eric Shilling9:13

In Bohem?

Eric Shilling9:15

He's one of the students, and Doctor Kaius in Sir John in Love.

Eric Shilling9:20

I remember in the uh Boheme, there was a an awful moment. Musetta goes out to bring back with her a muff in the last act to warm the dying Mimi's hands. And of course you know what happened. She came back without the muff, and there was Mimi saying to Marcel, Did you give me this muff, and how soft and warm it is? And there were we desperately trying to cover her up cover up her hands with blankets and so on. It really was an awful moment. Who'd got the muff then? Oh, it was just left off stage, it never came back on, unfortunately.

Speaker 210:01

Let's have another record.

Eric Shilling10:01

But what next? Well, as Marolo was the very first professional operatic role I did, I would like to have one of the most celebrated pieces in opera, the quartet from Rigoletto, and I'd simply love to have Caruso, who after all was such a great tenor, and I'd like to have him with Sembrich and Scotty and Severina.

Speaker 210:31

Carozzo and three distinguished colleagues in the quartet Fon Vigoletto, recorded in nineteen hundred and eight.

Speaker 210:38

Eric, after your few months of glory at the Saddler's Wells, you went back to the Royal College. What happened when you finished your studies? You approached Saddler's Wells, of course. Well, no, I

Eric Shilling10:48

I didn't actually. I had a sort of lead into a small company. My professor knew the director of that company. And so I went straight into Intimate Opera, uh a small group which performed chamber operas. In fact, there were only three singers for each opera. There was the

Eric Shilling11:10

heroine, who of course was the soprano, and the hero, who was the tenor, and the villain, who of course was the baritone.

Eric Shilling11:19

Uh there are a surprising number of operas for only three people. Mozart wrote his Bastien Bastien, the

Eric Shilling11:28

Thomas and Sally, Dibdin, the Grenadier, Pergolese, the Music Master, and no end of Offenbach. There's about well, at least thirty Offenbach operas for about three people.

Eric Shilling11:40

It's a very simple form of opera making.

Eric Shilling11:44

Though

Eric Shilling11:46

In fact, they were all complete operas, not cut versions, little complete chamber operas. Where did you play, in schools? Well, yes, we played in schools and music clubs and festivals and in fact theatres. The accompaniment could be anything from just a piano, in which case there are only four people need to travel, your three singers and your pianist. Or we had um piano quintet, which means piano and four strings, or we could even do it with full orchestra.

Speaker 112:08

Piano.

Eric Shilling12:17

And in fact it became very popular at the time I joined. There wasn't much competition for one thing. There weren't any of your Opera for all or opera eighty, any of those sort of groups. They just did not exist.

Eric Shilling12:31

And there weren't many grants being handed out in those days. Indeed there were not. But soon we found ourselves needing three castes, because there was so much work to do, and we travelled through towns and villages and schools and so on, all over the British Isles. And I literally mean the British Isles because I myself have been to

Speaker 212:33

Indeed there were not.

Speaker 112:46

Yeah.

Speaker 212:47

What

Eric Shilling12:50

The Orkneys and the Shetlands and the Hebrides, you know, so on. Did you go to the continent?

Eric Shilling12:56

I only went with them to Spain myself, but they also went to America. And in fact, wherever we travelled, we had all our props and costumes in just a few suitcases. And when they got to America, one of the local newspapers reported them as the opera in grips. Now you were producer as well as singer. Yes, I well that was after Anthony Hopkins took over. Anthony Hopkins became our musical director.

Speaker 113:12

Yeah.

Eric Shilling13:30

And introduced uh a whole new range of uh modern works. We did The Telephone by Minotti and Anthony Hopkins' own Threes Company, which is a marvellous work with uh libretto by Michael Flanders and we did uh The Dumb Wife by Horowitz and so uh you know we had a completely new repertoire. Then you were with the opera players. I don't know about that.

