Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Conductor who pioneered authentic early music performances, formed the Monteverde Choir, and won three Gramophone awards.
On the island
Eight records
Love Scene from Roméo et Juliette
London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Colin Davis
I think it's probably the most beautiful romantic music that came out of the 19th century, arguably anyway. You never see Romeo or Juliet, it's all in the orchestra. But the atmosphere that Berlioz creates is so sensual and so much to do with Italy and with the romance of those two people. It's so palpable. I love it.
This is an old friend of mine, Charlie Andrews, who was the estate carpenter and gamekeeper and sort of odd job man. And he was also a marvellous friend to me. ... He spoke out loud and remembered out loud William Barnes's local dialect poems and there's one wonderful one called The Giet of All in Two which Charlie actually recorded just before his death.
Hugues Cuénod, Paul Derenne, Nadia Boulanger
It's got such charm, and I wouldn't be without it for anything.
This is actually another singer, a Lebanese pop singer called Fairuz. And she's singing Ya Habibi from an album called Sentimental Mood. I adored her. ... I found myself busking well, moonlighting as it were, playing backing for Fairuz.
Entry of Polyhymnia from Les Boréades
English Baroque Soloists, John Eliot Gardiner
This particular piece that I love so much is the entry of Polyhymnia. And it's a purely orchestral piece, but it shows how different Rameau is from Bach and Handel, in that his music resembles a kind of French sort of 1920s blues style, which is very characteristic of the high Baroque. And I find it so special, I wouldn't be without it for anything.
Erbarme dich, mein Gott from St. Matthew PassionFavourite
This is particularly special to me because it's a recording we made in Aldborough at Snape in the wonderful Maltings concert hall, and it's got three of my most favorite musicians taking part in it. ... It's got the leader of the orchestra playing the obligato violin part, who happens to be my wife, Elizabeth Wilcock, and her playing of this obligato line and also what it represents to me in terms of her commitment to English Baroque Soloists and to me and to music making in general and the influence she's had on my life is enormously important. I wouldn't be without that for anything.
This is the MJQ, the modern jazz quartet, playing Versailles. It's from an old album called Fontessa, which as a child, as an adolescent at school in Branson, I used to play all the time. ... I can remember exactly how that was, the MJQ they are so special, these four very serious black gentlemen playing magnificently and improvising with such flair.
May no rash intruder from Solomon
Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists, John Eliot Gardiner
The group of musicians to whom I'm most indebted and who have been as it were my longest companions and friends are the members of the Monteverdi Choir. ... This is a very gentle chorus of Handel's, uncharacteristic perhaps, and it's the most soothing and the most English pastoral of his choruses. And it's the one that I will remember the Monteverdi perhaps best by.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:31Which gets the greater share of your time, the beef cattle or the music?
Well, I like to think that I do music on the side, that I'm really a farmer, but unfortunately that's not true. In the sense that I always wanted to be a farmer initially, but conducting soon became the most important thing in my life, and I've tried to combine being a conductor with a love of the countryside and also for the last ten years an active involvement in farming again.
Presenter asks
6:39The musical precocity apart, it was a very normal childhood, was it?
Oh yes, I mean I wasn't particularly interested in I had no thought of music as a career. I mean it was just natural to be part of what was going on in the house and that was musical. But the most important part of my life then was being in the country, being on the farm, being always at the stable door, working when I could or thought I was working, driving a tractor, having a marvellous time, I mean a blissful time until Till I was sent away to boarding school and then trouble started.
Presenter asks
9:15Considering all of that musical background, you didn't end up studying music at university. You studied history. How did that come about?
Oh, I got to Cambridge on a history scholarship, not on a on music one, and I was uh fascinated by history at the time and at still at that stage I had no thought of of really of doing music professionally. I was also put off very much by The type of musical world that went on at Cambridge, particularly at my college, King's, which was very precious and reverent and rather stuffy, and everything was sung in an extremely holy way, and it didn't seem to me to correspond with my own childhood memories of how that music went.
The keepsakes
The luxury
an endless supply of Sancerre wine and a lemon
if it's too practical, then how about [an] endless supply of san cer to drink with them
Presenter asks
14:47Was it ever likely that you would become a conventional symphonic conductor, or were you always someone who didn't fit into the conventional mold?
Well, I didn't know at that stage and one of the first things to test that out was going in for an apprentice conducting scheme, which I did with the BBC Northern Orchestra. And for two years, I was their apprentice conductor, which was a terrific training, because one got to conduct the overture in a live broadcast. And if the tradition was that if the overture lasted 12 minutes, you were given 10 minutes rehearsal time, that's all, to rehearse it with the orchestra, and then you were on the air. So I got to know an awful lot of overtures and also to to economize on rehearsal time. It was a very salutary, very good experience. And they were extremely tough and outspoken and told me when I was making a Horlicks of it and were also reasonably appreciative when it went well.
Presenter asks
22:58Would it be fair to say that you really haven't achieved the same kind of acclaim here at home in Britain?
I think to record buying public, yes, but to concert going public, probably not. Um I don't know why it is. It's something to do with with perhaps the incredible diversity of music making that goes on in London, and therefore the rarity value isn't so much. Uh and there's also I think it's to do with English musicians perhaps not being appreciated uh at home as much as they are abroad generally. I mean, it's a very English characteristic to allow that to happen. Unless you happen to be very, very young or very, very old, and then that's then there's usually
Presenter asks
30:17Do you have one particular musical ambition? Is there one work that you dream of performing in a specific location?
Yes, I've got a zany idea which I would really love to do, and that's following a sort of si northeast-southwest ley line pilgrimage route from probably Samarkand or Bukhara through Isfahan to Istanbul, to the Great Mosque in Istanbul, the Hagia Sofia, Santa Sofia in Istanbul, probably via Venice, to the Great Mosque in Cordoba, and then ending up in the Cathedral in Seville, doing a whole range of Polychoral, Venetian and English music. I mean Gabrielli, Tallis, Allegri, Monteverdi, Purcell, a whole jumble of of music with a movable audience, probably a promenade type situation, and different groups of performers playing in different parts of those wonderful buildings. I think that would be absolutely marvellous.
“I loathe the word authentic because I don't I mean it suggests something sterile and and sort of museum-like and um I know what people mean by it, but it it's not really something that it means a lot to me personally.”
“I was virtually bilingual and I was brought up speaking with a heavy Dorset accent and then spoke proper at home.”
“She said to me, But, my dear, your harmony is a tragedy without name, which indeed it was.”
“The thing I I would miss most was my family, and the second thing I'd missed most was The the landscape, I mean, Dorset. England.”
“I've got a zany idea which I would really love to do, and that's following a sort of si northeast-southwest ley line pilgrimage route from probably Samarkand or Bukhara through Isfahan to Istanbul, to the Great Mosque in Istanbul, the Hagia Sofia, Santa Sofia in Istanbul, probably via Venice, to the Great Mosque in Cordoba, and then ending up in the Cathedral in Seville, doing a whole range of Polychoral, Venetian and English music.”
“It has to be the Bach for all sorts of reasons, not least of all because of Liz, my wife, but uh also it is To me the most beautiful music of the lot.”