Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Composer whose first opera was a hit at 21, later fell from favour, retired to grow mushrooms, then rediscovered, now a successful composer.
On the island
Eight records
Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35: I. Allegro moderato
I just love that work and of course Heifitz was what violinists call the sans parai. He was the ultimate in violin playing and uh this is a great record.
I was commissioned by the Arts Council to write one of the three operas for the Festival of Britain... the idea was that this would go all over England to cheer people up a little bit.
Symphonie Fantastique, Op. 14: IV. Marche au supplice
I just fell in love with brass and drums and everything. And uh bailios meant a tremendous amount to me in those days.
I think that that uh that should cheer me up sitting on my desert island. I say, Well, I may be here for thirty years, but eventually I'll get out of it.
Rigoletto: Bella figlia dell'amore
Luciano Pavarotti, Joan Sutherland, Huguette Tourangeau, Sherrill Milnes
I must have a bit of Verdi, and I believe that Rigoletto is one of his greatest. The thing that I like most with this record, which is a quartet, is his ability to delineate characters through the melodic line.
I'd become very interested in the piano... John Ogden... he was absolutely shattered.
Symphony No. 2 in E-flat major, Op. 63: I. Allegro vivace e nobilmente
I think that the greatest symphony that an Englishman has ever, ever written, or ever likely to write, is Elgar's Second Symphony.
Jesu, Joy of Man's DesiringFavourite
I just think that he plays this like nobody else I've ever heard... if I'm in a bad temper or I've been very agitated... it sort of soothes me down.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:04What's it like to be successful again after a quarter of a century in the musical wilderness?
It's really a wonderful way to uh to spend one's latter days. I sometimes think of uh people I've known. For instance, when I when I was just starting, I met Cyril Scott and he had been very, very, very famous at the early part of the century. People compared him to Debussy. But by the time I knew him, he was absolutely thrown away. Nobody would look at him and he died uh in in obscurity. And I've often thought to myself, How lucky I am that uh I'm writing and uh full of life and and now people want to listen to my music.
Presenter asks
4:54Tell me about your early success. You must have been a very precocious young man to have had an opera staged in London at the age of twenty one.
I don't know whether it was being precocious. I'd been doing all my sort of normal studies, studying violin with Albert Salmons, and I did my composition and all the rest of it. But at the same time, my father used to put me through the ropes with opera because he was uh a person who had an enormous uh knowledge about particularly all the very early operas. He would say, Now, here's a scene from some play or other. Now, you go and set that. So I'd have to go and set that uh and of course I ... I'd get stuck and then he'd say, Well, let's see what Rossini would have done in that situation So I was sort of also brought up in the opera world so it it seemed to me perfectly natural that I should write an opera.
The keepsakes
The book
William Langland
Ever since I was a boy I have loved Langland's Pierce Plowman and I like to read it in the original Middle English... I've never got to the end so as I'm going to have plenty of time I'm going to tap Pierce Plowman.
The luxury
Romney's portrait of Lady Hamilton
I might have Romney's portrait of um Lady Hamilton because she played the violin.
Presenter asks
13:34But then war intervened, and rather disastrously for you. Can you tell me what happened?
Well, I tried to join the navy actually, but uh they didn't want to have me. I think my heart was a little bit dodgy. So um I went into the marine bands. ... And there was a a bit of a scrap one day and uh the ship was hit. Well, uh on one side of our position uh was the magazine and on the other side were the oil tanks. And the the oil tanks uh were broken and down came all this oil and uh most of the people were uh were just drowned in horrible thick black oil. But uh I was a lucky one and somehow or other I survived. Uh I survived but uh I was a total wreck after that.
Presenter asks
18:41So your confidence was obviously restored by discovering you could still write music despite your awful experiences?
Uh well, yes and no. I was still a bit very diffident about everything. I couldn't meet people, I couldn't do anything, you know, I wasn't fit for the music uh world really. Uh but I I had to write uh
Presenter asks
20:21Do you blame yourself for not writing another opera? Do you think you were oversensitive?
Well, I blame myself to a large extent because it was partly a weakness of character, but also circumstances in that all this shell shock h did have a very serious effect on my character. I couldn't stand up to people. Whereas when I first started, I was quite aggressive and everybody was going to play my music, and that was fine. But after that, I just became very timid and lost confidence where other people were concerned. I still had confidence about writing my music, but not where the rest of the world was concerned.
Presenter asks
27:51You've said publicly that one of the main reasons you were out of favor for so long was that you were on a BBC Radio 3 blacklist. Do you need proof of that?
I think probably there wasn't an actual physical list, uh, but uh it it amounted to the same thing, and there were other composers also in the same boat as me. I I was just told that if I sent a score to them, uh they didn't even uh look at it. But I I don't want to dwell on that too much, because they did make amends. They made amends very handsomely. It was mainly due to John Ogden. One day he'd been down to see me and he went back with uh two or three of my symphonies. ... And unbeknownst to me, one of these got sort of slipped through the net. ... the first thing I knew was that the BBC wrote to me and said that in due course they would play my Eighth Symphony. ... from the time they said that they would play this, it took them eight years. They played it in 1977.
“I sometimes think of uh people I've known. For instance, when I when I was just starting, I met Cyril Scott and he had been very, very, very famous at the early part of the century. People compared him to Debussy. But by the time I knew him, he was absolutely thrown away. Nobody would look at him and he died uh in in obscurity. And I've often thought to myself, How lucky I am that uh I'm writing and uh full of life and and now people want to listen to my music.”
“Silly old fool, don't they know I'm not Verde? You know, because I I thought nobody could ever write uh music except Verde. And what was I? Just trying my best to write a tune or two.”
“I was just like a doll on the end of a a string and a and they told my wife I'd have to spend the rest of my life uh in hospital, and that was that.”
“I blame myself to a large extent because it was partly a weakness of character, but also circumstances in that all this shell shock h did have a very serious effect on my character. I couldn't stand up to people.”
“Something comes along inside me and uh if I don't write I actually fall ill. It's almost a physical thing uh with me. It it sort of takes the whole of my body, it takes everything.”
“Well, if you had to play a thing a hundred times, which one lasts the best? I almost think that Bach would last uh better than anything else.”