Miklos Rozsa

Speaker 10:00

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

Presenter0:29

Our castaway this week is the composer Miklos Rozer, probably principally known for the many film scores he wrote in the great days of Hollywood.

Presenter0:40

mister Roger, we are dumping you, unsympathetically, on a desert island. Could you endure loneliness? I can try. Would eight discs help?

Presenter0:50

I think so. Eighty would be better, of course. Did you have any plan?

Miklos Rozsa0:55

Yeah.

Presenter0:55

And then choosing.

Miklos Rozsa0:56

Uh

Presenter0:56

This is facetious.

Miklos Rozsa0:56

Well, facetiously I would say eight works of mine, but that w wouldn't have been true because I never listened to my own records.

Presenter1:03

Yeah.

Miklos Rozsa1:04

Uh no, I never do. Because uh I have over fifty records and when I hear them again I said, Why didn't I do it this way? Why is it so fast? Why this? Why that? So I'd rather not listen. What's the first one you've chosen? The first I've chosen is a Chaconne by Bach. Why? Now I started out as a violinist. I started to play the violin when I was five.

Miklos Rozsa1:29

When I was seven I played in public, and I grew up with a violin. Later I wrote two violin concerto, one for Heifitz.

Miklos Rozsa1:37

and he definitely played better the violin than I did.

Miklos Rozsa1:42

But the chargon was one of the pieces that impressed me most. I think it is the greatest violin music.

Miklos Rozsa1:50

And I chose a recording by Adolf Busch, not only because he's a great violinist, but I heard him in Leipzig. I studied in Leipzig at the conservatory, you see, when I was eighteen, I was born in Budapest and went to Leipzig. And I heard Busch playing it in the Gevand House in a solo evening and I was tremendously impressed.

Presenter3:11

Adolphe Busch playing The Bach Shacon, BWV 1004.

Presenter3:18

Now you began to play the violin when you were five.

Presenter3:22

Was there a lot of music in the house?

Miklos Rozsa3:24

Yes, I was, because my mother was a pianist.

Miklos Rozsa3:28

She was a pupil of Professor Turman, who was a pupil of Liszt.

Miklos Rozsa3:33

And so I heard the whole list repertoire that she had to play not only the rhapsodies, naturally, but all the consolations and so on.

Miklos Rozsa3:45

and I grew up partly with that,

Miklos Rozsa3:48

And I had an uncle who was a violinist, the first violinist in the opera. Actually, he was a colleague of Aunt Aldoverati's father.

Miklos Rozsa3:57

And I became a pupil of Anta Dorati's father and studied chamber music with him. I told you talk to me.

Miklos Rozsa4:08

Oh yes, I could read music with five. And I went to school with six. So by that time I could read music but couldn't read

Miklos Rozsa4:17

Normal writing.

Miklos Rozsa4:19

You don't

Presenter4:19

Tell us you went to study in Leipzig. Why did you go to Germany?

Miklos Rozsa4:23

Well

Miklos Rozsa4:25

Very difficult to say.

Miklos Rozsa4:28

My father had a very large estate in Upper Hungary, and his idea was that I will take that one day over naturally.

Miklos Rozsa4:36

and I should become a chemist.

Miklos Rozsa4:39

And I did not want to become a chemist.

Miklos Rozsa4:43

However, the question was, if I stay in Budapest after finishing school, I would have to go to the university and study chemistry.

Miklos Rozsa4:52

and no music, because he explained to me you can't make a living with composition, and how right he was!

Speaker 14:58

He was.

Miklos Rozsa5:00

But if I thought if I go to Leipzig, because after all the Leipzig Conservatory was very famous, then I am on my own. I can do whatever I want. However, I must say I was honest. I went to Leipzig and immaturated in chemistry and in musicology. That he allowed. That was, you know, a science that was perfectly all right, nothing to do with compositions.

Miklos Rozsa5:25

And I went in every morning eight o'clock to the laboratory in a white gown, you know, and worked there. And I had to pass a great building and on the building it says Breitkopf and Hertel. This was a very old publishing firm, probably the oldest in Germany. And I thought, Breitkopf and Hertel, maybe one day they will publish my music.

Miklos Rozsa5:50

But I had to go to chemistry and I got analysis to make.

Miklos Rozsa5:55

And I came up to the sixteenth analysis, and that I couldn't solve.

Miklos Rozsa6:01

And there was an assistant, Doctor Meyer.

