Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A harpsichordist specializing in Baroque music, known for being the world's first Baroque disc jockey.
On the island
Eight records
Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Op. 5
instead of one of the standard recordings, a very, very old one made sometime in the very late twenties, about nineteen twenty six, twenty seven. and the pianist is Percy Granger.
Ballade No. 4 in F minor, Op. 52
This is a part of I think one of the grandest pieces that Chopin wrote, something very close to the end of his life, the Fourth Ballade.
there is a little piece called Etin Celle, which is Sparks by Moskovsky. And it's fascinating, just what he does. I've heard this in concert and it bowls the audience over.
Symphony No. 35 in D major, K. 385 'Haffner'Favourite
New York Philharmonic, conducted by Arturo Toscanini
I think especially the Mozart Hoffner Symphony, which I still cannot hear without remembering what this particular recording sounds like.
there's a foxtrot in this with a a dialogue between a black wedgwood teapot and a Chinese cup. And it's just it's very sophisticated, it's very, very funny, very charming, and extremely sensitive in the way it's handled.
I loved not only the sound of my father's voice in that, singing the part of Hagen, but the the Siegfried part sung by Melchior. And this is the section toward the end of the opera, just before he gets it in the back, literally, where he is recalling for the assembled mob there how he finally met Brunhilde and climbed up to the mountain top and went through the fire
O Cease Thy Singing, Maiden Fair, Op. 4, No. 4
there is a Rachmaninoff song, which I remember hearing all through my teens, because my father on occasion would play it. And this was something that he recorded in 1939. The song was Ossis Thy Singing, which is a terrible name for a song. But it was one that he rejected for the tiniest of reasons.
I think if you do anything with a harpsichord, you have to make it an expressive instrument. It is not a mechanical sewing machine. and above all I I think you have to make the instrument sing. And I think for the first time I was able to do that with this one section, the slow movement of the Italian concerto.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:31Have you ever experienced loneliness?
No, I don't think so. Mainly because I rather enjoy music around me, so that if I am lonely, if I happen to be by myself, for example, on a tour, I still keep everything on.
Presenter asks
7:48How was it that you didn't get hooked on opera yourself [given your father's career]?
I was hooked on opera. I was very much interested in whatever it was that was being played on the phonograph or that I happened to hear on the radio. Occasionally I'd be taken to concerts or rehearsals. So opera was very much part of my background. The fact that I went into the harpsichord was almost a total accident.
Presenter asks
8:19What did you want to be as a child? Do you remember?
I really didn't know, up until the time I was in my teens. I knew quite well that I was not going to become a performer. … I was interested in the production, the peripheral areas of music, so that I'd hoped, I think by the time I was 16 or 17, that I would get into artists and repertoire work with a record company.
The keepsakes
The book
Dylan Thomas
One that I would like to read over and over again because of the language's Dylan Thomas under Milkwood.
The luxury
A clavichord, if you can consider that a luxury. That's very close to home and very close to business, but that would be the instrument that I would want to play to myself, for myself.
Presenter asks
8:55Why was it that you switched to the harpsichord? How did this come into your life?
I've been record collecting for a very, very long time. … When I was 16, I was collecting the complete well-tempered clavier. … The album itself was filled out with two other 78s, the English suite number two, played not on the piano by Fisher, but on the harpsichord by Landowska. It turned out I liked the Landowska rather better … And I had an ambition that I would like to try a harpsichord sometime. … in my senior year at Harvard … I received permission to try a harpsichord … And there was a girl that I was going around with, whom I later married. She played the recorder. So we played some of the Handel Fitzwilliam recorder sonatas. And that was my first experience with the harpsichord.
Presenter asks
17:32How well would you be able to look after yourself on a desert island? Can you cultivate?
If I were entirely by myself, I probably would starve to death. … would do the best I can.
“Pianists complain about this all the time, but I think they really have a very easy lot when it comes down to it, because at least their keys are the same spacing overall. If there's any difference between one piano and another, it was it's bound to be in a matter of feel, action. But with the harpsichords you have that difference as well as the spacing.”
“I think if you do anything with a harpsichord, you have to make it an expressive instrument. It is not a mechanical sewing machine. and above all I I think you have to make the instrument sing.”