Charles Hazlewood

You're also very keen to change the definition of classical music. You prefer the term orchestral music. Why is that?

At some point, this term classical music, which is a bit of a misnomer anyway, because the strict term classical music means the era from about 1750 to about 1800. It's a particular point in music historical time. Anyhow, it's become this kind of like all-body word which covers off anything which happens to be involving an orchestra or a string quartet. And then at that point, it sort of starts to become a kind of a snobbish weapon, or more to the point, a place where most people, the great unwashed, don't expect to go. It's almost like classical music is a maiden aunt who sits alone in the front room and no one really wants to go and talk to her. Well, for me, all music of all sorts all occupies the same terrain. It's all part of the same broad stream. There are lots of eddies and currents, different kinds of pockets of activity going on, but they all interrelate. So, in a way, I'd like to say deaf to all terms or categories and just say there is one music.

So Charles Hazelwood, you said that that piece of music [Mozart's aria] was a comfort to you during an incredibly difficult time. What was going on?

It was, I suppose, the darkest night of my soul that time. And ever since you guys asked me to come on this programme, I have sort of come to a decision that I wanted to tell my whole story. And there are parts of my whole story that I've never uttered in public before. But I feel, as a result of over a decade now of healing and therapy and working on myself, that I feel ready to share the hidden part of my particular story. And it's simply that I was the victim of sexual abuse through most of my childhood. And apart from anything else, abuse is something which thrives on secrecy. It's like that's the toxic energy which it derives its power from. There's another reason for wanting to come out, and this is a form of coming out, I suppose, is I want to say to anyone listening to this programme who thinks they might have the potential to become someone who wants to touch a child inappropriately. You see, all the paedophiles which I knew as a child, they sold it to me as a form of love. Now, that is the most confusing and corrupting thing to get a child to invest in and believe in. It fundamentally messes up your internal wiring. So I would just say to anyone who is frightened that they have some of that in them, don't ever kid yourself that this is love. Don't ever kid yourself that the child can be an equal party in this. All you are doing is giving them a stain … and a whole bunch of damage inside them which will probably last their entire life.

You said you've been through a lot of therapy over a long period of time. To what extent have you been able to overcome your experiences and make peace with what you've been through?

It's been a long process of recovery. I've been incredibly, incredibly lucky to have my beautiful wife and my beautiful children around me holding my hand and hugging me and just holding me tight and safe as I've worked my way through.

I want to ask you about a project that you started when you were having a tricky time actually. And I know that it was a kind of revolutionary experience for you. It was setting up an opera company in South Africa, working with singers from the townships. What was the thinking behind it?

It was a real kind of a life-saving moment for me. Me and a brilliant British theatre director called Markton Fermay were running Wilton's music call. Well, I think it's the world's oldest surviving music call. It's on the border of Tower Hamlets in the city of London. So, simultaneously, the richest square mile perhaps in the world and the poorest suburb in London. It's a really interesting dichotomy there. This amazing Renaissance man of South Africa, a man called Dick Enthoven, who had been a politician, had been pretty much forced out of the country because of his outspoken views against apartheid. He came to London, made a lot of money, and of course, by this time, had gone back to South Africa and was very, very keen to put its cultural jewels on the international stage. And he came and started seeing our work at Wilton's and said, Look, I want to invite you two to come to South Africa to form a new opera company to create a platform for the almost unfeasibly enormous army of vocal talent that lies particularly in the black township communities of that great land. And it sort of remade me because I was starting to kind of unravel. You know, I started to lose my sense of why I was even making music. I went to South Africa and those guys completely re-ignited my fire.