Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
2 appearances
A world-renowned pianist, particularly known for interpretations of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Liszt, also a published poet and essayist.
On the island
Eight records
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:24What has been your guiding principle in choosing these eight records? Great music, great performances, personal nostalgia?
I suppose a combination of all of them. But as I'm a performer, it is of course important that the performances suit me and that I could imagine to live with them for a while. And indeed I have lived with most of them for several years.
Presenter asks
4:14Where were you born?
I was born in a little place in Moravia, in Czechoslovakia. And I went to Yugoslavia shortly after that to spend my youth there till the age of twelve. Then I went to Austria. I am Viennese and I consider London to be almost my second home.
Presenter asks
7:44Which composers did you feel most at home with at the beginning of your career?
I suppose my interest for Beethoven and Liszt was already strongly developed, and Mozart and Schubert followed a little later. And also contemporary music, I mean 20th century music, came along.
The keepsakes
The book
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
I'm selecting something that most British people will not know. It's the aphorisms of Lichtenberg.
The luxury
I would survive better, not praying, but just finding a kind of peace there.
Presenter asks
8:07A few years ago in London you played all the thirty-two Beethoven sonatas in a series of eight recitals. This is surely a great feat of memory apart from everything else. And playing them chronologically, you left yourself with all the big ones for the last evening.
Yes, if it is concentrated on a short span of time, on a few weeks, then it really means an enormous amount of concentration and one never can do well enough. ... Yes, this is a particular strain and I never did it again chronologically.
Presenter asks
20:18If you could have only one record out of the small allowance of eight, which one would it be?
I think I would settle for the well-tempered piano.
Presenter asks
1:29I wonder at your grand age, then, Alfred, what surprises you these days?
Now this is a very difficult question. I was surprised last year when suddenly my hearing broke down. And that was one of the worst surprises I had in my life. I don't go to concerts anymore or very rarely. I hardly listen to music at home. But I still listen to a few pianists whom I know very well. I have now adjusted to it to a degree and I can crack some jokes again.
Presenter asks
2:18What about the satisfaction of performing to an appreciative and knowledgeable audience? I wonder how much you miss that.
I don't miss it at all, and when I stopped playing in my seventy-eighth year, for good, I did not shed a tear. I was very pleased that some other people shed it for me. But I have never been just a piano player and I'm still writing. I knew that I would lecture and give masterclasses and give readings of my poetry. And all of this has happened.
Presenter asks
5:41How does one control feeling?
Well, first of all, of course, you have to have enough feeling to want to control it. But in in music, even if the feeling is beginning and the end of of the procedure of performance, it w would not happen without the filter of the intellect. Without this, there is no work of art. There has to be a cooperation between both.
Presenter asks
14:21What do you remember of [Hitler's visit to Graz]?
Uh I saw him on the street. There were hundreds, thousands of of people s screaming with delight, and he was in an open car with his uh arm stretched out. So uh he he was treated like almost like a messiah.
Presenter asks
15:02Tell me what impression that made upon you, long term of watching that happen.
I was just storing impressions. It was much later that I realized what this was meaning. I can only tell you that my memories of the wartime have been decisive for my whole life. They have prevented me from being credulous. from fanaticism, from nationalism. From creeds of any kind. And I'm very grateful for the experience. Horrifying as it was.
Presenter asks
29:40What have you discovered about yourself over the years?
You misunderstand me. I am not used to thinking about myself. I have I I d I am I don't have the goal to understand myself. I don't have the goal to understand the world. For me the world is absurd anyway. I do not go as far as to justify the existence of God or whatever whatever. I think these are questions that should be Avoid it.
“I did [quite] a bit of composing, quite a bit of painting along my piano studies. I always had a keen interest for literature. And when I had my first recital in Graz, I also had an exhibition of watercolors at the same time. But it was all only one or two years later that I decided for the piano … when I became a pupil of Edwin Fischer and when I won a prize in the Busoni competition in Bolzano.”
“It depends of where I am, if I'm at home. I work up to six hours a day. And if I'm on tour, sometimes considerably less or nothing, depending on travel and rest. I'm used to do a routine on a concert day of going through the whole programme at the hall, and warming up on a piano before the concert for about an hour.”
“I played a concert in Melbourne under the late Sir Malcolm Sargent … after we had finished the Mozart Concerto [K. 503], I wanted to rise from my piano stool to shake Sir Malcolm's hand. And I wasn't able to because my tails had got caught in the piano stool and some musicians from the orchestra tried to help me and unwind the stool, but they didn't succeed so that I finally had to take off my tails and shake hands and bow in the white vest, which has for some reason amused the public in all.”
“I never try to kill an animal except a mosquito … I just hope for some fruit trees.”
“I have no idea about boats. If I would find one I would probably try to escape and I would drown miserably.”
“I decided for Mahler's Ninth Symphony, which closed an era and opened a new one, which is really the door to new music in my eyes.”
“I was surprised last year when suddenly my hearing broke down. And that was one of the worst surprises I had in my life.”
“I did not shed a tear. I was very pleased that some other people shed it for me.”
“I saw him on the street. There were hundreds, thousands of people screaming with delight, and he was in an open car with his arm stretched out. So he was treated like almost like a messiah.”
“They have prevented me from being credulous. from fanaticism, from nationalism. From creeds of any kind. And I'm very grateful for the experience. Horrifying as it was.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, I can hear you, but you can't hear me.”
“If a man from another planet or or creature or or whatever, may hopefully grotesque creature comes to this world and asks me what is the most significant thing about mankind, I would say the urge for self-deception.”