Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A drama and music critic best known for his work on The Guardian and the BBC.
On the island
Eight records
I want a tune rather like that, a a good unending tune. I think it is a very magical tune, actually. It's Dupita's song to Semmele in Handel's opera, Where'er You Walk, What a Benediction.
I think it would be a disc which would be useful in killing four birds with one stone. It's the Chopin episode from Carnival by Schumann, two composers who I absolutely love, Schumann imitating Chopin. And this is also part of one of my most treasured memories in life, which is the Russian ballet, indeed all ballet.
Piano Quintet in A major, D. 667, "The Trout"
Clifford Curzon & Members of the Vienna Octet
I think uh something would always lift my heart. The Trout Quintet by Schubert. I can remember listening to it after an air raid and feeling completely cured. It was one of those Mara Hess concerts in the war at the National Gallery. Marvellous lifting stuff.
This is an example of Italian opera of the kind that I like. I know it's not great music, but I think it's marvellously effective music. And I adore the baritone who's singing it, Robert Merrill. Most marvellous voice. For the day I'm bored with this kind of thing, I shall know I'm dead.
Sei nicht bös (from Der Obersteiger)
Uh seinisht Bees, a little uh song from the Obersteiger, sung by one of the great lovely voices and joys of my life, Elizavet Schwartzkov.
Well, I'm very attached to the voice and manner of Charles Traine, and I should like to take a record with me of him singing La Mer.
Well, I know what I would need, and that is a lullaby, because I think getting to sleep all on your own with your own concerns would be tiresome. So can we have the the lullaby, the vegan lead of Richard Strauss, and especially sung by somebody with another marvellous voice, Lisa De La Casa?
Salva me, fons pietatis (from Requiem)
But I would want something which would re-spur or re-inspire my religious sense, which was very strong when I was young. And I would like something which would make me fall on my knees, I think. And I can't think of anything which combines more marvellously a sense of religious fervor and the excitement and joy of opera that I've had than this moment from the Requiem of Verdi salvame fonds beatatis.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:32What would you be happiest to have left behind?
I can't think I'm enjoying life so much. I can't think of anything I'd be happy to leave behind. Splendid. Couldn't leave Fleet Street behind. I mean, it would be agonies to be on one's own there and to lose London life. I don't want to leave London. I don't want to leave anything behind. Of course, one would be glad to leave the income tax people behind.
Presenter asks
0:52What would you fear the most [on the island]?
Loneliness … I think I could cope with some of the sort of Robinson Crusoe side of it, like building a shelter and that sort of thing, but I'd be down on my knees all the time praying for Man Friday to arrive.
Presenter asks
6:27What did you read [at Balliol College, Oxford]?
I started reading history in emulation of my sister and Veronica Wedgwood, who were up a year ahead of me. But I quickly saw that it would involve one in doing a great deal of reading. I didn't want to do a great deal of reading at that age. And as I talked quite an amount of French and German, I thought, well, languages were the thing. Bailey all disowned me. I mean, they didn't kick me out, but I had to go to another tutor at another college.
The keepsakes
The book
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There is something huge and deep and boring that I have never really explored to the full. Though I know bits of it and love bits of it, I should like to know the whole thing. I would take Goethe's Faust in German both parts.
The luxury
Ivory chess set and chessboard
No, that's awfully difficult i if it counts as a laxity. I think um A perfectly beautifully carved ivory set of chess men and a chessboard would be very good value because you could play chess with yourself or the parrot. I guess that may take time.
Presenter asks
7:13What did you do when you came down [from Oxford]?
I sank like a stone, really. The first job I had was at Radio Normandy at Faicorn on the cliffs between Dieppe and Le Havre. It wasn't a great success. I wasn't a great success. It was an interesting experience, in a way. Yes, I'm sure it was. And then I came back to London and I tried to live by giving French lessons and one thing and another. And then I stumbled into the Gaslight and Coke Company.
Presenter asks
9:51Is daily criticism not very wearing? As far as drama is concerned, surely very little time for consideration.
Oh, that's true. You have to hop into a telephone box sometimes and do it right off the cuff. But it's not wearying unless it's bad. The only thing is that you get perhaps you get bored with something slightly earlier than other members of the audience. But of course, if it's good, you just love it. I go again and again.
Presenter asks
11:16Looking back, is there any one constructive contribution that stands out in your mind? Any battle you fought for the cause of a play or an idea or an artist?
I wouldn't be, I think it would sound very immodest to say that I'd won any battles, but I think perhaps my feelings about certain ways of producing Shakespeare or my feelings for certain kinds of music, say Italian opera of a certain period, have prevailed. I mean, it would have seemed extraordinary to me if we should ever have had a revival of Donizetti's Lucia or Bellini's Norma, two works that I have greatly enjoyed. When I was 20, I couldn't have believed that possible.
“my mind's full of music all the time. It's like a computer. I've got my own gramophone on board.”
“while the performance is going on, you somehow learn to sort of write it in your head while it's going on. I don't like pre-cooked criticism. I suspect pre-cooked criticism.”
“When I first went up to Oxford, I was challenged. We were all asked as freshmen, what is your favourite composer? Who are your two favourite composers? And greatly daring, I said, Handel and Verdi, amid shrieks of laughter, because Handel was something that your aunt sang at the Albert Hall, and Verdi was something you heard on the hurdy-gurdy. That all changed.”