Miklos Rozsa6:05

And when I came towards him, he only shook his hand. He said, No, it's not right I went back and poor that, nothing came out. So I said, Enough I never went back. You gave up chemistry. I gave up chemistry. I went to the conservatory. I was accepted. I came home. I told my father honestly.

Miklos Rozsa6:26

He wrote a letter to my professor, who was Hermann Grabner, a pupil and successor of Max Reger, and he wrote back a letter that if anybody has the right to study composition, it's your son, and that did it.

Miklos Rozsa6:43

Let's have your second record. What's that to be? When I was in Leipzig, I wrote everything, of course, and I had to write a motette. It was a Benedictus.

Miklos Rozsa6:53

and I showed it to, or my professor showed it, to, Carl Straubi, who was the successor of Johann Sebastian Bach, of Church of Saint Thomas.

Miklos Rozsa7:03

And I went to see him, and he said it's very good music, but it's completely unsingable.

Miklos Rozsa7:11

And I said, But what shall I do? said You come to my choir in a Gevant House. We meet every Thursday.

Miklos Rozsa7:18

and you'll sing. I said, But I have no voice. I said, Who cares about your voice? But you will be sitting there. I did that for three years, and I learnt a repertoire and I wrote

Miklos Rozsa7:30

A lot of choral music, some of them was even performed in the B B C two years ago.

Miklos Rozsa7:36

which is singable now.

Miklos Rozsa7:38

And I sang all the great concerts, but sang again in quotations. I just opened my mouth and followed the music.

Miklos Rozsa7:47

The ninth symphony by Beethoven twice with Vortwingler and once with Bruno Walter, and these were memories I shall never forget.

Miklos Rozsa7:58

Apart from everything, I think the Ninth Symphony is the greatest music ever composed, especially the first movement, but the last movement is just incredible.

Speaker 48:07

Uh

Miklos Rozsa8:08

It's one of the greatest achievements of human mind.

Miklos Rozsa8:11

So I choose the last movement of the ninth symphony by Beethoven.

Speaker 49:09

I don't know, I'm sorry. I'm not gonna sleep out of this.

Presenter9:18

Part of the last movement of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony, Furtwengler conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

Presenter9:26

Your first composition was

Miklos Rozsa9:28

Published while you were still a student.

Miklos Rozsa9:34

And actually in the first performance at the Conservatory, of course, I played the violo. I must tell you, a worse performance couldn't have been done on the violo than mine. When you graduated, what did you do? Did you stay in Germany?

Miklos Rozsa9:49

I stayed in Germany until nineteen thirty one.

Miklos Rozsa9:54

when I went to Paris and gave a concert.

Miklos Rozsa9:57

and the concert was in the Ecole Normale de Musique.

Miklos Rozsa10:00

And there were many people, like Arthur Honeguer, and many musicians.

Miklos Rozsa10:08

And it was a tremendous success because I got three, four columns in the papers the next day, C'est l'homme de jour.

Miklos Rozsa10:16

And I always said it's c'est le plat de jourve. The man of the day or the dish of the day. That's right.

Presenter10:22

And that's right.

Miklos Rozsa10:23

So I

Presenter10:23

I thought this is it. I stayed in Paris. Now, to earn a living, I believe for a time you wrote some pop songs to be played in cinema intervals.

Miklos Rozsa10:32

Yes, under a Sudani.

Miklos Rozsa10:35

I was terribly ashamed of that, but that's all I could do. I didn't want to put my own name on it, of course, because b at that time Monteau was playing my music in Paris, and it would have been impossible that you go to a a Monteaux concert and you hear my a music of mine or to a chamber music concert and there was a fox throat written by Miklos Rosso. So I chose a name Nick Tomei. I don't know how I chose it, but it was idiotic enough not to resemble my own name. Let's have your third record, what Fruit Bee.

Miklos Rozsa11:10

Well, I was very fond of the music of Brahms and quite agreed with Billow, who said when he had heard the first symphony by Brahms, that this is the tenth symphony by Beethoven. It is just as great.

Miklos Rozsa11:26

And

Miklos Rozsa11:27

Bruno Walter became a very close friend of mine. He played my music in Austria, in Holland, and finally in America and New York. So this performance is by Bruno Walter, who I think was one of the great conductors of our times.

