Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
2 appearances
A celebrated conductor, born in Budapest.
On the island
Eight records
Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen (Cantata BWV 56)
the music to help me to get pacified with my being on a desert island altogether.
String Quartet No. 13 in A minor, D. 804 (Rosamunde) - 1st movement
This movement lingers with me through all my life and I love it.
I was there when it was first performed... one of the most beautiful love duets.
Divertimento for String Orchestra - 2nd movement
a very deep, tremendous, tragic record... tragedy is part of life.
Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73 - 3rd movement
Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra
to be reminded of my own conducting.
Duet 'Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen' from Die Zauberflöte
Tiana Lemnitz and Gerhard Hüsch
tender and humorous and beautiful.
Act I finale (love duet) from Otello
love music, again very beautiful music and again song music.
Duet from Act II of Fidelio (O namenlose Freude)Favourite
Martha Mödl and Wolfgang Windgassen
the most moving thing I can imagine in music or elsewhere, in art.
Rondo Capriccioso in E major, Op. 14Favourite
I tell you right away, I would not like it [being on my own] ... But if it has to be, then of course I would like to have a record of her with me. And that was my first choice.
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Brighton Festival Chorus
I will take the closing part. Because that is sort of the conclusion of the whole thing. And and really it does not matter very much which part, because it's also beautiful.
Concerto for Orchestra (opening)
Hungarian State Symphony Orchestra, Antal Doráti
I choose this one because that's my last recording of this piece. And I presume it is better than the previous ones as a musical conception, because if it wouldn't be a right presumption, I think I would have wasted my life.
Fidelio (final duet before the Act II finale)
Martha Mödl, Wolfgang Windgassen, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Wilhelm Furtwängler
Record number four is My Eternal Love. Which is, I think, the best opera and the most wonderful opera in the world
String Quartet No. 21 in D major, K. 575 (slow movement)
Now comes Mozart and now comes the string quartet, which is the purest and probably most beautiful form of absolute music.
Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115 (opening)
This would be Brahms. And this will be the also chamber music, the clarinet quintet, which is also going way back to my childhood. And has accompanied me ever since.
Winterreise, D. 911: Täuschung
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Gerald Moore
we will hear the Tai Shong and it will be sung for us by Fischer Diskow, who sings it incomparably actually.
Richard III (soundtrack excerpt)
That will be speech, because I don't think I would like to be without a spoken word. And that should be English speech, and it should be Shakespeare's text.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:08How did you set about choosing your eight records for this desert island?
Well, uh when I got this invitation to this island, to the to be an outcast. Well, I th I thought about the circumstances by which I would get there. Of course it would be an accident. Of course. Fundamentally it would not be an agreeable thing to be on a desert island. It would be something imposed by the force of destiny. And I would think what would I best want? First of all, music. That is necessary. Even if you wouldn't have asked me to choose records or choose music, I would have said music, that's what I want. Being on a desert island is some thing of an ordeal. So, first of all, I would like to have music which would especially help me to bear this ordeal. Then I would like to be consoled with human memories with uh memories and images of love, so I would like to have some love music. I want to have definitely human voices around me, so I want to have singing, I want to have chamber music, I want to have Mozart and I want to have Beethoven.
Presenter asks
3:43Has it always been conducting that interested you most, right from the start?
Yes, I always wanted to conduct. But I came to conducting in the natural way by doing it, not by somehow studying it in an abstract way. I was a practical musician, still am, playing instruments and performing and composing and doing music in a general way.
The keepsakes
The book
Mór Jókai
it would be a very fine novelist... He's the Hungarian Duma... I would choose one which is called as Oranyamer and it means the Golden Man.
The luxury
An old master drawing (Italian landscape by Van Cleve)
because that would be the page which she gave me on my seventieth birthday.
Presenter asks
In 1945 you reformed the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, which had been suspended during the war. It must have been an exciting task to build up an orchestra practically from scratch?
