Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A tenor, best known for his operatic career.
On the island
Eight records
I've chosen this because when I was on one of my tours away from home in in America at the Metropolitan, I went and saw this film and was very, very homesick for England. My family wasn't with me at that time and I just needed to be with England and part of it and this took me home.
Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68 'Pastoral' (3rd Movement)
Cleveland Orchestra, conducted by George Szell
It reminds me of coming home to the country just being part of mankind and nature. ... I have a very dear friend who is playing Principal Horn on this recording, who's given me a lot of encouragement and a lot of uh support. and advice during my career. His name is Mike Bloom.
Die schöne Müllerin, D. 795: No. 7, Ungeduld
Fritz Wunderlich and Hubert Giesen
I mentioned Larry Parker. That same evening he taught me my first songs and they happened to be the first two or three songs from Die Schoene Mullerin. I would like to play uh number seven from this recording. It's called Ungeduld, Impatience, when he sings Dein ist meinhertz, yours is my heart and. It will remain yours forever.
Leontyne Price, Rosalind Elias, conducted by Fritz Reiner
I never actually can listen to the birdie or even sing it now without feeling that that pain.
Das Lied von der Erde: Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde
Fritz Wunderlich, conducted by Otto Klemperer
This again is a record which was introduced to me in fact before I started studying singing, and the voice of Fritz von der Lich has just been close to my ears and heart since then.
Victoria de los Ángeles, Jussi Björling, conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham
This was my first really overseas engagement. ... And I'm going to have the part in Act Three where Mimi has discovered Rodolfo telling Marcello that he really wants to be separated from Mimi, and he discovers her, you know, she she collapses and he picks her up and she sings her aria of goodbye and he says, Dum que proprio finita, then this is really the end. And this is just really great music and great theatre.
It's going to remind me actually of all my friends, but also it's going to remind me of how I used to sound. And you know, one only grows and one hopefully keeps learning. And I need the memory of my progression to make me keep wanting to progress.
It's a record which I first heard when I was in Paris. And having worked with Therese and what a wonderful colleague she is. uh just sort of brings back this memory to me.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:54What were you good at at school?
Well, I was actually good at bricklaying. ... we did engineering drawing, technical drawing, and part of the curriculum on this side was to master the techniques of building. And we had to do bricklaying and all the the things that go with it, laying the mortar, laying the bricks of course, and then screeding and putting the uh finishing touches on the walls, plastering, things like this.
Presenter asks
3:33What did you do in the pop group?
Well I was chief vocal, if you can call it that and I used to play the maracas and the tambourine and and occasionally for one number I used to play the drums which was great. I loved that.
Presenter asks
4:23What was your first job?
I was fortunate to have met somebody from the BBC through a friend of my father's, and I had seen him at work as a floor manager on in television, and I thought this is the job I want to do, so I applied to the BBC for a job, and Of course, didn't get the job I wanted, was put into a clerical position.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
Kahlil Gibran
It's a book which I discovered [when I was] in America at a very vulnerable time and it's a very, very beautiful book which I think will actually help me get through the time of internment.
The luxury
Is it true that you were overheard singing in the BBC gramophone library?
I was uh checking records for transmission quality in in one of the listening listening rooms and the record Cristo Quella I was listening to I thought that the transmission quality wasn't too good and I went and got another disc and it turned out that in fact it wasn't the quality, it was the particular tenor that was singing it I didn't like ... So I I played it a few times and you know hummed the tune, lard it and sung some of the words and was uh overheard by Mr Cook and uh was introduced as uh a follow-on from that to one of the studio managers, a chap called Larry Parker ... And they were the two that really encouraged me upon a career in classical music.
Presenter asks
16:44What was your first professional engagement?
My first professional engagement was if we can disallow the choral society performances you do when you're a student ... The first job was singing with a chorus at Gleinbourne on the tour in nineteen seventy four, so I had a complete year of of actually no work when I left the Royal Academy. And the first job was with a chorus singing the off stage peasant in Ivgenyan Jegen.
Presenter asks
27:27Do your family come and join you when you are away for a long time?
We normally travel together, but now we're hitting, of course, schooling problems. Alexander is starting nursery school. We've booked him into a Rudolf Steine school which has agreed with us that uh we can take him he can do one term in England and one term in America or however long it needs to be so that we can be together because I think that the early years in a child's life they need to be with the family.
“I think I could get to grips with coping with being on my own and using that time for self-improvement.”
“I just felt something was wrong and something would go wrong. I d I don't know why, I just had this inner feeling. And halfway through the recordare I saw him uh leaning on the podium, his hands going white, his face wet and and his muscles sort of getting really tight. And I just threw the music stand away from his podium and pulled him down and lay him on the floor and I he he died in my arms.”
“I saw him at the back sending, you know, the cameras and the microphones down and they filmed my audition to him. Then he came up and said to me that it was the finest Mozart singing he'd heard and gave me a twenty minute coaching in the middle of uh of his recording session”