Presenter12:43

An excerpt from the fourth movement of the Brahms' first symphony in C minor, Bruno Walter conducting the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

Miklos Rozsa12:53

Quite soon you came to London? In nineteen thirty five I came to London. I was to write a ballet. There was a very good company, Markova in Darlin. Very good. Excellent company, excellent dancers.

Miklos Rozsa13:07

And there was a Lady Dera de Moroda and

Miklos Rozsa13:11

She wanted to do a Hungarian ballet called Hungaria.

Miklos Rozsa13:16

And what that Hungarian composer

Miklos Rozsa13:19

Now this is again one one of those things. I come to London and suddenly somebody was a Hungarian composer. That doesn't happen though every day. So I wrote this ballet based mostly on folk music, which suited me greatly, and actually that led me to the cinema.

Presenter13:38

You'd got to know a clever young French director, uh Jacques Fider.

Miklos Rozsa13:43

Yes. Jacques Feder I met in Paris, and his wife was Francoise Rosset, a very fine actress, and I knew them very well both, and one day he invited to his house, and I said,

Miklos Rozsa13:57

Why don't you improvise something? I said, Well, what?

Miklos Rozsa14:01

I've seen anything you like.

Miklos Rozsa14:03

I said, Why why don't you give me a theme?

Miklos Rozsa14:05

So he gave me a theme, a dramatic theme, the city is in uproar, the people are running around, and so on.

Miklos Rozsa14:13

So I sat down to the piano and played a city in uproar, and he said, Fine, that's all I wanted to know.

Miklos Rozsa14:20

Nothing happened, Erz.

Miklos Rozsa14:22

And none?

Miklos Rozsa14:23

A year later I read in the papers that he is in London.

Miklos Rozsa14:27

He stayed at the splendid hotel on Greene Park. He's not there anymore.

Miklos Rozsa14:32

And I called him and he said, This is wonderful.

Miklos Rozsa14:37

Could you come right away to the hotel because I am in great trouble.

Miklos Rozsa14:40

So I ran over to the hotel in a taxi, and said, What's the trouble? said these idiots don't understand my French, and my English is not good enough. I want to have my laundry by tomorrow morning.

Miklos Rozsa14:53

Could you explain this? Well, I did. So he said, Now we go out for dinner. I said, I'm sorry I can't go for dinner,'cause I have to go to my ballet. Oh, he wrote a ballet, he said.

Miklos Rozsa15:04

I said, yes, it's just came back from Glasgow. It's playing at the Duke of York Theatre, and I have to go there to see in what shape it is.

Miklos Rozsa15:12

Can I go with you? Of course. So he came and he was enchanted. He just loved it. He said, This is it and now we go out to celebrate. I didn't do celebrate what, but we went to Koalino's.

Miklos Rozsa15:26

And he ordered champagne? I don't drink.

Miklos Rozsa15:30

He drank one bottle, he ordered a second bottle, and as every gulp went down his evaluation of me as a composer went up.

Miklos Rozsa15:40

At the end I was the greatest composer ever.

Miklos Rozsa15:43

Written any music.

Miklos Rozsa15:45

But I thought, That's fine. He'll forget it back to morrow.

Miklos Rozsa15:49

I took him home to his hotel, and he said, Tomorrow Francoise is coming, my wife.

Miklos Rozsa15:55

And you come to lunch.

Miklos Rozsa15:57

I'll call you at ten o'clock.

Miklos Rozsa15:58

I was sure he'd forget it. He didn't. He called me at ten o'clock.

Miklos Rozsa16:02

And he said, Francoise, here we expect you at one o'clock.

Miklos Rozsa16:06

So I was in his hotel one o'clock,

Miklos Rozsa16:09

And we waited one, one thirty, two, two thirty, still no lunch.

Miklos Rozsa16:15

And I said, She's late, but she's coming. And she came, a lady I didn't know, very elegant, with a tremendous hat, and a gentleman, her husband. And they were introduced as mister and misses Sebur, S I E B E R.

Miklos Rozsa16:33

So misses Sieber sat on my right at the table, and Jacques Feder on my left.

Miklos Rozsa16:39

Suddenly she turned to me and said, Is my song ready?

Miklos Rozsa16:43

I said, What's wrong?

Miklos Rozsa16:45

I said, Monsieur Feder told me that you are going to write the music for our film. In the meantime I felt that Feder is pushing my left side. I said, Well, the song is not quite ready, but I am working on it. And I turned to Feder in a sotto voce whisper. I said, Who is she?

