Vlado Perlemuter

Vlado Perlemuter0:00

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 eighty four, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:29

On our Desert Island this week is the distinguished concert pianist Vlado Perlmutter.

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Vlado, you are no stranger to London, are you?

Presenter0:39

Uh well, it's difficult to to know London well because I found that such a big city.

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I I live in a big city, but it's not the same. You live in a big city.

Vlado Perlemuter0:50

A fan

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Each time I come back to London I find it bigger. Now this visit is a special one. It is to celebrate your eightieth birthday.

Vlado Perlemuter1:05

Uh

Presenter1:06

And then we go and spoil the celebrations by casting you away on a desert island. Could you endure loneliness?

Presenter1:15

Yes, it depends. Not too long. Well, uh, to tell you the truth, I'm always alone playing piano. Yes. So I can't say exactly how how long I can endure to be alone without playing piano. Well, you have the sounds of civilization.

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You have the sounds of eight records.

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Did you find it difficult to choose just eight to have with you? No. But now, when I heard them, it was also difficult because

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I was a bit uh not disappointed, but uh in my memory they were a bit different. Yes. But now uh some of them uh recognize them very well indeed and uh I love them. That's all I can say. All right. Which is the first one you've chosen? It's the Beethoven quartet number seven, I think in F major. Marvelous recording of the Bush quartet.

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The third movement of the Beethoven string quartet

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Opus fifty nine, number one.

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Played by the Bush Quartet.

Presenter3:19

Vlado, you were born in Lithuania, which is now part of Russia, in nineteen hundred and four, as we know. Were your parents Lithuanian?

Presenter3:28

No. My parents were Polish. My mother was born in Warsaw and my father was born in a little town near Warsaw. Your father was a singer?

Presenter3:41

My father was a singer and uh as a young man he went to Berlin to study singing. Then he came back to Poland.

Vlado Perlemuter3:49

Yeah.

Presenter3:53

And before he married, you see, was going to Berlin. So that's why well, we didn't ask me, that's why we went to Berlin a little later. But I have no remembrance at all of that. I was two years old, you know. And then from Berlin to Paris. Was that because there was going to be more work for your father as a singer in Paris? Yes.

Presenter4:16

Her father was a singer.

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Man a singer, a cantor. Yes. And uh he found a job in a synagogue in Paris. That's why we t we went to Paris. What made you decide to be a pianist? Were you put to the piano? Did your parents give you lessons when you were very young?

Presenter4:37

As a matter of fact, I didn't start very young. I mean, um many pianists started younger than I. Uh I thought that I was uh

Presenter4:47

between seven and eight. And uh we had a a upright and apparently I always stayed near the pedal. And you know in the upright the strings are going down, you see, so they make a sort of vibration. And I was always there with my ear against the the wood to hear the strings much more. And one day a friend of my father said, but that's such extraordinary for a young boy of five or six. He must be very musical. You and you ought to start giving him a teacher and giving music. So my my parents waited a little and uh at uh seven they started that.

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And uh she was not too bad.

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And uh she had always a good idea to make examine with the teacher of the Conservatoire once every six months or something like that. So I had a contact, you see. And very soon you were accepted by the Paris Conservatoire. I was accepted by the practice, but I must tell something in between. This teacher had a friend who knew Moshkovsky very well. And she introduced me to Moshkowski. So I practiced with Moshkovsky before I went to the Conservatoire. And during the Conservatoire, I went first for to the elementary school uh part. I was

Presenter6:23

Something like eleven or twelve, I think.

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And at that moment, you see, I was practicing with my old teacher and Moszkovsky once every fortnight. And at one exam, Corteau heard me and said to my mother that he wanted me to be admitted in his class in the conservatoire. That means the superior class superior. Well it was a great honor to be chosen by Corto.

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Rather, yes, although at that moment, especially

Vlado Perlemuter6:58

But

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Uno Courteaux resigned later on and created his own school, Ecol Normale de Musique.

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Let's have your second record. What shall we have next?

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We shall have the Brandenburg concerto. Which one? I think it's number three in G. Medel, and the conductor by Phil Wangler. That i the conductor I admired very much all my life.

