Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Conductor who galvanised Opera North, then music director of English National Opera, making opera daring and challenging.
On the island
Eight records
A Ceremony of Carols, Op. 28: Wolcum Yole!
Coventry Cathedral Boys Choir, directed by David Lepine
It takes me back to being a cathedral choir boy. It takes me back to a very special man called David Lepine who... ran the choir in Coventry.
Joan Rogers, accompanied by Howard Shelley
This is my wife, Joan... I think I discovered that she sang this song in the first week that I'd met her, and it kinda helped to seal a rather special relationship.
St Matthew Passion, BWV 244: Opening Chorus
The Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists, conducted by John Eliot Gardiner
This is me from the age of eight or even seven every Good Friday performing the St Matthew Passion in Coventry Cathedral... The beginning of the piece, every time I hear it, with this throbbing bass and this very long phrase unfolding, takes me straight back to that moment when I know that I'm going to perform the whole of this piece.
This is the Daniel family... in Yorkshire... this is all of us bashing round the kitchen.
Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Elgar Howarth
He, together with Gary Howarth, invented a suite from the opera for the Orchestra of Opera North to play in Huddersfield. And I was very lucky to conduct it. It's a very, very special piece.
Hermione Gingold and Gilbert Harding
This is our family deciding at about a few hours' notice to dash off to the Loire for a weekend... And I bought this tape in a duty free in New Haven... It is the most absurd piece of comedy and most surreal alternative thing that I've ever heard.
Symphony No. 1 in B flat minor: Last Movement
English Northern Philharmonia, conducted by Paul Daniel
This is a very great orchestra... it is the Orchestra of Opera North, the English Northern Philharmonia... Yeah, it's me conducting, I'm afraid, but it is a tribute to their fantastic virtuosity.
Winterreise, D. 911: IrrlichtFavourite
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, accompanied by Alfred Brendel
It's a piece that I know from my childhood... I could perform it all for you from memory... This is Fischer-Dieskau, who I grew up with as singing this piece to me. And I don't think anybody can sing it as well as this.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:06What kind of entertainment do you want to put on your stage [at the English National Opera]?
It's all kinds of work that challenge an audience, challenge that traditional audience that has come because their fathers and their grandfathers came, but also challenge people to think of the act of performance is something very fresh.
Presenter asks
3:15Were you nervous last autumn, first time as music director of the ENO?
I was very aware of the responsibility... I am not terrified... I am never terrified of the audience. I am very, very nervous of the responsibility of doing the repertoire, the actually bringing these pieces to life. But no, I love performing.
Presenter asks
7:50What was it that opened the door to music for you?
Well, it's something that's gone now, and it was the fact that at a state infant school. You were given a proper musical start... Somebody put a recorder in my hand and said Play this.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
A very large book, beautifully bound, with nothing in it
I think I want a very large book. Beautifully bound. With nothing in it. And I don't know whether I'd be able to write anything on them, but I couldn't possibly choose one way of thinking. And if I chose it now It wouldn't be anything to do with what I felt like when I got there.
The luxury
Cello and facsimile of Bach's cello suites
One of those things in my mi life that's been on hold, like lots of things are, you things you don't get back to. Um and one of them is a desire to learn to play the cello. But I also need A facsimile of Bach's cello suites, to learn.
When did you decide you were going to be a conductor?
I'd known I wanted to be a [conductor], for some absurd self-deluded reason for years and years. I think right back to when I first saw concerts actually in Coventry Cathedral... I just thought that something about what he had to do... was worth its weight in gold.
Presenter asks
17:09When did you get your big break?
I got to work as a repetitor... I was conducting Fidelio on seven hours' notice one Saturday when the conductor was suddenly ill... Fidelia starts with a very brisk two bars and then a pause and conducted these first two bars I didn't know what was going to happen and it happened and they played and they're fantastic. And I got to the pause, and in those five seconds at the beginning I thought, ah I'm going to enjoy this.
Presenter asks
28:24How do you get people over the doorstep of an opera house who wouldn't normally walk over it?
We perform a lot and work a lot to people with people who never come anywhere near the Coliseum... now you go there, you say, This is an issue, here's a subject, here's an idea. What would you do? If you were creating this piece.
“I think all art is contemporary, because Verdi never thought of his piece as as something that actually was in a museum.”
“I think that the government is beginning to realize that it is... Just as important to develop your soul as it is to develop your ability to count.”
“We as a nation are very bad at opening our emotions up. And that's why opera exists. It it exists to deal with all the taboos in society.”
“I am very frightened of the idea of being alone with nobody to communicate with.”