Miklos Rozsa17:03

And he whispered back

Miklos Rozsa17:05

You idiot.

Miklos Rozsa17:06

Marl

Presenter17:06

Benedit.

Miklos Rozsa17:07

D

Presenter17:09

No, she was.

Presenter17:10

And you were supposed to be doing a song for her that nobody had told you.

Miklos Rozsa17:13

No.

Presenter17:14

And that was your first piece of film writing in that song.

Miklos Rozsa17:16

That's right. That was not without armor, with robots with Marlon D3.

Presenter17:19

But don't

Presenter17:21

Yeah.

Miklos Rozsa17:21

Yeah.

Presenter17:21

Well, there we are. We've reached the point of your first film composition. Let's have your fourth record.

Miklos Rozsa17:27

I knew very little of Le Bussy before I went to Paris.

Miklos Rozsa17:32

But suddenly a new world opened up to me, which is French Impressionism.

Miklos Rozsa17:37

And I chose Lame.

Presenter18:40

An excerpt from the Dialogue Between Wind and Sea from De Bucy's La Mer, the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Toscanini.

Presenter18:49

You wrote that song for Marlena Dietrich. You began to work quite a lot with the studio that made that film, the Corder Studio, Alexander Corder.

Miklos Rozsa18:58

Yes. I did about ten in England and then four in America. The first one was Knight Without Armour, which he liked. I didn't meet him until it was finished.

Miklos Rozsa19:11

And he came to me and said, I like your music, you're going to work for me.

Miklos Rozsa19:15

What took you to Hollywood? Alexander Gordon.

Miklos Rozsa19:18

We started the Thifu Baghdad here in

Miklos Rozsa19:21

London, nineteen thirty nine, summer thirty nine.

Miklos Rozsa19:25

And suddenly on september third,

Miklos Rozsa19:28

Something unpleasant happened, and there was no more money to follow with the film.

Miklos Rozsa19:33

We recorded as much music as we could.

Miklos Rozsa19:36

And Alex went to America. He was a member of the United Artists Corporation.

Miklos Rozsa19:42

and came back and said United Artists is putting up money in America to finish the film.

Miklos Rozsa19:48

And I have to take over the key man. You're one of'em.

Miklos Rozsa19:53

And actually I asked how long will I go for? Said two, three months. Now I am there since forty-four years.

Presenter19:59

Well, it was very difficult to get back, I presume, the war being on. Does the composer conduct?

Miklos Rozsa20:06

Yeah.

Presenter20:06

The recording session.

Miklos Rozsa20:07

Yeah.

Presenter20:07

Yeah.

Miklos Rozsa20:08

Well, in England I did not.

Miklos Rozsa20:10

But I was studying conducting in England. I must say I was very grateful that I had this idea.

Miklos Rozsa20:17

I went to Trinity College because in Leipzig I didn't study any conducting. I was composing. I I was not interested. I said there's somebody else can do that.

Miklos Rozsa20:27

However, here I thought this is about time that I studied. I went to Trinity College of Music, a Mandeville Place.

Miklos Rozsa20:35

and I was a pupil of Kennedy Scott.

Miklos Rozsa20:39

He was a great choral director. For one year

Miklos Rozsa20:42

And then when that finished I was a pupil of John Fry who conducted the orchestra, and I had to conduct the school orchestra too, mostly my own compositions to start with, but then I conducted both Elgar symphonies.

Miklos Rozsa20:57

I conducted the planets and anything you know which which was spectacular and you can learn from. From then on I conducted every score of mine.

Miklos Rozsa21:08

Record number five.

Miklos Rozsa21:11

I was in Paris when I first saw Daphnis and Cloa.

Miklos Rozsa21:16

I first heard the music Monteu conducting who gave the first performance as well in nineteen twelve.

Miklos Rozsa21:22

And then I heard him many times

Miklos Rozsa21:26

And it of course is is a splendor of orchestration, of colour and imagination.

Miklos Rozsa21:32

And it's I think it's a great, great work. Let's hear it.

Presenter22:37

The closing passage of Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe, the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Monteur, and there's also the choir of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

Presenter22:48

Looking down the long list of about a hundred and twenty movies, you seem to have had spells of of being, as it were, type cast as a musician. You you had a kind of Oriental jungle phase to start with. That was

Miklos Rozsa23:07

And the

Presenter23:07

The thief of Baghdad And they're dropping room.