Eric Shilling13:57

Well, I started singing them at much the same time. It is uh uh a group that uh is still in existence. In fact, I'm now one of the directors of that company. They also do o opera mainly with piano accompaniment and uh they do grand opera. I mean, you know, your uh Carmen and uh Bohem and so on, and they cut or get round rather judiciously choruses and orchestral interludes with perhaps a a little spoken word or something of the sort. And the new opera company, who were they? Well, that was a group formed by some Cambridge students and they formed a group uh specifically to do unperformed modern works and uh I did some work for them, some of those modern pieces.

Speaker 114:39

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 214:48

Well this was obviously a very very good

Eric Shilling14:51

Grounding in your profession. Oh, indeed, my goodness, yes. There's nothing like uh travelling with intimate opera or opera players where you can never relax into the chorus or the scenery or anything else. The responsibility is absolutely yours to keep the thing going.

Speaker 115:04

Anything else?

Speaker 215:08

Right.

Eric Shilling15:09

Let's have your fourth record. What's that, Eric? Well, I'd like to hark back a little to intimate opera. Um one of the roles I enormously enjoyed doing was The Cooper by Thomas Arne. And in fact in this recording I am singing The Cooper. It's an arrangement of Arne by Joseph Horobitz.

Speaker 215:34

An excerpt from the Intimate Opera Company's production of Thomas Arn's The Cooper Who were your colleagues on that?

Speaker 215:41

Well

Eric Shilling15:41

The soprano was Anne Dowdahl and the tenor was Duncan Robertson.

Speaker 215:47

When were you invited to join the Saddler's Wells Company again as a permanent member?

Eric Shilling15:52

Well, that was in nineteen fifty nine. I joined them for a season of Die Flademaus at the Coliseum. I must tell you, in those days, it was actually popularly known as Die Flademaus, which seems incredible for only twenty years or so again. Anyway, uh after that I I did all sort of things, and I really mean all sorts of things. The sheer variety of what one's done since is bewildering. I mean I've done everything from Wagner, the co-porter with

Speaker 216:24

The company. As it's the fiftieth anniversary of the company, the fiftieth birthday, let's talk about some of its early history. Well, before you joined it. I know Lillian Baylis had presented quite a lot of opera in English at the Old Vic in the nineteen twenties. Now that was before

Speaker 216:40

The Sadler's Wells Theatre was rebuilt and Yeah. Uh

Eric Shilling16:42

Sadler's Worlds opened in January 31.

Speaker 216:46

Now, a bit on the small side still for opera, and up in Islington, which was a fair way from the West End. Yes, I

Eric Shilling16:53

I think this was uh in a way a drawback, although not so noticeable perhaps in those days, because a great uh number of the audience were locals, or at any rate Londoners.

Speaker 217:05

Well, that was Lillian Bayliss's original idea, an old Vic for North London, wasn't it right in the middle of the day?

Eric Shilling17:09

Wasn't it right and marvellous thought?

Speaker 217:11

I know the company built up marvellously right up until 1939. Then the war closed the theatre. Yes, it did, and they.

Eric Shilling17:12

I know.

Eric Shilling17:19

They spent the next four or five years mostly on tour, although for a part of the time they did get the new theatre in St Martin's Lane, I think now it's called the Albury, but for many years they were in fact rather teetering along in very difficult circumstances and with their strength very much depleted.

Speaker 217:43

So it was fairly soon after the reopening after the war that you made that first temporary appearance? Yes. In fact, I think that uh

Eric Shilling17:50

Yeah.

Eric Shilling17:51

what I've just said uh was the contributory factor. I mean a student still at college doesn't normally find himself doing principal parts, but they were still waiting for the big names to come back from the war and so

Speaker 218:05

Beautiful.

Speaker 218:06

The great event, of course, really, in in in the fifty year history, was the move from Sadler's Wells to the biggest theatre in London, the Coliseum, right in the West End. That was, yes, really marvellous.

Eric Shilling18:18

It was so much due to Stephen Arlen, who was our managing director at the time. For some years we had pressed for an English National Opera Theatre, as it were, on the South Bank as a sister to the National Theatre. But unfortunately, money was not forthcoming, and so it fell through. But in 1968, thanks to Stephen Arlen, marvellously, we moved into the Colosseum, the largest theatre in London, in the heart of the West End. And although it meant that we'd got to find 1,000 or more new

Eric Shilling18:59

attenders every night, which is a considerable increase in custom that you've got to find. We were, as I say, in the heart of theaterland, and it meant that we had a great deal of passing trade and visitors to London, the uh overseas and provincial visitors, of course found us easily and in the event

Speaker 119:04

Yeah.