Presenter8:14

The opening of Bach's third Brandenburg concerto in G Furtwangler conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

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You were enrolled at the Paris Conservatoire. Consteau was was a wonderful pianist. Was he a good teacher? He was a wonderful teacher. He was something exceptional.

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The only thing you had to do is to listen to Gortu.

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I mean that he didn't talk such a lot about especially if the piece was a piece of his repertoire he played a lot on the piano. So if the pupil was gifted enough to listen intently to what he heard,

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That was the best way of teaching from Corto.

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Now at that time Fauret was the director of the Conservatoire. Did you have an opportunity to meet him?

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Not at that moment, but later on.

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In twenty two, that means two years before he died.

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I had a a friend of the Conservatoire.

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The parents of this friend were a great friend of Faure, and they invite used to invite Faure for summer in the mountains.

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And I had the great

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Luck.

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to be invited in the same house at Faure. So I lived very near Foray and uh I learned to know him much better than any artist at that moment. See, because of course he was very old, because he died other old.

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But I had occasion to see him.

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And to hear him playing piano. He played piano. He was an organist. And even at that age I heard him playing piano.

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And I had the great honor to play to him certain pieces of his own, you see, like nocturnes, them and variations, ballad, and the first violin, piano, sonata played to him.

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But uh at that time in twenty twenty two I was

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Uh wait a minute. Eighteen years old.

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So I I couldn't realize what it was to know Foray to meet him and to see him working because he worked till the end. You see, his last piece was the string quartet. He didn't finish it because he died before. He was an extraordinary worker. All the afternoon, in the morning, he went to the town. He liked to have his coffee in the bistro and he came back. It was up in the mountain, but after lunch he disappeared completely. You couldn't see Forret till the supper time. Let's have your third record. What's that to be?

Presenter11:15

Of the Daphne Sechloe.

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The first piece called Le Le Vie du Jour conducting

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By Charles Munch.

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Daybreak from Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe, Charles Munch conducting the Paris Orchestra.

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So you were a first prize winner at the Conservatoire at fifteen. You stayed on, of course.

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Did you earn money as a young student by playing in cafes or anything of that sort?

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I didn't play in Cafe, but I play you know, cin uh the cinema at that time was not talking, I don't call it there were silent films. Yes. So they did some music.

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To accompany the film.

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So I played in the cinema.

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Although long time it was rather well paid, I must say.

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But very hard work.

Vlado Perlemuter13:05

But Betty how

Presenter13:07

And uh I was introduced by other musician, a violinist, because they wanted a trio. So it was a violinist, a cellist and me. And we had to accompany all the the mood of the film. It was a table hard work because you had to to improvise and to improvise the bridge.

Presenter13:32

In between an adado to an allegreto to a scervur to a la lego to a prestissimo to it was a terrible work. And at the beginning I thought I couldn't be able to do it, you see, even with my first prize and all the other price. I was seventeen. But very valuable experience, I should think. Yes. I must say that I think of this experience without sadness. I mean it was rather extraordinary.

Speaker 313:53

Yeah.

Vlado Perlemuter13:53

Yeah.

Presenter14:02

You went on at the Conservatoire to win the Prix d'honneur. What did you play on that occasion?

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I played a very important work from Paul Ducas, called Variation entales, sur anteme de Jean Philippe Rameau. Did you meet Ducas? Yes.

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Amide Ducas. I played to him this work after I had a Prédonneur. I was still practising with Courteau. But Courteaux was very often away at that time, you see, at the time of his great tour in America.

Presenter14:37

He had a an assistant who gave the lesson. But but this piece I practised with Courteau. And uh after that, as Paul Ducas was in the jury, I wrote to him, I wanted to play to him the piece. So I went to him, I played Variation at the Louis des Finale. What sort of man was he? Oh, he was a very remarkable man. The man certainly the most cultivated I ever met in my life. He was an example to the musician who think that in being musician you have only to care for music. It's a great mistake.

Presenter15:17

In my profession of a teacher, I do my best to develop this taste among my pupils to be interested by other things than music. You see, that means literature, painting, everything you can find in life. And Paul Ducas first he was a good writer. He was a critic at the same time, a critic in a newspaper in Paris.

