Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
2 appearances
Naturalist and broadcaster best known for presenting acclaimed nature series and as a former BBC channel controller and director of programmes.
On the island
Eight records
The Lord is My Light (Chandos Anthem No. 10, HWV 255): The Lord is my strength and my shield
Ian Partridge, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, conducted by Neville Marriner
I reckon one of them, when you really feel low, is this piece of handle. It comes from one of the Shandos anthems, of course, The Lord is My Light, and it's about dancing with joy.
Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 36: II. Larghetto
Academy of St Martin in the Fields, directed by Neville Marriner
When I said I had sounds as I played the lot, I in fact actually played only the slow movement from the second symphony. But nonetheless I played it with great feeling and I would like to hear that.
Chaconne in D minor (from Violin Partita No. 2, BWV 1004, trans. Busoni)
One of the bits that I like very much is the Bussoni transcription of the Bach Shacon. And I suppose I would like to hear it played by Michelangeli, who I've heard play it in the concert hall. uh and particularly those last final pages which start uh with something fairly simple that I can play, but then you turn over and it gets very nasty indeed.
Così fan tutte, K. 588: Act I, Trio: 'Soave sia il vento'
Montserrat Caballé, Janet Baker, and Richard Van Allan
Well, those years were uh years of going away on trips very frequently, um and partly for that reason, but partly because it's some of the most sublime music ever, uh I'd like to hear the loveliest song of farewell that I know, which comes from the first act of Cossi van Tutte by Mozart, Suave si el vento.
Columbia Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Igor Stravinsky
However, the second half was the Firebird, in which Stravinsky conducted. And we did record it, and that recording exists, and it is one of the most m marvellous pieces of of musical control. So I like to hear about a Firebird.
Trio Sonata No. 1 in F major, ZWV 181: I. Adagio
I've had some experience of this uh game of taking away records for your desert island, and one of the things that I uh have been doing on recent trips is to take something that I don't know at all, but I feel it would be quite nice to sort of get into. And I think I'd like to take something that I haven't heard at all by Johann Dismas Zelenka.
One of the meetings I most value was with Benjamin Britton. And so I liked a a bit of of Britain's music and I think perhaps a bit of the Spring Symphony, which will do me very well because it not only reminds me of Britain, but also of Spring and the English Spring, and I guess I'd like to hear a bit of that on a Desert Island.
String Quintet No. 4 in G minor, K. 516: III. Adagio ma non troppoFavourite
Um the last record I don't have any particular reason for choosing, except that it does seem to me just one of the most sublime pieces of music that exists. I have taken it away with me on every single trip I've ever been to that I've taken music, and I certainly wouldn't want to be on the desert island without it. It's uh Mozart's uh G minor Quintet.
Soave sia il vento (from Così fan tutte)
to me it summarizes uh saying goodbye, and I spent a lot of time doing that in my life.
And the Glory of the Lord (from Messiah)
Academy and Chorus of St Martin in the Fields, Sir Neville Marriner
It was the first really major work of which I knew every single note, and it is still a Swan Leichelson, not just my childhood and sound, but it is just um a breathtaking work of Sarah Leichelson.
Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D minor, BWV 903
by golly, you really do need a bit of gristle. I mean, you really need something to chew on. You really need something you can listen to twenty times and still the stuff there.
Duke Ellington and His Orchestra
while I was on B B C Two, um uh amongst the various things that weren't being covered, for example, was jazz. Jazz was not covered at all.
If you've only got eight, then you mustn't have three pieces of Mozart or five pieces of Schubert. You've got to have something of everything. And I would therefore extend the musical conversation back to Monteverdi.
Adagio (from String Quintet in C major, D. 956)
Mstislav Rostropovich, Emerson String Quartet
when you do get these um bad times, you do occasionally want solace and serenity, and there is absolutely nothing, there is no piece that I ever uh listened to, which so transports you into that kind of condition.
Symphony No. 1 in B-flat minor: II. Scherzo: Presto con malizia
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, André Previn
after Serenity of Schubert, occasionally you really feel pretty spiteful about life. And you also uh want to have some modern music, or relatively modern music. And I would take uh Walton's first symphony because the second movement he calls it con malizia with malice.
Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen
Janet Baker, New Philharmonia Orchestra, Sir John Barbirolli
I've listened to this particular piece in all kinds of circumstances, uh in the Antarctic and uh in the Sahara, but the most magical time I think was lying on the deck of a boat in the Galapagos at night...
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:31What instruments do you play?
Well, I play the piano. I've… Play only a few pieces, but very, very badly.
Presenter asks
3:24Where did you serve and in what [for your national service]?
Well, I applied to go abroad. I thought it'd be very nice to go abroad, so they sent me to the Firth of Forth and put me on an aircraft carrier, swinging from the boy in the middle, where I swung for a year or so, which is about as broad as you can get.
Presenter asks
6:31Had you at the back of your mind a proposition, planning to sell the BBC programmes about natural history?