Eric Shilling19:20

I think the move was v

Speaker 219:22

Very much justified. It must have needed a lot of adjusting to the performances, the productions. Well, indeed.

Eric Shilling19:28

It did. I remember uh Stephen Arden himself was uh quite anxious. He spent a lot of time out in the front of the theatre listening to us, wondering if we could cope with our greatly enlarged auditorium. But at least it meant that um we could put on things like Wagner's Master Singers and The Ring.

Eric Shilling19:51

and Rosencavalier, Aida and in fact uh in the season to come we've got Tristan and Otello, which were far too big

Eric Shilling20:02

conceptions for sound

Speaker 220:04

And in direct competition with the Royal Opera House, which of course works in the original language, but you do everything in English.

Speaker 220:14

And then, of course, there was a certain amount of confusion about the Sadler's Wells Opera, and Sadler's Wells being in North London, and you were operating right in the West End. So that had to lead to the change of name to the English National Opera.

Eric Shilling20:20

Being an

Speaker 120:20

Uh

Eric Shilling20:26

To be a ink.

Eric Shilling20:27

Yes, well I I hope with all our expansion in repertoire and uh so on really has justified our being called the English National Opera. I I do uh humbly think that we have grown with our opportunities, uh you know, and are worthy to be called the English National Opera.

Speaker 220:48

Yeah.

Speaker 220:50

Because it is national. It isn't just a London company. There is a certain amount of touring. And of course, now there's the English National Opera North. Yes, indeed.

Eric Shilling20:58

That's a sort of sister company that has resulted from English national opera and I think a very fine enterprising thing. I think every new opera company is to be welcomed and it has taken over a great deal of the touring that we used to do up in the north and in fact it plays to very good houses I understand.

Speaker 221:21

You've seen a lot of progress. Let's have another record.

Eric Shilling21:22

The time rather than

Eric Shilling21:24

Well, I would like very much to choose from Fledemaus, which I think is the finest operetta ever written, the Sadler's Wells recording of Brother Mine and Sister Mine from that nineteen fifty-nine season.

Speaker 221:43

The finale, or part of the finale of Act Two of Johann Strauss's Die Fledermas.

Speaker 221:48

The Sadlas Wells Chorus and Orchestra and their principles conducted by Wilhelm Towski.

Speaker 221:54

Now your own contribution to the company. How many roles have you played? Have you ever kept tabs?

Eric Shilling21:58

I'm afraid I haven't. I know many years ago it was seventy, so

Eric Shilling22:03

I should think it's probably a hundred anyway. I don't know, I really don't. Which roles have you created? New productions?

Eric Shilling22:09

Well, one of the roles I created was the Lord Chancellor in Iolanthe. I shall never forget the first night, because that was truly terrifying. We uh did it in Stratford-on-Avon.

Eric Shilling22:24

The Gilbert and Sullivan operas came off copyright on the thirty first of january, nineteen sixty one, and Norman Tucker decided that we would put on the first non-copyright performance of Gilbert and Sullivan on january the first, nineteen sixty two.

Eric Shilling22:42

And we opened in Stratford-on-Avon with Iolanthe, and I was asked to do the Lord Chancellor. Now, I had never played any Gilbert and Sullivan in my life. And you know that terrible nightmare song which the Lord Chancellor has three minutes of uh non-ending patter, and at the end it gets even faster.

Speaker 223:00

Oh, the Patterson, yes.

Eric Shilling23:08

And I was petrified by the thought that a thousand or two in the audience knew it far better than I did. But what finally very nearly finished me was the fact that they decided to broadcast it. And there were literally thousands of people listening to it on the radio who knew it far better than I did. And we had never played to an audience before, so we didn't know the timing, you know, where the laughs come in the dialogue and so on. It was like running down a tightrope almost, but fortunately in the event it did come off quite well. What about travels? I have been with the company to Austria and Belgium, Czechoslovakia.