Miklos Rozsa23:10

The four feathers before all Oriental subject matters.

Presenter23:15

And

Miklos Rozsa23:16

Some first rate psychological thrillers you did quite a second. Double indemnity, I remember double indemnity and so on. About ten.

Presenter23:25

And I

Presenter23:29

You were a pioneer in the use of electronic music and philosophy.

Miklos Rozsa23:34

Yes, as a matter of fact I was the first one who used the electronic music, which was the phtalamine. Yes. Which was hardly known th at that time. That was a French invention, wasn't it? It was no, it was a Russian invention.

Presenter23:45

Notion

Miklos Rozsa23:46

Teremin was a Russian physicist and he came to the West in nineteen twenty two.

Miklos Rozsa23:53

and played his instrument everywhere, in England, in Paris, in America,

Miklos Rozsa23:58

And it was a fantastic instrument.

Miklos Rozsa24:01

Quite out of this world sound.

Miklos Rozsa24:04

And finally I came to spellbound where mister Hitchcock said, I want a new sound I said Telemin.

Miklos Rozsa24:12

And Mr. Selzing, who was a producer, said, Is that an Italian dish?

Presenter24:18

Yeah.

Miklos Rozsa24:19

Grave okay.

Presenter24:19

But

Presenter24:21

The next phase of your music, you became uh an authority on the music for historical epics. You did Bern Hove, for example, which must be.

Miklos Rozsa24:31

Yes, well that is complaining. There was another episode in my life and that was the gangster film, to the film Noir. And actually I became the Al Caponi of Hollywood Music.

Miklos Rozsa24:44

And then came finally, in nineteen fifty, the first historical, or shall we say, bibliohistorical film, Vovadis.

Miklos Rozsa24:55

Now whether I succeeded or not is not for me to say, but I tried to recreate the music of the first century.

Presenter25:02

How many

Miklos Rozsa25:02

The Oscars did you win? Three. Three. For which films?

Miklos Rozsa25:06

The first was for spellbound. I must say in brackets that Mr. Hitchcock was nominated, but he did not get an award, so he didn't send me a telegram to congratulate me. The second was which is indicative for my book, A Double Life, which was a very good film, a psychological film again, with Ronald Coleman.

Speaker 125:15

It's heavy.

Miklos Rozsa25:30

and the third one was Ben Hur. But

Presenter25:32

Now you took the title, The Double Life. You pinched the title of that wrong. I did pinch it, but I left the A out.

Miklos Rozsa25:36

I did

Presenter25:39

Because it is very applicable to your own professional career. That's right. Let's break off your sixth record.

Miklos Rozsa25:47

I was in London and wrote the music for the V I Piece with Elizabeth Taylor and Burton.

Miklos Rozsa25:57

And the director was Anthony Asquith, a very fine gentleman. And one day he said, I'm going to bring you to morrow something. And he brought me the score, not the record, the score.

Miklos Rozsa26:09

of Britain's War Aquium.

Miklos Rozsa26:12

Well, I didn't sleep all night. I was reading that score and I said, When is it going to be recorded? And he said, Very soon.

Miklos Rozsa26:20

Apparently he was a friend of Britain.

Miklos Rozsa26:23

And finally I got the record too and I was

Miklos Rozsa26:27

Enchanted.

Presenter27:23

Part of the Die's Eire from Benjamin Britton's War Requiem.

Presenter27:29

Like a recording conducted by the composer. Of your many shall I use the word serious but of your many compositions written entirely for yourself, which are your favourites? Which ones do you like?

Miklos Rozsa27:40

Well, they all belong to a certain period, and my biggest success was theme variations and finale.

Miklos Rozsa27:48

The first performance was given by Charles Munch, then Bruno Walter gave it all over the world,

Miklos Rozsa27:55

And actually Leonard Bernstein made his debut with this work, and it was played every about a hundred and fifty performances.

Miklos Rozsa28:04

And this is of course very close to me. But then I wrote five concerti, one for Heifitz, one for Pietigowski and Heifetz, one for American pianist Leonard Penario, then for Jano Starko, or cello concerto, and I just had the first performance of my Violo concerto in Pittsburgh.

Miklos Rozsa28:28

which I wrote for Pinkazuckerman and was conducted by Andrei Previn.

Miklos Rozsa28:34

We've got to your seventh record.

Presenter28:35

God watchful that be.

