Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A very successful writer of romantic novels.
On the island
Eight records
Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74 'Pathétique'
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Herbert von Karajan
Well, perhaps a little melancholy a choice, but I would like the Tchaikovsky sixth. Because let me try to explain what it was like growing up in Australia. I grew up in Sydney, and not in a musical family, and I didn't know anything about music, but we did have one good Government station. And I suppose everyone has a door to music. And I could only say that perhaps snatches of Tchaikovsky were that adore, marvellously romantic, very appealing, uplifting or down footing, whatever it was. So I wouldn't know the exact thing that rang the bell, so I'd have to choose Tchaikovsky as a sort of synthesis of all.
Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 31
Well, this is the Chopin Scherzo, No. two, and it has a most oh, it is very much engraved in my heart. At the end of the hostilities with Japan the prisoners of war were released, and Lily Cross and her husband came first to Sydney, mostly to recuperate, I would think. And this lovely lady, gave a free concert to the students at the Conservatorium. And I will never in my life forget this tiny creature, very thin from the concentration camp, coming on stage, and I don't know that this was what she started with, but she was so tiny that wi these great crashing chords that's coming she stood up to play them. And there she was with her hair in a great pigtail and wearing terribly simple sort of cotton shirt and pants. We'd never seen a woman in pants, I don't think, before that, but it was an indelible impression, and this lives with me forever.
Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra in E-flat major, K. 364
Academy of St Martin in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Marriner
Yes, well now here we've sort of lost nostalgia, and I'm growing up, I hope, a little bit, and one's into music more, and so I'd like Mozart's Symphonia Concertante.
Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15
Arthur Rubinstein, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Erich Leinsdorf
Well, this is where I go back to wanting the piano again. I would love to hear the Brahms Piano Concerto No. One. I really want those big, great, crashing chords which they tell me are fiendishly difficult to play.
Orchestral Suite No. 2 in B minor, BWV 1067
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Herbert von Karajan
Oh, well, I think we'll just go on with all my loves. Um Bach, I'd like the orchestral suite number two.
London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Aaron Copland, with Henry Fonda as narrator
Pure nostalgia, and this is my my piece of America, because to live in America in the fifties was a great, great experience. And I have a well, Abe Lincoln is one of my great heroes. So much so that any time that Sol and I were in Washington, last thing at night, The very last thing, before going back to the hotel, we'd take a taxi to the Lincoln Memorial, which is splendidly lit at night, and he was this great brooding figure. who seem to embody the conscience of the nation. and he is just so full of majesty. And I admire him so much, and it sums up America for me, so I would like Copeland's Lincoln portrait.
Symphony No. 9 in C major, D. 944 'The Great'
London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult
Well, now comes the charmer of all time in music at least that's how I think one begins with Schubert. And then of course one gets into the chamber of music and he gets more and more serious. But I would love his great C major symphony.
String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 131Favourite
Well, now, here comes the man. The man for all time, all seasons, for every mood of the heart, the mind, the soul. It's Beethoven and for that I will go to the String Quartet opus one three one.
In conversation
Presenter asks
4:40Did you have an ambition to be a pianist?
That was the only thing I wanted in life, but of course I didn't know anything about it. I started so late. I was not able to convince my parents that it was serious. And we weren't terribly well off. My father was a civil servant, six kids, you know. We weren't poor, but we had no luxuries. So they waited for a whole year to see if I would go to my teacher's house and practice every morning at seven thirty before they actually got around to buying a piano for me.
Presenter asks
6:20How old were you when you started writing [your first novel]?
Well, I started when I was fifteen, and finished the book in the Christmas holidays when I was sixteen.
Presenter asks
7:20Was [your first book] about the war?
A large part of it was set during the very early part of the war in Britain when the very heavy shell firing of Hellfire Corner was going on.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
Will and Ariel Durant
for about twenty five years, as each volume came out, I have been collecting something called The Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant. … I love the style, but I've not read them. So there I am, I'm going to read all that, and when I get off this desert island I will be so awful because I'll know it all.
The luxury
what I really want is I want to go back to where I left off or, in fact, right back to the beginning. I want the rudiments of music, right up to harmony and counterpoint, and then I want, stitched on to that, the forty eight preludes and fugues of Bach.
Did you have to earn for both of you [when you and your sister were in London]?
I had to earn for both of us. But, Roy, you know, remember, one's nineteen years old. The world is all ahead of you. You're full of confidence. You you don't fear anything, really. I mean, if I were faced with that situation now, I would be paralyzed with fear. I wouldn't be able to write a word.
Presenter asks
15:50What was your first big grown-up success?
Well, it was a novel called Sarah Dane. And I must say, Roy, that I looked at my very slender financial resources, took a deep breath, and plunged in, because it was the first historical novel I had ever written, and I knew it would require a great deal of research. I was not trained in research I didn't know anything about it, and I knew it would take time. It took two and a half years. and to my well, amazement, delight, wonder, it really was a very big success.
Presenter asks
19:25Did living in the Virgin Islands work out?
It did not work out. We went there because I said to Sol, Now, look, I'm not going to grow old in this wretched winter of the north eastern States, and I want to retire to somewhere that's warm and beautiful, and certainly the Virgin Islands are that. But you try living there. and it's altogether a different situation. Now I say it with great humility I did not realize what it was like to be another colour until I lived there. I began to understand why black people feel as they do. If I had been pushed aside for a couple of hundred years, as they pushed the whites aside there. you saw the other side of the coin. It made you extremely sensitive to this situation, and we felt it was not right for us. We were, in fact, the wrong colour.
“I have to be so careful about it that I would never try to write when music is playing, because I would think that I was writing much better than I do.”
“I am for the long book, the big book, the story. That is, I tell stories and they're usually long.”
“I do not dare to call it an art, because I'm not an artist, unfortunately. That's reserved for very few people. But I think I'm a craftsman.”