Eric Shilling23:51

Holland, France

Eric Shilling23:54

Yugoslavia, and even Australia. We uh went over with Orpheus in the Underworld, and in fact I was very lucky there, because I was able to take my wife with me. She was playing the part of Cupid.

Eric Shilling24:08

And I was playing the part of Jupiter, the father of all the gods, and in fact she was my grandson in the opera.

Eric Shilling24:17

We took with us the conductor, the producer, and the cast from Saddlers Wells, but we picked up in Australia the orchestra, the chorus, and the ballet.

Eric Shilling24:30

And uh we started off in Sydney, we did some weeks there, and then we moved over to Melbourne for uh about twice as long, quite a long period in Melbourne. Before we went to Melbourne, our conductor and producer moved over there to audition for chorus and ballet and so on. The people who were auditioning had a form to fill in.

Eric Shilling25:00

And there was a baritone who read this form, and one of the things he had to fill in was the range of his voice. And for range of voice he filled in three hundred yards.

Speaker 225:18

That's pretty good. He could bounce it off the back wall.

Eric Shilling25:22

Uh

Speaker 225:22

Let's have record number six.

Eric Shilling25:26

Well, of course I would love it to be Orpheus in the underworld because I probably performed that more than anything else. And what I would like out of all that delicious score is the fly duet where Jupiter, he finds that Eurydice is down in Hades in a room in Pluto's dwelling. In fact, she's in a bathroom in Wendy Toy's production, which we did.

Eric Shilling25:55

And

Eric Shilling25:56

In order to get in.

Eric Shilling25:58

Through the keyhole, he disguises himself as a fly.

Eric Shilling26:04

And

Eric Shilling26:05

I used to come in through the door.

Eric Shilling26:08

I can't tell you how that was. That was a very secret system of getting right through the dart.

Eric Shilling26:13

With a cloak on, on the front of the cloak it said invis, which rather looked like something Latin, but when I turned my back to the audience, there was the rest of the word ibble, invis, ibbo, yes, and I had the fly on a sort of wand and we sang this marvellous duet where you will hear me singing as a buzzing rather as a fly and the soprano is June Bronhill.

Speaker 226:44

The Fly Duet

Speaker 226:46

With June Bronhill from Orpheus in the Underworld. How many productions a year do you play in on an average with the English National?

Eric Shilling26:53

I should think about seven or eight. It varies, of course, according to what's in the repertoire and what they want before. And usually there are also other roles which we're not necessarily going to perform, but we have to cover. You can understand the working of an opera house is very complex, and it's not sufficient just to have principal roles, but you've got to allow for emergencies, and so all of the principals are called upon to be available to do other roles if necessary. So I suppose one covers with roles one does oneself and roles you might have to do, something like ten or a dozen roles.

Speaker 227:38

Of course, I you still have a little time for for concert work. How important is the is the concert platform in your career?

Eric Shilling27:44

Well, uh it's

Eric Shilling27:46

Quite important. I do enjoy doing recitals and lecture recitals, talking about opera and so on. It varies considerably. Sometimes one is well caught up in lots of outside work, sometimes not so much. Not only concert work, but obviously other operatic works one is asked to do.

Speaker 127:51

Yeah.

Eric Shilling28:10

As one has been so long in opera, one tends to get a little in watertight compartment. People expect you to do opera, and perhaps are not so expecting you to do oratorio, for instance, which I did a great deal of earlier on in my career. But as one does opera for many, many years, naturally people think of you as operatic rather than whatever the uh

Eric Shilling28:39

Yeah.

Speaker 228:40

Adjectives for oratorial. Yes. We've got to record number seven. Watch that.

Eric Shilling28:45

Thinking very carefully about being remote on a desert island, I think there would be a a certain sense of loneliness. I think it would be quite awe inspiring and there is something about it that um

Eric Shilling29:03

Well, I suppose it's the contemplation of nature which calls the mind deeper things. You know, one feels that there are things beyond just our own immediate material necessities and concerns, all our worries and so on. And I would very much like to have something from what I consider to be the masterpiece of otherworldly music, the St. Matthew Passion.

