Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Playwright who co-wrote three thrillers with his twin brother Antony.
On the island
Eight records
Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne
For me this represents one of the glories of Baroque music, of which I'm especially fond. It's both grand and intensely moving to me.
Symphony No. 53 in D major, 'L'Impériale'
Academy of St Martin in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Marriner
I admire it extravagantly because of its craftsmanship and its joy. and I would feel always that I could never tire of this attitude to music and to life. this confidence and this happiness.
Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-flat major, K. 271Favourite
Myra Hess with the Perpignan Festival Orchestra
To me the piano concertos of Mozart are the most marvellous of all his many marvellous compositions.
I think this piece which I love dearly, is one of the most astonishing pieces of music I know. It was written by Mendelssohn at the age of sixteen.
CBC Symphony Orchestra and the Festival Singers of Toronto, conducted by Igor Stravinsky
I think that this piece is one of the. absolutely great pieces of music of the twentieth century. And I would love to have this by me on that desert island, and particularly in those very lonely evenings.
Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54
Dinu Lipatti with the Philharmonia Orchestra
One of my very favorite piano concertos. And particularly in this version I'd like to hear Dinu Lipati play it. I'd like to hear the last movement. It seems to me to contain more Joie de Vive than almost any Finale, I know. I just love this music.
Vienna State Opera, conducted by Clemens Krauss
We were talking about Joie de Vive. I would like some more Joie de Vive. I think one would need all one can get on that desert island, and I would like to hear. Diffledemas, part of Diffledemas. Particularly the ensemble Bruderlein, Schwesterlein
Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, conducted by Colin Davis
And indeed, in one mood one could take all eight records and make them Mozart. He seemed to me an inexhaustible composer. A l little known choice the chorus that opens the last scene of La Clamenza di Tito.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:37Do you play an instrument?
I play the piano for myself, and I enjoy playing it. I play it every day, but I would stop it immediately if anybody came in.
Presenter asks
2:25When did you start your fascination by the theatre?
I think very, very early. As early at least, I think, as ten or eleven. I certainly remember at twelve going alone to the Golders Green Hippodrome and seeing John Gilgard playing Richard the Second, and being totally intoxicated by the experience.
Presenter asks
2:50What happened to you when you left St Paul's?
I became a Bevin boy. That is to say, I was sent down the coal mines as part of my national service. And I was there for two and three quarter years.
Presenter asks
7:15What was your next step? You went off to the United States.
I went off to the United States, yes. Oddly enough, I found myself when I left university, I I came to believe myself really totally unemployable. Anyway, I went to America. I'd met some American friends during my years at Cambridge, and I thought that must be rather marvellous to go there. And I did go there, and I worked In New York City For three years really, from nineteen fifty one to nineteen fifty four it was.
The keepsakes
The book
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Edward Gibbon
It's a book I have never finished, and always want to. I love that grand style. It's like listening to someone play the organ at full volume and with great skill. I could always sort of start again with that one. It's long and magnificently told and it's almost inexhaustible. And I love the prose style. It's baroque again.
The luxury
A Monet painting (Morning on the Seine)
I would take a Monet. I know exactly which Monet too. It's one of the mornings on the Seine, which reveals oh, dawn on the Seine and great hanging lilac coloured trees reflected in very still water. Where is the picture? It's in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. And it would be for me very necessary to have an object of human skill around, and to conjure a landscape very different from the one I was looking at.
Presenter asks
8:44What was your first play to be presented in the theatre?
It was called Five Finger Exercise. A very successful play.
Presenter asks
12:53What inspired that interest [in writing The Royal Hunt of the Sun]?
When I was ill. I had a stomach ailment. I Red Prescott's Conquest of Peru. I I wanted a long book to read. And it seemed to me an absolutely extraordinary story. And I had always wanted To recreate almost epic theatre.
“I went off to the United States, yes. Oddly enough, I found myself when I left university, I I came to believe myself really totally unemployable.”
“I think that [the literalism of the film version of Equus] was a terrible mistake, I must say. I mean, the literalism of the sequence, the end of the film, I thought was wrong, wrong-headed, and In fact, disgusting. I can't look at that safe.”
“I like to work in the mornings when I'm very much fresher. I like to work roughly say from nine or ten. till over the crown of the day till about two or three and then stop.”