Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
An intellectual and Cambridge lecturer, ferocious advocate of European culture through books like Language and Silence and Bluebeard's Castle.
On the island
Eight records
Lohengrin: "In fernem Land" (Lohengrin's Narration)
Wagner's anti Semitism we all knew about. Wagner was surrounded by Jews. Jews had largely made Bayreuth possible, etcetera. So the ruling was father said no more in Germany, he couldn't bear it. So we had some French Wagner. And there's a singer, Rogachevsky, and his Lohen grin was something we heard very often. And to day, as I listen to it again, the sheer wonderful absurdity of it doesn't it turn it into a French opera, Le Roi Dis or so. But it still moves me enormously.
The that largo from Handel, sung by Schlussnus, whose text says Thanks be unto you, my lord. You have led your people through the sea, it's the Red Sea, you have led them by the hand, and whenever we got terribly depressed, terribly and said, uh uh when Austria fell, uh then part of our family vanished in Czechoslovakia, it was too late, couldn't get them out this was a record that I used to hear in the house. It moves me still to tears, and it's deep confidence and deep sadness at the same time.
Symphony No. 7 in E major: II. Adagio. Sehr feierlich und sehr langsam
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler
One of the last great concerts in Berlin by Furtwengler, Bruckner Seven Symphony. And most of the people in that hall, or a great many, were going to be dead pretty soon. They knew it. By that time it was clear that the Reich had lost the war and what would happen anybody could think. Berlin already was under constant air raids. That's why part of the tape is lost. And yet if you were to ask me what is total peace, total human repose, I would pick these few moments.
Les nuits d'été, Op. 7: II. Le spectre de la rose
Régine Crespin, with L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, conducted by Ernest Ansermet
If I had to pick one case where the sense of total beauty I could put it no more intelligently stupid way to put it where beauty incarnate a number of things in Belios. It seems to me one of the reasons why Belios is so difficult to approach is that he transcends almost any other music in this mystery of sheer loveliness, and I would want that to be with me.
Um, question of humour. We've just had absolute beauty in Berlioz. One of the wonderful questions, Sue, about which very little is worth reading, is when music is funny, when it makes you smile, in a very special way, even laugh. Haydn has famous jokes. That's not quite what I mean. It's the rarest thing is of an amusing musician. I hesitated a long time. There are pieces by Brubeck which seem to me deeply funny and funnily deep. But for a very brief piece, it's Eric Sati, one of the deepest jokers ever in music.
London Sinfonietta Chorus, conducted by David Atherton
My whole life from probably the first thing I ever did learn by heart was some lines from Homer, and Homer has never left me. The Iliad Odyssey is simply indispensable, and that's why I've picked the next selection.
Adagio for Strings, Op. 11 (Agnus Dei)
Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge, directed by Richard Marlowe
I've chosen the next extract two things the unearthly beauty of Cambridge, and secondly, a selection where American and English truths meet in a completely unique way, a great American composer in the setting of Trinity Chapel, Cambridge, for which he wrote this piece.
This is a record which I've almost identified over and over with so much in my own life. It's France, but it's much more than France. It's a voice such as has never been again, though it's imitated and imitated. And if you were to ask me where does the mystery for you of the grip of music lie, why does a melody or a beat Or a modulation, enter into and never leave you again whether you want to or not, it would be in the opening bars of this selection.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:19Did your father intend you to take his advice to "always have your bags packed" literally?
Oh, very much so. Remember that Hitler was coming nearer and nearer. And the important thing, I think, was to say … Don't be afraid. The world is a very large and very exciting place.
Presenter asks
6:40How early in your life were you aware that life for a Jewish family was different?
Oh, right at the beginning. I remember being chased down the street from Malysee by the boys yelling rather Hitler than Blum. That was at the time of what is called the Franc Populaire and the Socialist Government in France. Uh it was a constant element. That's how you grew up. You had to know that something very big was coming. One couldn't of course tell what it really was, but that the situation was precarious.
Presenter asks
7:38How did your parents react when you were chased down the street?
That was one wonderful moment which which which probably shaped me for the rest of my life. Uh mama had me next to N. We came up in the apartment and she shut the shutters because there was a perfectly stupid mob coming down the Rue de la Pompe. And Papa came home, said open the shutters, and took me with him to the balcony. and said very quietly This is called history. You must never be afraid.
The keepsakes
The book
A calendar and appointment book for five hundred years ahead
A calendar book and appointment book for five hundred years ahead. day by day exactly with the astronomical analytic. And I would have that, and begin filling in imaginary appointments, engagements, lectures, quarrels, lawsuits, encounters with men and women and children for hundreds of years after my death, and suddenly that would be the Book of Life.
Presenter asks
21:18Why do you find it such a paradox that men who appreciated great works of art could also participate in the atrocities of the Holocaust?
You're quite right. There are many people who seem to accept this, who say, why should love of great beauty, and even ability to perform it or carry it out, be any barrier? Well, there I got it utterly wrong. All I can plead was there were quite a few splendid people who got it wrong too, from Plato to Matthew Arnold, perhaps to FR Levis, a wonderful teacher, who were certain that the cultivation of the sensibility of beauty, of humanity, of seriousness in art, in literature, in music and painting, would be some kind of help, some kind of barrier against inhumanity. But it's all over our world. Inhumanity can be combined with high aesthetic experience. And I don't have an answer.
Presenter asks
29:08Why do you think you have elicited such strong criticism and reaction from specialist academics?
First of all, I am an outsider in many ways, always have been, but I will reveal to you, I think, where the source of this and it is often hatred, it is often hatred lies. From the first sentence of my first book, which was called Tolstoy Dostoevsky, I said If one could write a single page of Tolstoy's War and Peace, or Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov, who the hell would want to write a book about them? That is to say, that there are light years between the acts of creation and even the finest criticism and commentary, which is our John. Pushkin had a wonderful image. He said, You're the mailman. Please carry the letters. And it's fun and it's exciting. I am immensely grateful for my life in profession. I'm a mailman. Sometimes I've been able to carry the letters to the right box, to the right readers, saying, Read this, look at this. I've never mixed it up with writing the letter, as Pushkin most unkindly reminded me.
“Trees have roots, and I love trees. I have some wonderful ones in my garden. Human beings have legs. I regard this as a tremendous advance.”
“To learn by heart means exactly that. It gets into you, it lives inside you, it shapes you, you shape it. That is what education, I think, is about.”
“I'm a totally unreconstructed, unrepentant mastodon of elitist joy and passionate conviction, um which is that most of present schooling is organized amnesia.”
“Inhumanity can be combined with high aesthetic experience. And I don't have an answer.”