Eric Shilling29:35

Could I have Janet Baker singing Have Mercy, Lord, partly because this is one of the supreme moments in that marvellous work with the wonderful violin obligato.

Speaker 229:52

Janet Baker singing Have Mercy, Lord from Bach's Saint Matthew Passion, a recording conducted by Karl Richter.

Speaker 230:00

Now, Eric, what form are the are the celebrations taking for this fiftieth birthday of the English National Opera?

Eric Shilling30:05

Well, uh the main programme was the gala which took place a few days ago in the presence of the Queen. We were very honoured that it was her first visit to us and uh I hope it was a great success financially which is obviously what the gala is all about. It's for the Sanders Wells Benefit Fund and so on.

Speaker 230:27

Well, now we've come to the end of the London season. Do you know what you're going to sing next season, in the fifty first season? Yes, indeed, I I do know.

Eric Shilling30:36

I'm doing Deflay the Mouse again. Of course. And welcome back. And Antonio the Gardener in.

Speaker 230:41

And

Eric Shilling30:43

Marriage of Figaro?

Eric Shilling30:45

I'm doing funny now in Rose and Cavalier, which I'm very much looking forward to.

Eric Shilling30:50

A small part in Les Mammel de Teresia.

Eric Shilling30:54

Which is a rather naughty French opera. Yes. I poulant.

Eric Shilling30:59

And uh

Eric Shilling31:00

The Merry Widow comes in again.

Eric Shilling31:03

What's your last record going to be?

Eric Shilling31:06

I'd like the quintets.

Eric Shilling31:08

By Schubert.

Eric Shilling31:10

It is such pure music.

Eric Shilling31:12

So sublime and for its own sake I think there are occasions when one wants pure music and if I could have the second movement.

Speaker 231:26

Part of the slow movement from Schubert's string quintet in C major, the Amadair's string quartet with William Pleith.

Speaker 231:35

How would you manage on a desert island area?

Eric Shilling31:37

Could you look after yourself?

Eric Shilling31:38

Well, I fear I'm not very good at do-it-yourself and that sort of thing. I'm pretty bad, in fact.

Speaker 231:44

Never done any fishing.

Eric Shilling31:46

No, no, fishing's not in my line. Sailing? No, no, I I'm very bad at anything to do with the water. I can't swim.

Eric Shilling31:54

I quite enjoy going on a boat, but uh really

Eric Shilling31:58

Your next question, which is going to be, would I try to escape? I can tell you frankly, I don't think I would. I'd uh sit very tight until somebody came to...

Speaker 232:07

Rescue me. Alright, so we needn't bother with any of that. If you could only take one disc out of the eight you've played us, which would it be?

Eric Shilling32:14

Oh, it would have to be The Marriage of Figaro. That is the most sublime opera I ever heard, ever hoped to hear, and so human, it really would be

Speaker 232:26

A perennial joy Deviani

Speaker 232:29

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

Speaker 232:33

Well, what I would like

Eric Shilling32:34

Like, if it is permissible, is.

Eric Shilling32:38

An astronomical telescope. That's all right. At home we have recently been trying to acquire an astronomical telescope. It is something I'd like very much to have. It is so marvellous to gaze upon the heavens, the moon, and the stars.

Eric Shilling32:53

And I could also cheat a bit by looking out to see for the possibilities of rescue, I suppose. Why not?

Speaker 233:00

And one book you've already got the Bible and Shakespeare.

Eric Shilling33:03

Well, practically every day I read poetry. Not a great deal, but I do love my verses.

Eric Shilling33:11

And there's an old collection which I've had for very many years.

Eric Shilling33:17

called the Albatross Book of Living Verse.

Eric Shilling33:22

Louis Untermeyer. I think he must be American or something like that. But it really is the collection for me. It has all my favourite poems right from Chaucer up to very recent times.

Speaker 233:37

You shall have it, and thank you, Eric Schilling, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Eric Shilling33:41

Thank you very much. I really have enjoyed it. Far more, I'm sure, than I would enjoy really being on a desert island. I'm sure. Goodbye, everyone.