Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
An art critic who defended his mentor Sir Antony Blunt after his unmasking as a spy; he attacks contemporary art in the Evening Standard.
On the island
Eight records
Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26 (first movement)
Zino Francescatti, New York Philharmonic, Thomas Schippers
Part of the first movement of Bruch's violin concerto in G minor
Frühling (from Four Last Songs)
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Ackermann
The first of the four last songs, Frühling
Porgi amor (from Le nozze di Figaro)
Margaret Price, Vienna Philharmonic, Riccardo Muti
The aria Porgi amor from the first act of The Marriage of Figaro
Komm, Hoffnung (from Fidelio)Favourite
Christa Ludwig, Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer
Leonora singing Komm, Hoffnung from Fidelio
Tu che invoco (from La Vestale)
Maria Callas, Orchestra of La Scala Milan, Tullio Serafin
The aria Tu che invoco from La Vestale
Trio (from Der Rosenkavalier, Act III)
Christa Ludwig, Gwyneth Jones, Lucia Popp, Vienna Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein
The trio from the last act of Der Rosenkavalier
Liebestod (from Tristan und Isolde)
Kirsten Flagstad, Philharmonia Orchestra, Wilhelm Furtwängler
The Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde
Auf dem Wasser zu singen, D.774
Ian Partridge, Jennifer Partridge
One of Schubert's lieder, Auf dem Wasser zu singen
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:15You often denounce contemporary art without even seeing it. Is that fair?
No, that is that's that's neither true nor fair. It's an accusation made in the Sunday Times and repeated by somebody who frequently broadcasts the B B C. But you never go to a private view, do you? … Most people are very kind and understand that I am an intensely shy person … And they let me in early eight o'clock in the morning at the National Gallery or a week before the Royal Academy of Summer Show opens and I'm let in.
Presenter asks
2:06Isn't it too easy to heap criticism on the infamous bricks at the Tate or a sheep in formaldehyde or melted chocolate sculpture? Shouldn't you as an art critic be more generous and permissive in your opinion?
I have never heaped opprobrium on the bricks anyway, the bricks work of art that I defend, but smearing chocolate on the walls seems to me to be a rather low form of interior decoration … It seems to me absurd that when there are beautiful materials to handle for sculpture and painting, that uh young artists should utterly neglect them and heap um sandbags in the corner and take photographs and so on, anything to avoid the problems of technical demands and abilities. It is as though you expected somebody who had never played the piano to put on a rip roaring performance at the Albert Hall, and you would sort of dump them on the piano stool in front of a Bechstein and say play when all they can do is with luck bang out chopsticks.
The keepsakes
The book
Schubert's Songs (1880s edition)
Franz Schubert
At home I have all Schubert's songs published in an edition in, I think, the eighteen eighties, with a rather crummy Victorian translation of each of these narratives. And it's it's a piano accompaniment. …
The luxury
It's Michelangelo's Pietà. When he was twenty four, made it for the Pope. It's in the Vatican now. It is unimaginably beautiful and so surprising when you think of it twenty four hacking that marvel out of a great trunk of marble. And it it gives me hope that there is the possibility that young men might one day again produce great works of art.
Presenter asks
5:54What is your artistic provenance? Has art always been a part of your life?
I think that my earliest, my very earliest recollections. Or a being. so small in the National Gallery that I could lean against the wall underneath pictures and look up at the frames. This had a curious by product many years later when I went to Christie's … She [my mother] was deeply interested, or she was an artist … I remember again as a as a very small child being lugged along the beach at Lulworth with um Paul Nash. It was he who taught me to look at um twigs and pebbles and things and see more than is there on a whole landscape in a rock.
Presenter asks
9:39Your mother married again when you were ten. How dramatic an effect did that have on your life?
Um, I think my stepfather, who is an exceedingly nice man, acquired the most uncooperative of stepchildren. Until I went in the army I think I behaved quite shamefully towards him. I deeply regret it now, but I you know, it was inevitable.
Presenter asks
18:17Your National Service was interrupted by your studies at the Courtauld Institute, and you've described it as the best two years of your life. Why was it such a good experience?
It taught me, amongst other things, that um there is nothing I cannot do if I have to. … Well in nothing one c you know, um in a street accident you don't you don't fold up, you you do whatever is necessary. You have to use your common sense and get on with it. … I think so. I'm not dismayed by the idea of the desert island.
Presenter asks
22:10You first met Anthony Blunt at the Courtauld Institute in the early fifties. You've called him a wonderful and stimulating teacher. Did you immediately become firm friends?
I was fortunate in that the syllabus ran in what was essentially the right order, so that one reached one's final year, which is the year in which I did my special period, which was the seventeenth century. And so Antony was my tutor in terms of French architecture and painting. … I remember one day I'd done an essay on Monsanto and something had come up in that essay which was an idea, a reinterpretation of a ground plan … It struck Antony. And in a moment it seemed, um, the floor was covered with comparative maturity material, more ground plans, more elevations. And he's saying, My God, you're right, you're right. … Here you have the most distinguished man in his field, and he is prepared to take on an idea from a student. This is a generosity of spirit which is unheard of in so many universities, amongst so many teachers.
“I have never heaped opprobrium on the bricks anyway, the bricks work of art that I defend, but smearing chocolate on the walls seems to me to be a rather low form of interior decoration, and I have seen much finer things done by um professional interior decorators with bits of uh sort of smudgy sponge and other rather prettier colours than chocolate.”
“It is the emotional draw of music that um undoes me, and it's it's on that basis that I've chosen my pieces.”
“I have simply never known how to deal with people. If you if you reach the age of eleven without really coming into contact with other children of your own age, or even not of your own age, other children, only adults, then then you end up by being rather queer fish.”
“I tell an uncomfortable truth from time to time.”
“It taught me, amongst other things, that um there is nothing I cannot do if I have to.”
“And it it gives me hope that there is the possibility that young men might one day again produce great works of art.”