Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Music director of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, known for his talent in understanding and directing the human voice.
On the island
Eight records
Young and FoolishFavourite
This is a magical combination. They only made two records together, but this r record is probably my favorite record of all recordings that exist on the planet. It's uh often puts me in a very me melancholy mood and therefore it can be a little bit destructive, you know, uh if I listen to it too often. So I hide it away. But every now and again I I drag it out and um yeah, young and foolish.
Vittoria! Vittoria! (from Tosca)
Franco Corelli, Orchestra del Teatro Regio di Parma & Giuseppe Morelli
There are certain singers that just take your breath away, and Franco Corelli's voice. I mean, you don't hear that kind of voice today. It just doesn't exist. This moment is opera in Italy. It's a live performance from Parma, the Teatro Reggio, which is a notoriously difficult public. And of course, when you go to sing there, you're on a tightrope. And my God, does he deliver here? And if you come to my house for dinner, you always have to listen to this because it's a. And that's what I was thinking on being on a desert island. If somebody else landed on this island, I'd entertain them with this.
Carlo Guelfi, Maria Gulegina, London Symphony Orchestra & Antonio Pappano
Recording has been a big part of my life in the last eight years or so, and I love the process so much. Completely different from being in the theatre. To create a performance in a recording studio i is something completely different. And the reason I chose this next record is because it contains a moment of which I'm very, very proud. It's one of my own recordings, and I thought long and hard about whether I should do this or not. But I'm very proud of having persisted to achieve something special with a singer, something so personal and so intimate.
Maurice White, Al McKay & Allee Willis
I grew up in America in the seventies and you couldn't not be hooked in as a young person to groups like Earth, Wind and Fire if you were uh susceptible to pop music. And I was very drawn to it. I find it it's it's somehow much sexier than classical music often. I w want to be free and I want to dance, you know. I don't dance that much and I'm not very good, but I love to dance the pop music.
Slavonic Dance No. 2 in E minor, Op. 72
This next r record, the Kromalink duo, are wonderful pianists, and it reminds me of the time my wife, Pam, and I first got together, and at breakfast time we would listen to this music.
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra & Carlos Kleiber
Well, I think if you're on a desert island you can fall into a stupor if you're not careful. And I think that you need to be reminded of life's energy and life's force. And Beethoven is so somehow so basic and so natural that you need to be reminded of what's somehow what's possible.
You know, if you're on a desert island I think you need to be made to smile and to laugh. And Louis Prima makes me smile.
Piano Sonata No. 21 in B-flat major, D. 960 (Slow Movement)
It's a slow movement from the. Great B-flat sonata of Schubert. I chose this record as much for the pianist Richter, Sviatoslav Richter, as for Schubert. Everybody has their own touch on the piano, and Richter's is very, very special. He always inspires me to try and achieve something as special to myself at the piano.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:55Did you ever consider being a concert pianist?
I did for about five minutes. Um um but I don't have the patience. I I I don't I don't think. It's just a a terrible thing.
Presenter asks
6:37Did you ever see your father perform on stage?
I did actually. I saw uh it was a kind of a a small uh production of Pagliace and I remember… dressed in that clown costume, but what was so vivid was that when he murdered Nedda. It was funny because the two of us went out to buy the knife that he would have to kill her with… completely destroyed. The tension and the temperament that my father had had completely smashed this knife to pieces. And I must say that scared the life out of me, and yet I was fascinated at the same time. And it's important. It's a defining moment, I think, you know, because you think that, my God, I… went on. To do, to be around this kind of theatre, this kind of tension, this kind of blood-curdling involvement somehow, as a way of life. I do it for a living.
Presenter asks
10:44How did you start working as an accompanist for your father's singing lessons?
I think I started playing for my father's students when I was about ten… simple songs, little Italian arias. I was I was okay. I could play that stuff. Later on, when we moved to America actually, we built two studios so that my father would work a half an hour of technical work of scales and arpeggios and breathing stuff. And then the students would come to me to work on repertoire, little songs, some pop songs, uh, opera.
The keepsakes
The luxury
Presenter asks
16:58Why did you feel so strongly that you had to get out of Connecticut?
I realized being in uh involved with opera had something well, something, uh a lot to do with languages and really getting inside the languages. I needed some other experience and the main catalyst was that I I didn't speak German… and this was a kind of a thing that was started to bother me. And I started to feel i very insecure about it… So the first step was I got an audition with the New York City Opera as a pianist… Overnight, all of a sudden, six days a week, I wasn't teaching with my father. It was a huge step.
Presenter asks
19:43When did you realize you wanted to be a conductor?
In 1987 I went to Oslo and I conducted La Boheme, and all of a sudden I saw myself just take over. I said, no, you've got to do this. No, you've got to move over there. Move with this music here. When you sing that note, you've got to have a look like this on your face at the Mosette Desaria. You've got to have a lure and you've got to. You've got to get the audience and you've got to get the chorus with you. And all of a sudden, I was stage directing. I just, it was the moment that I knew this is it, this is what I am, this is what I do.
Presenter asks
26:25Why do you conduct with your hands instead of a baton?
Last season, at the end of the season, I had tremendous problems with tennis elbow. And I'll never forget it was in a performance of I Pagliacci, and the baton just came flying out of my hand at one moment… I decided I'm not going to pick it up. And I just said, let me give this a try, let me see what happens. And two things happened. All of a sudden, the pain in my elbow just disappeared. And all of a sudden, this feeling of embracing the orchestra and making more flowing movements, more expressive movements with my hands… happened. I think I've become, I think, warmer and more expressive without using the baton.
“I think most influenced by my mom and dad having been such hard workers, that kind of Italian, typical Italian, uh working class type of person who at the drop of a hat would burst into song or something, you know, a a Neapolitan song would come”
“Of course, I I think I have good taste, but on the other hand I think I there's a part of me that has bad taste and and I and I li and I'm proud of it.”
“I understand how difficult it is to stand on the stage in a heavy costume with lights coming at you, with somebody telling you to sing in tune, in time, with taste, with remember the words and everything. So I have a a basic admiration for singers. Then I push for that they have to achieve not only what they know they're good at, but what they don't know they're good at, what where they can go extra.”
“I'm totally impractical. That's why I um in a way maybe brought this book, you know, Mark Twain, with me, because I'm very I I've a very, very um I was very affected by Huckleberry Finn and and and the adventures of Tom Sawyer. And I figure there's a chance that maybe I will learn how to make a raft somewhere in this book must be.”