Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Crime fiction writer best known for novels like LA Confidential and The Black Dahlia.
On the island
Eight records
Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 55 'Eroica'
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Herbert von Karajan
It is the beginning of Beethoven's third symphony, the arroga, the two hammer blows that begin it. Are the revolutionary announcement of the romantic era? Nothing that came before it. Was this dark, this deep, this heroic, this large? This important This passionate.
Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 47
Itzhak Perlman, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, conducted by André Previn
The fiord like Icy, distanced romance of Jean Sebelius' one violin concerto. Listen to it. It is the essence of romanticism and chill.
Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-flat major, Op. 106 'Hammerklavier'Favourite
A part of The third movement of Beethoven's magnificent and largest piano sonata, the twenty ninth, the Homer Clavier, it creates the Romantic Piano Movement. It predicts syncopation, ragtime, and jazz, and Beethoven wrote it Stone Daph in eighteen sixteen.
Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Eugen Jochum
Beautiful elegaic. Tribute to the death of Rickard Wagner, written by Anton Bruckner, the second movement of his seventh symphony.
Große Fuge in B-flat major, Op. 133
Ah Quartetto Italiano Playing Beethoven's Grossfugue. There is nothing like the Grossa fugue nothing sounds like it nothing is as discordant, as beautiful, no string quartet is as revolutionary. Beethoven wrote this near the end of his life.
Symphony No. 4 in E-flat major 'Romantic'
Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Eugen Jochum
The beginning of the first movement of Anton Bruckner's Fourth Symphony, The Romantic. It's the Berlin Philharmonic, again conducted by Eugen Joachim, and the magnificent beginning of this symphony.
String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 131
The beginning Of yet another late Beethoven string quartet. The one thirty one in E flat, again performed by Quartetto Italiana.
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 'Choral'
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Herbert von Karajan
The concluding disc is the beginning of What can I say the most magnificent piece of music ever written the Ninth Symphony of Ludwig von Beethoven the Berlin Philharmonic, again conducted by Herbert von Carion.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:55Do you think your mother would feel honoured by what you've done? Do you think she would be proud of your writing career?
I don't know if she would like specifically what I wrote about her because I was quite candid. But she might have felt the honour that people feel quite often when you accurately portray their life.
Presenter asks
5:41What is it about Beethoven that speaks to you, that is so important to you?
He is the voice of God. He is the most unfathomable genius ever created by civilization. Sometimes I think there is only him and me. And that he speaks to me personally.
Presenter asks
6:59Tell me a little bit about the early days of home life, when your mother and father were still together.
She was a good looking red haired nurse from Wisconsin. He was a hunky and Homeric hung drifter from Lynn, Mass. They were a great looking cheap couple like Jane Russell and Robert Mitchum. My parents hatched me in a cool locale, L A, the Film Noir Epicenter, at the height of the Film Noir era.
The keepsakes
Presenter asks
14:35How did you learn about her [your mother's] death?
I came back from the weekend with my dad on the fateful Sunday afternoon of June 22nd, 1958. I saw cops in the front yard of our house, police cars. I knew immediately that she was dead. Policeman Kneeled down to my kid's eyes and said, Son, your mother's been killed.
Presenter asks
15:10Can you recall what went through your head at that point [when you learned your mother was killed]?
I was relieved. I hated my mother and lusted for her at the time of her death, and at the time of her death my one desire was to live with my stupid, permissive father and get my own way. So my bereavement was complex and ambiguous, and I have spent half a century in a dress of my mother's memory, writing about her.
Presenter asks
21:21How did you stop [your drug addiction]?
It was the extremity of my addiction and the imminence of death that more than anything else simply scared me sober. ... I turned almost overnight from a self-destructive buffoon to a highly disciplined. Meticulous creative force, and before you knew it I was writing books.
“I'm not much of a cohabitator, I'm a damn-good obsessor.”
“I deliberately isolate myself from the culture so that I might more efficaciously live in my head past periods of American history in order to recreate them better for my readers. I don't go to the store, I don't go to the dry cleaners, I don't go to movies or watch television.”
“I only go at things obsessively. I love to fight. I hate to lose. I don't care if I get hurt. And I never give up.”