Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Poet, critic, and writer on art, natural history, and travel.
On the island
Eight records
String Quartet in F major, Op. 3, No. 5 (Andante cantabile)
The first one is a Haydn string quartet. Because I have a great liking for Haydn. You know, it's partly a kind of championship, I feel. He's not as played as much as Mozart or Beethoven. And always seems to be reckoned be a little bit behind them. And I find him both romantic and unromantic, a kind of dry romantic, and that suits me very well.
Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, Op. 31: IV. Elegy (The Sick Rose)
Peter Pears, Dennis Brain and the Boyd Neel String Orchestra
Well, my second record is the Blake Song. from the serenade for uh tenor horn and strings by Benjamin Britton. And that's really my kind of delivery from Him Z and M. Long ago. and the first modern composer.
Dido and Aeneas: Dido's Lament ("When I am laid in earth")
Victoria de los Ángeles with the English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Sir John Barbirolli
Coming back rather to the soppy side of me, I think, you know, classical tear-jerking, perhaps we should call it.
She Never Told Her Love (from 6 Original Canzonettas, Hob. XXVIa:34)Favourite
Back I Go. This is a sort of a junction of two strains, Back I Go to hide and And to um Benjamin Britain, and to Peter Peyers, is Peter Peirce singing one of the Haydn cancer nets, the Shakespeare one, about She Never Told Her Love.
String Quartet in D major, Op. 76, No. 5 (Largo)
Another Haydn and rather a more solemn Haydn, I think. A hidden quarter again.
Jeux d'enfants, Op. 22: Petite Suite
Paris Conservatoire Orchestra, conducted by Jean Martinon
for me this is a very in a way for me this is a very special record because Do you remember the Belly Rooster Monte Carlo? ... And they did uh the Je d'Enfant. With a decon song by Miro. And the deco was wonderful, and the music was really delicious, and light, and wonderful, and rather mysterious. For me it combined two things, um the painting and the music, and I I knew Miro.
The Holy Sonnets of John Donne, Op. 35: XIV. Death Be Not Proud
Well, this is getting a bit more serious. Back we go to Benjamin Britton, um from the settings of uh The Secret Sonnets have done the wonderful one Death be not proud.
Nabucco: "Va, pensiero" (Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves)
Chorus and Orchestra of La Scala Milan, conducted by Claudio Abbado
It would be a very good one. to play when one was feeling a little miserable if one did on one's desert island. And that would be the famous Varpensiero chorus from Nabucco by Verdi. And my wife and I first heard it when we had no money, when we were in Venice, and we were up in the gallery and it was extremely hot in the Fenici theatre, and down below they were singing Nabucco, and they had four encores for the the great chant of uh misery and liberation.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:31Is music important in your life?
No, I'm afraid it isn't. Not very. I'm a musical ignoramus.
Presenter asks
4:09You lost several of your elder brothers in the first war [and the second]?
Well, there were seven of us. ... I'm the only one. They were all killed in the First or the Second War. One just after the Second War, but as an aftermath of the Second War.
Presenter asks
4:30What were your hobbies as a child? What did you enjoy doing?
I enjoyed the ... bird nesting, bird watching looking for antiquities looking for plants. I wanted to be a botanist my miserable headmaster said, I wanted to be a forester actually. He said, Well, you're a classical scholar and you will read classics. So I read classics.
Presenter asks
18:02Who were your major influences as a poet?
That's a difficult one. George Herbert, I would say. Yes. I think I stick at George Herbert. Which is odd. Uh maybe that's a cleric son's choice. I mean, I think it's a very good choice, but it just happened that my father and my grandfather were readers of George Herbert and there were editions of George Herbert lying about the house, or tucked away in my father's library.
The keepsakes
The book
James Murray
It has to be poetry and poetry is well looked after by Shakespeare, not prose, because I find once you've read a novel you've read it. ... I think on due reflection that I should take the fifteen volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary, I think.
The luxury
I should take an ample and inexhaustible supply of foie gras, which I should have every other Thursday.
Presenter asks
28:56Could you look after yourself on a desert island?
Could I look a Yes, I think I could look after myself reasonably ... well. And quite handy. ... Lazy but hand Day.
“If you live as a professional writer. You've very little time to put a grammophone record onto a grammar phone. At least I find that.”
“I think as soon as you start writing reminiscences or memoirs, you've got nothing more to say.”
“I find once you've read a novel you've read it. You know what's coming if you start reading it again. I don't like that.”