Vlado Perlemuter15:31

Yeah.

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And it was a bit

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savage in a way.

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He was so critical, you see, that he

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Burn his own work.

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when he was not satisfied and he was never satisfied. The result is that you don't have many works published by Paul Dukas. And I must tell you something terrible. When he died, in his testament he asked his wife to burn what he left.

Vlado Perlemuter16:14

In his wife.

Presenter16:16

Not to be published as a postum of things.

Vlado Perlemuter16:18

Yeah.

Presenter16:20

You had won the Prie d'Honneur, you were ready to start an international career as a pianist, but you said no, you had more work to do first, and you spent two years studying what I might call musical technicalities. What was your thinking? How do you know of that?

Speaker 316:35

Yes. What what was your thinking?

Presenter16:38

What do you do with that?

Vlado Perlemuter16:39

Yeah.

Speaker 316:39

But

Presenter16:40

Yes, I've started to learn harmony, what they call counterpoint. But I was not very gifted for harmony and uh that means that it it took a lot of time to make the exercise, you know, the four voices things and the counterpoint. I find counterpoint terribly difficult. It's time we had your fourth record. What's that to be?

Presenter17:04

Peter Pearce singing Foggy Foggy Dew and uh accompanied by Benjamin Britton. Why do you choose it? Well, because it was one of the first things I heard when I arrived in England and uh my friends, the family where uh stayed, you see, in in England, they played this record very often. So I used to be very familiar with this and I liked it very much. The record they played was an earlier version, was it not? Oh, certainly. Not certainly. Not because I came for the first time in England in thirties.

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Yeah. So let's say it's a sort of a travel in between my youth.

Speaker 317:51

Night she came to my bedside when I lay fast asleep.

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I bet

Presenter17:57

I lay

Speaker 318:02

She laid her head upon my bed, and she began

Vlado Perlemuter18:09

Good.

Speaker 318:13

She sighed, she cried, she damn near died She said, What shall I do?

Vlado Perlemuter18:15

Night cheese

Vlado Perlemuter18:20

Well I

Speaker 318:24

Oh, I hold her into bed, And I covered up her head, Just to save her from the foggy, foggy

Presenter18:36

The Foggy, Foggy Dew, sung by Peter Pearce with Benjamin Britton at the piano. Vlado, you made a special study of Rabel's piano music. Yes. In fact, you you learned the whole of his piano repertoire, did you not? Yes. The first piece I learned was Je Dot. Yes. And uh I was absolutely taken by his music and I learned all his piano music.

Vlado Perlemuter18:50

Yeah.

Vlado Perlemuter18:54

Yeah.

Presenter19:02

And you played it to Ravel himself? I wanted to do that to Siebel. Ravel was already very popular at that moment and uh well

Presenter19:12

I was rather shy to do that, but a friend of mine said, Why don't you write to Ravel and tell him simply, because he won't refuse to see you. So I wrote to him that uh I practised all his piano music and I wanted to play this to him. So he answered very simply and fixed an appointment and I I went there to play his works.

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Ravel was interested in a way because, of course, many pianists at that time played some pieces of Ravel, but

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He was very interested at a young pianist, because at that moment I was young.

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Well, I was twenty three.

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that uh young pianist took uh all his time to practice all his music. So he was interested that I went

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once or every fortnight for

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Three or four months. And he coached you? Yes, he taught me all his music.

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But look here, I would like to tell you that Ravel was not a piano teacher.

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He was a great composer and uh he was, of course, interested by a pianist who played all his works. So, of course, he he told me. Was he a good pianist? No, not at no not at the time I met him. Well, he was over fifty and uh he probably didn't practice his piano very much. But I think that when he was young he must have been a rather good pianist because he got his first prize in Paris Conservatoire. So it means that technically he was a certain

Speaker 320:34

No, not absolutely.

Speaker 320:38

Bye.

Vlado Perlemuter20:44

But

Presenter20:56

You had a certain standing, you know. You wrote a book about your experiences with Ravel. Yes. Sadly out of print now. It is out of print, but it's a question to translate it in English. And it is the more funny thing. It's just translated in Japanese.

