Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
American conductor and virtuoso, known for taking over Boston Symphony at 24, TV star, principal conductor of London Symphony.
On the island
Eight records
Der Lindenbaum (from Winterreise, D. 911)
…thinking perhaps there won't be any winter on this island, I'm not sure, but this would be interesting to have the sense of a season that I'm not experiencing.
…one of the things I'm proudest of in my whole life making this record.
Wonderful (from The Gershwin Songbook)
…as sung by the magnificent Ella Fitzgerald who brought such elegance to all of this music.
Vespro della Beata Vergine (1610)Favourite
This is a piece that is so beautiful I can scarcely talk about it without getting misty eyed… it's still my most favorite piece.
Kreisleriana, Op. 16 (2nd movement)
…one of my great heroes… the wonderful cool and elegance with which he approached music, an incredible sense of colour that he had.
…this piece really completely comforts me and brings me into a state of tranquillity. It elevates and sets at rest my mind.
Come Sunday (from Black, Brown and Beige)
…a wonderful example of how someone can really be a classic composer, even though he wrote in a genre which could be classified by some people as, oh, well, that's jazz.
Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77 (final movement)
…I couldn't bear the thought of going off to this island without having something by Brahms. And Brahms really did write the greatest violin concerto of all.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:13Michael, do you class that moment twenty years ago when you had to take over in mid-concert as luck?
It was a moment that occurred so quickly that I could scarcely gather any impressions while it was actually taking place. When Maestro Steinberg said to me, Put your suit on, you're going to conduct, I just stood there as if I hadn't heard him, and he had to repeat it a few times. I thought, he must be joking… and then afterwards, after the concert, I telephoned my parents and said, well, this is a very major thing that's happened, and I'm sure it's going to send my life spinning, perhaps out of control, in all sorts of directions I can't imagine. And I do hope I manage to get control of it again, and I'm still trying twenty years later.
Presenter asks
2:09You have an ulterior motive, as it were, of the best kind, don't you? Because it means you can bring music to the people, you can popularize music.
I think people within any particular sphere of music loving tend to be rather proprietary often and rather suspicious and defensive when it comes to admitting that other forms of music have any merit. And I find that so silly because the whole attraction of music is that it is a universal expression of mankind and the point is to get at as much as possible of what it is people have wanted to sing, wanted to pour out from their hearts in music and in whatever genre it's been.
The keepsakes
The book
The collected poems of Rainer Maria Rilke
Rainer Maria Rilke
I'd like the collected poems of Raina Maria Rilke, because I find his work so profound … I try and rediscover that sense of how valuable every little instant of consciousness really is.
The luxury
Yamaha MIDI computerized concert grand piano
It's a combination piano and computer so that you can play, but you can also store everything that you play, and you can compose with it, you can do amazing things with it. So it's really quite a glorious toy. I think it could keep one amused many, many hours.
Presenter asks
6:18But how do you set about creating that [the feeling of Einfeurung] with an orchestra? Do you coach them note by note, or do you just start playing?
Well, you use a lot of different techniques, but with an orchestra like the LSO, which has a very great tradition in playing these big masterpieces, it's a question of starting in, playing the piece, and establishing some priorities about what the tempo is going to be, what sort of articulation it's going to have, what sort of mood even it's going to have, perhaps. A lot of that you can communicate just by the sort of way you move or the kind of eye contact that you have with people and just little things here and there very often produce the best sort of performances.
Presenter asks
27:44You've also been known to shock the classical music establishment by saying that classical music isn't necessarily special, isn't necessarily best. What have you meant by that?
I believe music is such a wide art form, and there is a time and place in everyone's life for different sorts of music. And sometimes when you're walking down the street, perhaps at night all by yourself, it might be a tune from a Gershwin musical or something from a movie score or the last line of an old blues tune… you just can't really say which will bring you the sort of comfort that you're looking for at that moment. So in that sense no one genre of music is inferior to any other.
Presenter asks
31:07You've been likened to Leonard Bernstein. Do you object? How do you react?
I'm flattered. He's a most remarkable individual. I mean, he really does have an all-encompassing appreciation and understanding and mastery of all these musical forms.
Presenter asks
34:53Time for the impossible choice. Which of those records could you take only one would you choose?
I think I would have to take the Monteverdi Vespers because although we only heard a little fanfare-like excerpt from it, it has such an amazing range. It contains very romantic music, very sad music, very devotional music, very joyous music. So that would give me the greatest variety of what the human experience is all about.
“I was raised in a theatrical family and for many, many years of my life I never saw a show from beginning to end. It was always in New York. So, oh, the best scene in Fair Lady is the end of the first act or the second scene of Pajama Game or this. When I we went from theater to theater seeing different parts of things. Just getting a kind of impression of the whole.”
“I like to take things almost to the edge of catastrophe, perhaps in pursuit of the ultimate sweep of possibility in a performance and then just pull it back just at the last moment.”
“When I was a very small boy playing a couple of concerts, the very first set of tails that I ever wore in a concert were ones that I inherited from my grandmother.”
“And there were these wonderful restaurants that opened at five or six o'clock in the morning because all the stars had very early calls and they would go to have amazing breakfasts. And I remember my father taking me and being in a restaurant called Musso Franks in Hollywood and saying, now about six in the morning, saying, now over there, you see that? That's all the Barrymores. … And over there there's Tyrone Power and there's this one and then sometimes we'd go there at the end of the day and say, oh, you see that man in the corner looks rather in his cups. That's Faulkner. He's a very famous author. You'll read his books one day.”
“This is a place where I asked them if they knew any Western music and they apologetically said no, we really didn't. So I thought I would test them. I said, well, have you heard of Mozart? No, sorry. Beethoven? No. How about Barbara Streisand? No. How about Michael Jackson? When they said they hadn't heard of him, I knew they were really purely involved in only their own musical traditions.”
“By reading his poetry, which is something I do regularly, I try and rediscover that sense of how valuable every little instant of consciousness really is.”