Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
British conductor of international renown, who began as a doctor and overcame childhood paralysis to become a highly sought-after conductor.
On the island
Eight records
Noël Coward singing Poor Little Rich Girl. My mother had also a music stool and it was full of wonderful sheet music and th the album that I loved the best in fact was was an album of Noël Coward. One of my curious achievements is to be able to actually sit down at the piano and imitate the man. But I love the whole atmosphere. I think if I'd been reborn I'd like to have been reborn in the thirties as a as a cabaret pianist and this will bring back the feeling of a sort of Mayfair night in London in about nineteen thirty two.
Ville (from Les Illuminations)
Peter Pears, English Chamber Orchestra, Benjamin Britten (conductor)
This is in fact a part of Britten's Les Illuminations called Ville, it's a setting of Rimbaud, sung by Peter Pears, conducted by Britten. Britten and Pears appeared at my school when I was eleven when we did a performance of St. Nicholas cantata which he'd just written. This was in 1954. And from that moment onwards I think I was hooked on the music of Britten, whom I regard as for me, one of the great influences musically on my life from that moment onwards. And also, I want to hear something in French, and this is in French.
In the Bleak Midwinter (dark version)
Choir of King's College, Cambridge, Stephen Cleobury (director)
Gustav Holst (arr.? traditional)
It's a piece of terrible nostalgia, but I think on a desert island one will need that. I mean it's going to be perpetually sunny, and I want to remember Christmas, which I love, and I Christmas for me is King's College, Cambridge.
English Chamber Orchestra, Geoffrey Tate (conductor)
I think we are due for some more nostalgia. I hate to tell you that. You see, on this wretched desert island I shall miss all that sort of running water and green English lushness. And so what I'd like to hear, in fact, are the Banks of Green Willow by George Butterworth.
Quintet: Di scrivermi ogni giorno (from Così fan tutte)
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus, Karl Böhm (conductor)
This is a wonderful moment from Così fan tutte by Mozart. It's the moment in which the false young lovers are falsely saying goodbye to their believing girlfriends, thinking that they're going to the wars, sobbing with misery and emotion, and the cynical old philosopher is laughing underneath. I mean the way both the tragedy of the situation and the comedy of the situation is conveyed by Mozart, I I think this is one of the most extraordinary things I know.
Symphony No. 104 in D major 'London' (1st movement, part)
English Chamber Orchestra, Geoffrey Tate (conductor)
I love this piece because although it's written by an Austrian, it's about London. It's the London Symphony by Haydn.
Fliedermonolog (from Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg)
Norman Bailey, Vienna Philharmonic, Sir Georg Solti (conductor)
I haven't chosen that moment [of bitterness]. I've chosen the moment where Hans Sachs sits and sings about the lilac smelling in Middle Europe. And I love Middle Europe. I love all those onion spires and those wonderful green Alps. And this music apart from the fact that Wagner is after Mozart my great love, it seems to be redolent of a another part of the world that I shan't see again if I'm on this island.
I'll Be Seeing YouFavourite
It reminds me of America, which I love. It reminds me of all sorts of things. It's Billy Holiday singing I'll be seeing you.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:00These are impressive achievements, made more so in his case by the fact that he has been crippled from childhood with a paralysed left leg and severe curvature of the spine. He is Geoffrey. Geoffrey, only a a year's formal training. Does that mean that you are an intuitive musician?
I suppose it does. I mean, I began playing the piano when I was about five and had lessons for about five years, and then stopped because my parents wanted me to concentrate on more important things, so they thought. Um and I just went on playing the piano. That was instinctive, I suppose, and I used to go to my local library and get out books of operas and I sang a lot.
Presenter asks
2:39And has music always then been a kind of consolation to you?
Yes, I would retreat to a piano, often with a book. My great great childhood thing was to take a book that I was reading, put it on the piano, and literally improvise as I was reading the book. And I would do that for hours, my mother said.
Presenter asks
3:12How have you chosen your eight records?
For nostalgic reasons, for reasons if I'm going to be in isolation of reminding me of places, people and sometimes simply to sort of simply because I love the music itself. But basically I think it's an attempt to create an environment around me so I won't be too lonely.
The keepsakes
The book
Jane Austen
I want all the works of Jane Austen. ... They're all nice and short in one volume. And that would cheer me up after Billy Holiday.
The luxury
Piero della Francesca's Nativity
so I can look at that, because that's full of people singing and being wonderful.
Presenter asks
5:11Let's talk about how you conduct, because of course, unlike other conductors, you can't stand in front of an orchestra for a long time. Your disability means that you have to perch on a high stool. Does that get very uncomfortable?
I've got [used] to it. I suppose it did at the beginning, but I now can do it without thinking about it. I remember [Karl] Böhm, the conductor, saying, you know, you'll find it actually a help in a way. You have more control if you don't jump around. And it is perhaps true that it helps to focus what I do sitting down. It's not that disadvantage.
Presenter asks
11:54Do you ever worry that when you receive those kinds of accolades you might be getting a sympathy vote? Or do you feel that you have always earned everything you get?
Oh no, I often feel I'm getting a sympathy vote. I think you're absolutely right. I even feel that now. It's very strange. I mean, I have to be convinced that what I'm doing is because I'm worth it and not because people are saying, well, you know, it's rather amazing that he's doing it. I still suffer from that. I don't think I shall ever lose that sense.
Presenter asks
31:07What of the future, Geoffrey? What ambitions do you have musically?
I'd like eventually to have my own symphony orchestra maybe, so that I can really program and do what I want. That would be lovely. I have a terrible burning ambition … to conduct the ring at Bayreuth … My secondary ambition would be to conduct somewhere Meistersinger, which I haven't yet done, and that might happen.
“I saw music I mean, the notes were my friends, rather than the children.”
“I still have my grave doubts about it. Maybe because conducting music was a second thing in my life. Maybe I've got the sort of [Zigeuner] wanderlust inside me and that I will that I perhaps will never absolutely feel that I'm at home in any one thing.”
“I loathed it for a long time. I mean, I used to go to Covent Garden and wonder why the singers were never with the beat, always sang out of tune, and why the productions looked so horrible … And yet, when it works, it is the most wonderful thing in the world.”
“I have to make them want to do it. I have to seduce them into wanting to do it my way.”
“I have a lot of interior fear, um genuinely so. I mean, you know, before concerts is the obvious and banal case, but I do have a lot of interior fear that I have to work out. But I normally have enough strength in me to sort of overcome that and do it despite myself … I suffer beforehand, I mean, you know, go through sort of sleepless nights and that sort of thing.”
“Of course I'm bitter. I'd be stupid not to be bitter. There are times when, of course, I would love to be, you know, perfectly straight and perfectly normal. … the bitterness is part of a great sort of panoply. I mean, it's a useful thing to know about bitterness, you know? I don't think it's bad to know what bitterness means. I mean, I'm not basically bitter, but it does perhaps represent seven to eight percent of my life. Why not?”