Yes, that was very, very exciting and that's a unique chance in a lifetime and I'm eternally grateful that I had this chance. Uh to describe it would take many many hours so I don't even go into it but it was really something out of this world to create a fine orchestra in the span of about two months time.
Presenter asks
7:40Do you find that orchestral musicians differ much temperamentally in different countries?
No, I find that this is the most international crowd you can imagine. Musicians are the same everywhere. They even look alike.
Presenter asks
8:43You've given the first performance of a number of outstanding modern works. Which ones do you value most?
That is almost impossible to tell, because I given so many and at the moment of their performance each one was the most important thing in my life. But maybe I say, and again, a Bartok memory, that is his last work, his posthumous work, the Viola Concerto, which was a very. It's a heartbreaking and wonderful thing to perform for the first time.
Presenter asks
11:22How well equipped do you think you are as a castaway? Could you look after yourself? Are you good with your hands?
Oh yes, I'm f fairly good, very good indeed. I think I could make myself a house, I could do all sorts of things, making tools, and I'd be all right. Right. One thing I couldn't do is cooking. I think I would have to live on fruits. I don't like to fish. I think uh that's not a particular art. I think I could fish if I had to. But I don't like either uh fishing or shooting. I don't like to kill animals. The only living thing I was ever shooting at were watermelons. Successfully? Oh yes, I got some of them. Could you do it with a bow and arrow? I think I could do that too. Yes, I did shoot with bow and arrow. Oh then you're going to be all right.
Presenter asks
1:45Did you take it for granted that music was to be your life?
Yes, I always knew that music is my life.
Presenter asks
3:45Was it conducting that was interesting you right from the start?
Actually my main interest ... is composing ... and always was. And I got side track to conducting ... when I was about twenty or twenty one, and that probably was in some degree the consequence of the war and those conditions which put me into a ... state of neurosis which forbade me to do creative work for a while.
Presenter asks
4:39How did you find [Richard Strauss] as a very young man? Was he genial, or rather forbidding?
No, not forbidding at all. Not forbidding at all. It was he was very nice, very non-committal, in fact ... He was just very natural, a quiet man who had his own thoughts and did his business very very well, with great authority, without ever raising his voice.
Presenter asks
8:11How did you become aware of [the inspired racial hatred in Germany]?
I personally became aware of it ... because I went to a meeting which happened in what was then the equivalent of the Musicians' Union ... And it was ... such a hateful, horrible event that I went home to my young wife and and said, Look, we go. This is this is not a place ... to make music there ... to live here is impossible. Let's go.
Presenter asks
14:20Was there much musical life starting up again [in Hungary after the war]?
Starting up again ... and I conducted concerts there, with hardly an instrument to play on ... It was fantastic, fantastic, and sadly fantastic experience. Humanly it it was most rewarding. It is it is really ... sadly astonishing how people stand up in in emergencies wonderfully and how great failures there are when everything goes right.
Presenter asks
22:40How well equipped do you think you are to look after yourself [on the island]?
Oh yes, I think I could do that. I it it would be much worse with cooking. I think I would eat only raw food what I can find on the trees ... I would not catch an animal, I would not wound an animal, I would abhor to do that.
“Being on a desert island is some thing of an ordeal. So, first of all, I would like to have music which would especially help me to bear this ordeal.”
“I want to have definitely human voices around me, so I want to have singing, I want to have chamber music, I want to have Mozart and I want to have Beethoven.”
“This movement lingers with me through all my life and I love it and I want to hear it.”
“I would like to be a much better person and a much better artist than I am and I hope that I still continue that.”
“I wanted to combine this with human voices. So here is the Pamina, Papageno duet from the magic flute, which is tender and humorous and beautiful.”
“It would be definitely the Fidelio.”
“I tell you right away, I would not like it [being on my own]. But if it has to be, then of course I would like to have a record of her with me.”
“I always knew that music is my life.”
“I am now of that age, I think, that it is expected of me by others and by myself to produce less experimental things, but produce what I know best ... produced that better.”