Presenter21:17

Well, that's very handy. And it's very well sold in Japanese. But the Japanese apparently forgot the copyright, so I have nothing of it. Oh, what a shame. It is a shame.

Speaker 321:28

Uh

Presenter21:31

Record number five. Yes, good. Why do you choose that? And well, for the same reason as the other record, because it was played every day, every night, every evening at the same place in England. And I was so grateful.

Vlado Perlemuter21:41

And uh

Vlado Perlemuter21:54

Uh

Presenter21:58

to the B B C Library to have found the same man, Douglas Byn. Oh, dear Douglas Byng. Yeah, Douglas Byn. And and he he was absolute I found it marvelous.

Vlado Perlemuter22:04

Dear love

Speaker 422:12

Miss Otis regrets she's unable to lunch today, madam.

Speaker 422:20

Miss Otis regrets she's unable to lunch today

Speaker 422:26

She is sorry to be delayed, But last evening down in Lovers Lane she strayed

Speaker 422:37

Madam

Speaker 422:38

Miss Otis regrets she's unable to lunch today.

Presenter22:45

Douglas Byng singing Cole Porter's Miss Otis Regrets from the show High Diddle Diddle.

Presenter22:51

Vlado, were you in Paris during the German occupation? Yes. I stayed. It was a great risk, but I stayed till forty two. And then you escaped? And then I escaped uh from Paris first to the so-called Free France. Mhm. Later on I was uh obliged to escape from France.

Presenter23:13

I knew many people in France because I played, of course, a lot. So in each town in unoccupied France, I always met someone who knew me by name and they helped me a lot. Eventually you got through the barbed wire into Switzerland. Yes. Do you know the extraordinary thing? I had a rucksack and do you know what I had in the rucksack? I had one shirt, I think something like uh two or three French francs in my pocket. And uh Beethoven hundred and eleven, I was just practicing at that time. Great. I believe the Germans shot at you even when you were on Swiss territory. Yes. I was already on on Swiss territory and I heard I won't forget that, you know, this

Vlado Perlemuter23:54

We're on Swiss territory.

Presenter24:06

All the shots they did at me. Well.

Presenter24:11

You know, a certain moment of your existence you when I I was near these barbered walls, they were very high, you know, I thought that was impossible to to climb. I found uh l the strength to do that and I did it. When your life is in question, you find some strength that you thought that it would be impossible to do. Mhm. But I did. And when the war was over you returned from Switzerland into France and took up your career again, travelling all over the place. And you began teaching at the Conservatoire.

Vlado Perlemuter24:40

And if

Vlado Perlemuter24:43

And you

Presenter24:47

Yes. I began teaching in in fifty. And at the same time I traveled as much as I could and uh I prepared my concerts. It was a hard work. I had twenty years of very hard work.

Presenter25:03

Doing both. Yes, of course.

Vlado Perlemuter25:05

Yeah.

Presenter25:06

I haven't thought very seriously before uh I went to teach in the Conservatoire. And teaching in the Conservatoire, as I thought, was something very serious, very deep. You see, I had twelve pupils and I was lucky enough to form very good pupils who just now give concerts, are teaching themselves. Sometimes a member of the jury. My pupils are. And you stayed there nearly twenty five years.

Presenter25:38

I stayed twenty five years.

Presenter25:40

Let's have record number six.

Presenter25:42

Oh, that's Fyodor Chaliapin, best of boys. I loved this record all the time I heard. He was such a great artist. I was always deeply moved by his Chaliapin way of singing Boris Godunov.

Speaker 326:15

Oh, how are you?

Speaker 326:17

Yeah.

Speaker 326:19

Are you?

Speaker 326:23

Whoa's it!

Speaker 326:26

Yeah.

Speaker 326:29

Right.

Speaker 326:35

Whoa.

Speaker 326:37

What?

Speaker 326:40

God

Speaker 326:46

Yeah.

Speaker 326:47

This is

Speaker 326:54

Um

Presenter26:57

Shaliapine.

