Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Composer and conductor best known for his work in film, television, and theatre.
On the island
Eight records
Aperite mihi portas justitiae, BuxWV 7
I loved the piece very much and sought out the seventy-eight and played it obsessively. It just seemed to me a most wonderful kind of balanced and pure piece of music and one that could take repeated listenings, as indeed when I was a child, I did listen to it over and over again.
String Quartet No. 13 in B-flat major, Op. 130: V. Alla danza tedesca
The thing I like about this movement is that there's a sort of laughter through tears atmosphere to it, and it just has a particular emotion I think will help me preserve a kind of equilibrium on the island.
Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92: IV. Allegro con brio
New York Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Arturo Toscanini
When I hear this piece on my desert island, I'll be remembering the extraordinary exhilaration and fatigue perhaps of getting through getting through these marathons.
Die Zauberflöte: Act I Quintet
one reason I asked for it, aside from thinking that it is the most joyous and ingenious and moving work written for the stage, well certainly one of them, but this particular recording was one that I heard all the time in New York. On all the music stations, this performance was repeatedly played, and so it would be again a kind of nostalgia.
Original Broadway Cast of West Side Story
I was still in New York the year that it was produced. And at that time, this felt very contemporary and dealt with sort of an atmosphere of of living in New York. So it's very nostalgic about New York.
The Rite of Spring: Augurs of Spring (Dances of the Young Girls)
What I like about it is its modernity. You feel you you are emphatically in the twentieth century. You it couldn't have been written any other time. It's clashing dissonances and emphatic rhythms.
And what it has is, first of all, Billy Hardy's superb jazz phrasing. as well as a great depth of feeling mixed with that. Um I think it's a superb performance and it's one that I would never tire of listening to.
And as I stood there conducting I shed the Gladiator Wild a rather unwieldy baton I thought, This surely must be the maddest moment of my life.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:35Which is the real you: the composer locked away, or the one in the hurly-burly of film, television, and theatre?
I think they both are. The term schizophrenic implies two parts. So there can't be one without the other. I'm locked away in my studio composing, so that I may then enter the marketplace.
Presenter asks
2:57Do you come from a musical family?
Not especially, though it was a family in which there was music always around me. My mother played piano and very early on I insisted on having piano lessons and insisted that she then play fourhands with me. This was probably a strain on her, but at any rate she was cooperative. My grandfather, that is her father, was also very musical, sang very well and played the flute. But I must say that the real stimulus for music was really just being in New York City.
Presenter asks
3:28Was music your first ambition?
Yes, it was. But at a certain point I got diverted into painting. And during my late childhood and and early adolescence I actually painted quite a bit. And then I found … the more I was involved in music, the less I painted. But I still have retained my interest in painting and try and and actually collect paintings if I can.
The keepsakes
The book
Anton Chekhov
I decided I would really like a very large collection, if not the complete short stories of Chekhov.
The luxury
I decided I would like a very expensive shampoo, because I think I'd get a lot of salt in my hair.
Presenter asks
3:50What happened when you left school?
I had a very checkered … education and left school for jobs and then went back to school again and did a kind of toing and froing. The real moment I left school was when I was offered a very spectacular job playing for the Robert Shaw Chorale as a pianist. He had actually come up to the music conservatory where I was studying. … and Robert Shaw came up to prepare the choir for a recording of the complete Daphnis and Chloe of Revelle. None of the … Choral pianists for the people who were playing for rehearsals, they all got too frightened to play because it's a very, very elaborate score. And so finally they the cheeky New Yorker in Boston, they said, Would I would I do it? and I said, Well, of course I would, because I was dying to work with Robert Shaw, who was legendary in the States. … and he offered me a job playing for his choir, so I left … the Conservatory to tour with the Chalkras, which was the the first professional job I'd ever had.
Presenter asks
17:52How does a composer present his music [to a director]?
Yes, you can do that and I d I quite like doing that. Um some composers object to it and think they'll give a bad idea, but I think it's important that I mean there's one terrifying moment for me which is that you arrive in the studio when an orchestra of seventy-five is there and you run through the music and the director says … Well, I know I said it should be fast, but I'm can you do it slow? Or vice versa, which is even worse. So uh I try and do as thorough a briefing as I can, but it may not always work. … if I can eradicate perhaps, you know, seventy five percent of … the possible revision so that the the director knows more or less what I'm doing. It's better, it goes faster.
Presenter asks
27:00Could you cope with the rigours of Desert Island Life?
Well, I've deliberated about this uh question of how would I cope? And I thought, well, when you come to ask me on what book I would choose, I c I've been thinking, well, perhaps I should ask Robinson Crusoe. Perhaps that will offer me some clues, or perhaps a huge DIY manual. … My feeling is that I would survive, albeit messily.
“I'm locked away in my studio composing, so that I may then enter the marketplace.”
“This event or this way of showing these films is is quite unique in my experience. It's not like sound film where you know that everything is going to be all right. It has all the sort of trapeze act of the live performance plus the endless visual availability and sophistication of the screen.”
“And as I stood there conducting I shed the Gladiator Wild a rather unwieldy baton I thought, This surely must be the maddest moment of my life.”