Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Conductor who led the Philadelphia Orchestra and began conducting at the age of twelve.
On the island
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:08Did you hear a lot of music in your home as a child?
Yes, I always wanted to be a musician since I can remember, since I was four or five years old. When I was about that age I was up in Palmen, that's the north part of Germany at that time. And I heard a violinist up there and I fell in love with that instrument, asked for a little violin, and that's how I began music.
Presenter asks
0:31When you left school, you studied at the Royal College here in London?
Yes, I studied [at] the Royal College and I … I feel I owe a very great debt to the Royal College. It's a wonderful institution.
Presenter asks
0:49When you'd finished your studies, what was your first professional engagement?
I never finished my studies. I haven't finished them yet. I've been studying all day today and I'll be studying all day tomorrow and for the rest of my life because conducting is very, very difficult and very complicated. And a modern orchestra is very complex. I'm sure of that.
Presenter asks
You were for a time an organist here in London, weren't you?
Oh yes. I … I played first the violin, then the viola. And then the piano and then the organ. And now I play the greatest instrument of all, or I tried to play it, and that's the modern orchestra, yeah.
Presenter asks
3:11Which was your first orchestra?
Well … I did a certain amount of conducting here in London and in Paris, but the first … I had steadily was Cincinnati, after that it was Philadelphia, after that it was … I can't remember what came next.
Presenter asks
3:31The Philadelphia Orchestra, where you stayed for so many years, you made into one of the premier orchestras of the world. How long were you in Philadelphia?
I was there from … Fifteen to thirty five. Yes. Twenty years.
Presenter asks
4:22How long ago did you start making records yourself?
I can't remember, but … I remember that the first records we made, that was of course before electrical records. And we made them into a huge horn. It was like uh a great horn made of wood. [It] was enormous and we pushed as many players as we could inside of that horn and … made records that way. Of course they were not very good but th those were the very early primitive days of records. Now we record uh electrically and by magnetic process on tape, as you know. And that of course is much better. But in the future we will find, I'm sure we will invent much better ways of recording than we have at this present time.
“I never finished my studies. I haven't finished them yet. I've been studying all day today and I'll be studying all day tomorrow and for the rest of my life because conducting is very, very difficult and very complicated.”
“I was in London. Long time ago I lived in German Street and uh a man came and said I'm looking for an an organist. … [He said] I want a a good organist, but I want a man who's not too British. Well, that wasn't a very tactful thing for him to say, but that's what he did say to them, and they said, Please take Stokovsky. We we'd like him to go. So he offered me the position of Saint Bartholomew's Church in New York.”
“I love to travel. I I would like to travel every day of my life. I think I'm just a vagabond. It's it's delightful to be going to different countries and cond conducting different orchestras because the personalities of the players are always so different.”