Presenter26:59

The Death of Bodies from Bodies Goodenough.

Presenter27:03

In travelling in other countries and travelling all over the place, do you sometimes have difficulty in in getting a satisfactory piano? Have you ever had some bad ones given you?

Presenter27:14

Do you remember one particular one? Yes.

Presenter27:18

I remember, you know what? It's a paradox because I never played so well. It's actually maddening. Sometimes it's an impossible profession, you know, to be a pianist, a car, a pianist. It's a curse. Because when you have everything, a marvelous piano and you play like a pig.

Vlado Perlemuter27:34

Because when you

Presenter27:39

And the same time you have a what I call the casserole, you see, uh you you play remarkably well. That's what happened. You are like Corto told me once, My dear, you are not a machine, you are human and you have nerves, that's why this career is so difficult.

Vlado Perlemuter27:49

Yeah.

Presenter28:01

You are not a mechanic. Let's have another record. That's Bram's clownet content.

Presenter28:07

played by the members of the Vienna Octet. Mhm. There is a a great sentimental feeling about Brandt Clarinet because I heard it when I was ill in Switzerland.

Presenter28:23

I was in the sanatorium, you see. I was laying down in the house near me, in the another chamber. So I was familiar with the client, so I wanted to put it in the desert aisle.

Presenter29:36

Part of the second movement of the Branze Clarinet Quintet, played by members of the Vienna Octet. Now you're celebrating your eightieth birthday, Vlado. You have no intention of retiring. Sometimes when I'm terribly tired of practising, I said let's give up.

Presenter29:54

But as long as uh physically I can, if I'm not ill, I'm going to give concert.

Presenter30:01

Well, there is an interruption in your career because we're putting you on this desert island. Do you think you could endure that loneliness and that rather miserable experience of living on your own?

Presenter30:12

I don't think so.

Presenter30:13

You have no skills. Y you're you've never done any camping out and camp fire cookery and all that sort of thing. No, I'm very bad cook. Are you? Oh, yes. I I like good cook.

Presenter30:26

Perhaps I could learn.

Presenter30:28

Well, I think you'd have to. I'm a bad cook, but I like good meals and I I shall miss them tabling in desert along. Sitting under a palm tree playing your eight records. What is your eighth? What's your last? De Bussie La Mais. Yes. That's always, since I was a pupil in the Conservatoire, I always adored. I think it's a m one of the masterpieces of French music, La Mais.

Presenter31:54

An excerpt from Debussy's La Maire

Presenter31:57

Ansomet conducting the Swiss Romant Orchestra.

Presenter32:01

If you could take just one of the eight records you have chosen, Vlado, which would it be?

Presenter32:06

I think finally it would be the Bandenburg, the Bandenburg, yes, yes, yes. And you're allowed to have one luxury, any one object to give you pleasure, something of no practical use whatever.

Vlado Perlemuter32:09

Number three, yes, yes, yes.

Presenter32:19

A picture from Gelandaio.

Presenter32:23

that I adored since I was fifteen. Because I was interested. You see, me even in fifteen I had my first prize, but I went to the Louvre and I was interested by painting and still adore painting.

Presenter32:37

I don't paint myself at all, but if I can, I don't miss the great uh exhibition in Paris of the painters and and I always adore this Gelandaio. It's it's a portrait of a old man with his grandson. And one book. You already have the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. Well.

Presenter33:02

I can't hesitate because one thing I had had done all my life and in at certain period of my life, you see I read it again, it's Mollier. Yes. The complete play of the complete play. So I can uh have something to read when I will be in this island.

Vlado Perlemuter33:16

Complete.

Presenter33:22

You shall have a handsomely bound volume. Yes. And thank you, Vlado Perlmutter, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. Well, I ought to thank you because I had sincerely a real pleasure to do that with you. And I must tell the listeners that uh I had a bit of a f stage fright before you showed no signs. But you m made it so easily that uh I must say that it was a great joy.

Vlado Perlemuter33:46

Did I

Presenter33:51

Thank you very much. Goodbye, Reboy. Goodbye.

Vlado Perlemuter33:52

Yeah.

Vlado Perlemuter34:03

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