Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A clarinetist and early music pioneer, disabled by thrombosis, who became a leading guest conductor of Stuttgart Opera.
On the island
Eight records
Final movement of London Symphony (Symphony No. 104)Favourite
Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century; Frans Brüggen (conductor)
Haydn is of all people ... he was really writing for everybody.
Overture to La Finta Giardiniera
English Northern Philharmonia; Alan Hacker (conductor)
This demonstrates the excitement when one's in the pit and all the audience are there.
Hymn to the Sun (First Interlude)
It's the only record that features me ... I'd like you to hear this interlude of Harry Burt whistles.
I was absolutely entranced by it. It was again the fact that somebody was playing an instrument in such a vocal way.
Opening chorus from St. John Passion, BWV 245
Vienna Concentus Musicus; Vienna Chorus; Nikolaus Harnoncourt (conductor)
I think I'd like this on the desert island because it's so awesome ... the whole heaven and earth and sea or universe.
Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head
When my two daughters were at primary school ... They played for the school concerts ... to kind of make up for it really.
I have to play a record of Tony Cohen selection ... he's a great musician.
Return of Ulysses (excerpt: Minerva's aria)
Rotraud Hansmann; Vienna Concentus Musicus; Nikolaus Harnoncourt (conductor)
The reason why I'd like Monte Verdi ... they so describe the human experience in such a touching Shakespearean way.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:01Do you think your career has been richer and more varied as a result of your disability?
I think it's very true, actually. After all, it's quite possible that although playing in an orchestra is very glorious, I still might be doing that. I mean, I had to leave the L P O because of my disability, and that meant I got involved with my own groups, and then I had time, you see. If I'd been principal clarinet of a major London orchestra, I could have only really done that.
Presenter asks
4:34What exactly happened to you then, Alan? You were twenty-eight years old and in reasonably decent health.
Yes, one day I had a pain round me which is rather like a beer barrel being tightened round your chest. And it got rather worse. And I mentioned it to players in the orchestra, and they said, Oh, well, we've got trouble with our backs ... And it got worse and I was teaching in a school and felt rather embarrassedly, rather kind of drunken. And I just had to to leave. ... So it it was effectively your back was broken by this motion.
Presenter asks
6:29And it must have been a terrifying experience. You presumably thought for a while you might be able to move again. You didn't know it was a permanent condition.
The keepsakes
The luxury
Hovercraft wheelchair with a cappuccino machine
I think I'd actually like maybe I could have a hovercraft wheelchair that would get across the jungle quite easily... and maybe I could have a sort of cappuccino machine fixed to the wheelchair.
I don't think you really do think actually when that happens to you. Traumatized. When I was in the Middlesex, there were doctors ... they did their best. But anyway, eventually ... I started to play the opening of the Mozart clarinet quintet ... and by the end of the week I could go right over the top, back down again. So it really was therapy occupational therapy.
Presenter asks
14:24Tell me about your musical roots, Alan. Do they go deep? Is it in the family?
Yes, my mother, she can still play actually, and she's one of these people who can play things by ear rather beautifully. And I think my dad He's very moved by music. Played the cello when he was a student. They kind of left me alone ... I actually joined the choir, had a duff piano teacher ... I also made my own wind instruments. I don't really know why, but ... it's odd, isn't it, how things appear in your youth, and you don't know why they do, but anyway, cubes did, as far as I was concerned.
Presenter asks
16:38You were awarded a professorship at the Royal Academy when you were barely twenty. What did that mean?
Well, Reginald Kell, a great English clarinetist, returned from America and taught at the Academy for a few years, and I was one of his pupils. And when he left he said I'd like Allan to take over. But I was only nineteen at the time and I'd got a job in the LPO. And I think the authorities thought, well, we can't really call him a professor at this age, but they paid me the professor's money and I taught myself to teach.
Presenter asks
25:56And what about pain? Are you in pain?
Well, my back aches all the time and my legs are my feet stinging rather like if you've been sitting on the Louvre too long with a good book. I mean, I can remember things like that, even though I've been like this for about twenty-eight, twenty-nine years. ... I do tend to make light of it, but on the other hand I did say to you earlier on that Life was a bit of a nightmare to begin for quite a long time actually.
“I started to play the opening of the Mozart clarinet quintet, which, as you know, is a sort of upward arpeggio, and I could just play a couple of notes and really felt like dropping dead out of the wheelchair, and then the next day I could play just a little more, and by the end of the week I could go right over the top, back down again.”
“Well, no, no. It was simply that they said, was I capable of doing a German tour? and I said yes, but I thought it was important to travel in a car rather than be lifted by my colleagues into a coach. And they wrote back to me a couple of weeks later said We don't think you can manage it. So I said the sort of things you're not supposed to say on the B B C and left.”
“I was absolutely entranced by it. It was again the fact that somebody was playing an instrument in such a vocal way.”
“I think if you're disabled you're more on your own. So I suppose if you're disabled you're rather more prepared for it perhaps than others.”
“Yes, I think it is, actually. In fact, I mean, to go back to to musical points, in the sixties when uh Peter Maxwell, Davis and Burke Whistle were writing very fierce white red and white hot expressionist music, I couldn't understand why I was able to play this music over and over again. But to put it in um kind of South London terms, I was actually getting rid of dirty water because I was just disabled.”