Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A world-renowned tenor who began his career as a head herdsman before winning a scholarship to the Guildhall School of Music.
On the island
Eight records
Der Neugierige (from Die schöne Müllerin, D. 795)
Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten
This is the first music outside of Sankey and Moody and the Methodist hymn book which I really had any contact with and it was like being hit over the head with a sledgehammer.
Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen (from Rückert-Lieder)
Christa Ludwig with the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Otto Klemperer
This comes straight out of my student times. I I I can remember sitting or laying on my student bed somewhere in Highgate early in my time at the Guild Hall and listening to Christel Vig singing this and thinking, Okay, come and get me now. I'm I'm ready to go.
Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön (from The Magic Flute)
Fritz Wunderlich with the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Karl Böhm
The magic flute is there for several reasons. I've sung it many times myself. I've even recorded it. But for me the person who who sings the part of Tamino better than anybody I think has ever aspired to. is Fritz von der Rich.
Gloria in excelsis Deo (from Mass in B minor, BWV 232)Favourite
Academy of St Martin in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Marriner
I made that announcement, as it were, because it's one way of taking my my lovely. Lady with me. Um we met on an academy tour in Germany singing the Mozer Requiem and we've never been apart since and uh this is wonderful to take this with me.
Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, Op. 31
Peter Pears, Dennis Brain and the Boyd Neel String Orchestra, conducted by Benjamin Britten
It is a a masterpiece, and I have so much fun seeing it. Um I've recorded it and sung it many times and uh It never ceases to to amaze me that the musical structure of The insight that this man had. were tremendous.
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 'Choral' (Slow Movement)
Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, conducted by Kurt Masur
These wonderful people are our recent friends, no less dear but recent, and they I'm afraid they follow the the same pattern as everybody else really. They are mates. And uh I'd just love to hear that. And this movement sensational.
Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 (Variation No. 2)
This is the record I suppose I play more than any other. I love Bach very much. I love his invention and the joy that comes from this music.
Duo Seraphim (from Vespro della Beata Vergine 1610)
John Elliott Gardner and the Monte Veddi Orchestra and the English Baroque Soloists have been a huge part of my life for a long time. We work wonderfully together and We've produced a whole lot of Very interesting records, I think.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:05How much do you miss your former life, the farming and the open air?
Not too much, because uh fortunately I have parents in law who live in the country down in Wales, and we have a little house there, a sort of Tudor shack, really. And we have nothing but farmland and trees all around, so whenever I'm missing it I try and get down there and take a fix.
Presenter asks
1:32Were you aware, though, when you were farming, or when you were at Agricultural College before that, that there was part of you that was unfulfilled?
Yes, I I think all my life I've been someone to whom things happen. I never regard myself as as a prime mover. And I suppose when I was at college, farming college, I did feel a little bit out of water. But the academic side of that took care of that for me, and it got buried, and it didn't re-emerge until quite a lot later.
Presenter asks
5:26Who was it who eventually then said to you, Look, you really do have a huge talent here and you've got to do something about it?
Well, when I went to work in Sussex, uh I joined a choir. And there were one or two people there who had actually been taking lessons from a teacher at the Royal Academy... We talked, I sang, and there was a long silence, and then she said, Well, what do you want me to tell you?... she said, Well, okay, you're in the wrong job. Is that straight enough for you? And I I said, Well, what does that mean? So well, y you shouldn't be farming, you should be singing.
The keepsakes
The book
This took a long time to decide, but I thought in the end what I would like to do ... It's taken me the biggest Welsh English dictionary I can find, and some tapes, which I already have. and learn to speak the language, so that if I ever did get rescued, I wouldn't then have to spend my time in the back kitchen down in Lamberta. Reading the newspaper while everybody else talked over my head.
The luxury
Parquet flooring, tap shoes, and tap dance instruction book
since I can't take Liz. I thought that what I might do is to ask if I might take a couple of square metres of parquet flooring. and an inexhaustible supply of tap shoes and an instruction book. And then I could learn to tap dance and get fit at the same time.
Presenter asks
7:40The sacrifice in the end, of course, was your marriage, wasn't it?
It came very quickly and uh I was travelling from Sussex to London every day to work, to go to the Guildhall. After about eighteen months it became clear that there there were major problems, mostly because my wife married a farmer and suddenly found herself looking after a singer. They aren't the same at all.
Presenter asks
10:04How did you cope with that kind of ignorance about music [at the Guildhall]?
I was so focused on what I needed to do. I I went to the Guild Hall every morning when the doors opened at nine and I left at nine at night. I used to hover constantly in corridors, waiting for somebody to finish in a room so that I could get in there for half an hour or a quarter of an hour... and so I just I just worked every moment I could.
Presenter asks
23:45Can you describe to me what happened that day [when your voice disappeared in New York]?
Well It had been happening really for probably three or four years before that. And there's one does. I was ignoring it. and trying to deal with it... within five or six days it had gone completely, and showed no prospect of returning... they found it... Um it was a polyp... a sea anemone shaped thing. with a long thin neck and a little round head, and it waved about. and it strangled one cord and beat the other one to a pole. And that's why I couldn't sing.
“I think all my life I've been someone to whom things happen. I never regard myself as as a prime mover.”
“my wife married a farmer and suddenly found herself looking after a singer. They aren't the same at all.”
“There's something which uh when you sing especially s a role or or a um a part which with which you can identify very closely, that you lose something of yourself when you do this. Uh you give and of course you get many things back, but you never get back what you give.”
“I don't As a general rule, listen to other people's performances when I'm learning the role, because I do feel that I I would be very susceptible to them. And also I think most singers f feel this, that when they listen to other people singing, they will all think always think that they're a great deal better than one can ever be oneself.”