No, not at all. It never seemed to me feasible that the BBC would ever have the money to send anybody abroad and make films. In nineteen fifty two, um live television was what the BBC did. Of course. And only very few people were allowed the luxury of going abroad with with cameras.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
Shifts and Expedients of Camp Life, Travel and Exploration
William Barry Lord and Thomas Baines
That's a great practical value, this book. Absolutely. Essential. It tells you how to make a canoe with a one-bolt of canvas.
The luxury
I think I'll take a guitar. I used to think I'd take a piano, but on the other hand is tuning in all that, so I couldn't do all that.
What were your terms of reference [for Zoo Quest]?
Well, one of the most popular programmes at the time was was showing animals, live animals, on live television… However, I did feel that it… actually didn't show enough of the animal because it always looked as though it was a freak sitting in the studio on a doormat. So I thought it'd be nicer if we could actually show the animal abroad in its proper circumstances in the African bush or whatever. And then there would be a little sequence in which it was caught for the London Zoo. And then you would dissolve through and there was the animal live in the studio. And that was more or less the brief.
Presenter asks
20:49Tell me about [Life on Earth], how it originated and what you had in mind.
Well, once the the pattern of a a thirteen part one hour series of programmes which dealt in a fairly serious and methodical way with… some part of n knowledge. Once that pattern was set, it was quite obvious that the natural for such treatment was the animal world… The idea being that we should start with the very simplest animals or the very simplest form of life and work our way through as indeed animal life developed.
Presenter asks
23:13What were the best moments, what you look back on with supreme satisfaction?
Going down into Chesapeake Bay on a given date, which you had actually predicted by reading the literature, which was one night in spring when the moon was in this particular position… horseshoe crabs, which are an extremely ancient form of uh crab… would come up out of the sea to breed… We arrived at about four o'clock in the afternoon and we said, Where are the horseshoe crabs? and they said, Oh, they'll be coming up in about an hour and a half. We walked down to the beach and a million horseshoe crabs just slowly came up out of the sea to lay their eggs. And that thought that that had been going on for 150 million years, just like that. That was fairly moving.
Presenter asks
11:04Which parent or who talked to you interestingly about wildlife?
Oh, neither. Neither of them knew no the but then that was the great trick, you see, uh of education, as far as they were concerned, I think. That they took the view that the way to get a child interested in something is for the parent to display an interest in that subject, but also a deep ignorance.
Presenter asks
11:41What prompted that interest [in fossils]?
Well, I don't think any child would be uninterested in hitting a rock with a hammer and seeing two things fall apart and seeing a gorgeous seashell, I mean, glinting and shining in the sunlight. And someone says to him, Nobody's seen that, you know, for 150 million years. Yours is the very first eye that was set on that.
Presenter asks
16:51Was it your idea to cover Wimbledon [on BBC Two]?
It was my idea to cover yes, to cover it, I think I th well, certainly, I don't can't claim it was my idea, it was certainly my idea to cover snooker because we introduced colour for the first time.
Presenter asks
24:06Was that ecstasy or naked fear on your face [when lying down with gorillas]?
Oh no, total total ecstasy, total ecstasy. Um to be accepted by this creature, which was much closer than I thought it was going to be. I mean, I d I didn't expect it to be as close as that. She just sort of emerged out of the uh out of the giant nettles and put a put her hand on top of my head. and another hand underneath my chin, and turn my head.
Presenter asks
28:39Do you worry about [the BBC today]?
Yes, I certainly do. I mean the one thing that you've absolutely apparent is that the whole of the broadcasting world has been transformed and that the the sort of things that I was worrying about twenty years ago don't obtain anymore... The B B C has got to change, and uh nobody would deny that. Uh one just hopes that in the process of changing it is perfectly clear that what is what is important is programme quality.
Presenter asks
31:53Has being close to the natural world affected your attitude to religion, to God?
Well, if you if you you must not only just think of hummingbirds, you've also got to think of uh a a parasitic worm boring into the eye of a small child living on the banks of an African river, for example. And presumably that worm, too, is is a product of the Almighty. So I don't think that the complexity of the natural world, or its beauty, or its savagery, or whether in fact it evolves through Darwinism or not, is necessarily anything to do with the religious conviction about a deity.
“I actually feel that I know something about this problem of taking eight discs away for a desert island. I don't take eight discs. I regularly take, though, forty hours because I I have a... 40 hours on disc? No, on cassette. But I have a small briefcase. Well, a reasonable size briefcase and it carries a cassette player and 40 hours of cassette music and headphones. Stereo headphones.”
“I'd certainly try to escape because I am quite sure that uh I um am like the rest of Homo sappiens a social being and uh I think after about a week I think your own company gets quite boring.”
“It is packed with the most invaluable information for castaways… there's a good paragraph on how to baffle alligators. on um building boats, on making fire. And Baines, as I say, was with Livingston. And when you do these things you actually feel that that was what Livingston was doing. It's an invaluable document.”
“our job involves a certain amount of thespian skill.”
“the way to get a child interested in something is for the parent to display an interest in that subject, but also a deep ignorance.”
“Nobody's seen that, you know, for 150 million years. Yours is the very first eye that was set on that.”
“the cherishing of expertise and professional standards and loyalties has vanished.”