Miklos Rozsa28:37

Record number seven is Stravinsky's saccudi prentum, the rite of spring.

Miklos Rozsa28:42

I heard this the first time in Paris, conducted by Montu.

Miklos Rozsa28:47

But I have to tell you a story.

Miklos Rozsa28:49

that I was in London in nineteen sixty three, may twenty ninth, which was the fiftieth anniversary of the date when Montu conducted the same work

Miklos Rozsa29:01

In Paris, in the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, where there was a tremendous scandal. A riot, almost a riot.

Speaker 129:09

Mm-hmm.

Miklos Rozsa29:10

And Stravinsky jumped out of the window to save his neck.

Miklos Rozsa29:14

And now fifty years have gone, and in Albert Roll Monteau was about eighty five or eighty six.

Miklos Rozsa29:22

conducting this work. Stravinsky was sitting in a box with his wife.

Miklos Rozsa29:28

And this old gentleman, Monteur, came out and I was afraid what what is going to happen, because he didn't look that he's going to live through the performance. Well, it was a fantastic performance. The whole audience jumped up, there was a standing ovation, the orchestra jumped up and everybody started Stravinsky, Stravinsky.

Miklos Rozsa29:53

And there in a box this old gentleman bowed.

Miklos Rozsa29:57

They wanted him on the podium, but he couldn't walk any more.

Miklos Rozsa30:01

And everybody was standing, everybody was shouting, Stovinsky took bows.

Miklos Rozsa30:07

But no Monteaux. Monteaux disappeared.

Miklos Rozsa30:11

Suddenly, about ten minutes later, he came into the box. You know how large Albert Hall is. He walked around to came into the box of Sarvinsky. The two old men embraced each other and everybody cried. I cried too. It was the most touching experience of my life. Let's hear the end, the Don Sacral from the Rite of Spring.

Presenter31:29

The closing passage of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, the Columbia Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer himself.

Presenter31:37

We've put you on this island.

Presenter31:40

We'd give you a certain amount of help to make a hut and so forth, but could you look after yourself? Can you cook? Ever done any fishing?

Miklos Rozsa31:46

But none of his fish.

Miklos Rozsa31:47

No, I'm completely impractical. The only thing I can do is write music, nothing else.

Presenter31:51

So we're only

Presenter31:55

I don't know what you're going to write music. On or with, except we are going to give you a luxury. Would that be the most important thing? Would you like some manuscript paper? Yes, I would say so. And plenty of pens and ink. Yes, please. All right.

Presenter32:08

But I'm a little bit worried about uh how you're going to manage.

Miklos Rozsa32:12

Fish probably you can catch with your hands.

Miklos Rozsa32:16

Your last record.

Miklos Rozsa32:18

The last record is

Miklos Rozsa32:20

The concerto for orchestra by Bailabarto.

Miklos Rozsa32:23

Bartuk is very close to me, not only because he is a Hungarian,

Miklos Rozsa32:28

but because he is a great composer,

Miklos Rozsa32:31

And because of this very tragic life, he lived his last five years of his life in America. Who is conducting this recording? This is a friend of mine, very close friend of mine who has done much of my music and I admire him enormously, Sir George Shorty.

Presenter33:50

An excerpt from Bartock's Concerto for Orchestra, Sir George Shelte conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Presenter33:57

If you could take just one of the eight discs you've played us, mister Roger, which would it be?

Miklos Rozsa34:03

Well, I think the beat of them, because the ninth symphony for me is the beginning and the end of music.

Presenter34:09

Yeah.

Presenter34:10

You told us you're one luxury. You're allowed one book. You already have the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. Yes. One book.

Miklos Rozsa34:16

Well, there I have to ask your forgiveness because I'm going to ask for a Hungarian book. That's all right, that's fine. What is the title?

Presenter34:24

Yeah.

Miklos Rozsa34:26

Hungarian and also in English? Well, I would like to have the collected poems of a great Hungarian poet, probably the greatest of this century, but unfortunately poetry cannot be translated.

Miklos Rozsa34:38

His name is Adi, A D Y, Andra Addy, and he influenced me very much in my youth. I wrote a lot of songs on his poems, and I still would like to write more.

Presenter34:51

Uh

Miklos Rozsa34:51

Right.

Presenter34:52

The Hungarian Poems of Adi.

Presenter34:55

And thank you, Niklaus Roger, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. Thank you so much to ask me here. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 135:10

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