Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Conductor and musical director of the Welsh National Opera.
On the island
Eight records
Introit for the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
Choir of the Monks of the Abbey of Saint-Pierre de Solesmes
I once had the opportunity to stay there for a period of just over a week and to attend all of the offices... It was a glorious experience and the sound of those monks I mean over a hundred people singing in the most magnificent unison is a sound that I shall treasure forever.
String Quartet No. 8 in E minor, Op. 59 No. 2 'Rasumovsky' (4th movement)
I never forget hearing the Amadeus quartet in Cambridge, playing Opus fifty nine, number two, and particularly Norbert Brynin's solo playing The Last Movement.
Spem in alium (The Forty-Part Motet)
Cambridge University Musical Society, conducted by David Willcocks
I think the one satisfying project of my academic life in Cambridge was helping my tutor Philip Brett in preparing a new edition of the Forty Part Motet by Thomas Tallis... I find it a magnificent piece, a very modern piece for its time, and the sound structures that Tallis builds with his eight five-part choirs simply miraculous.
I adore his piano music. I think the piano sonatas are glorious. I've never been able to play them at all. They're always far too difficult.
September (from Four Last Songs)
Elisabeth Söderström with the Orchestra of Welsh National Opera, conducted by Richard Armstrong
We recently recorded the four last songs of Strauss and uh I'd like perhaps to hear the second song.
London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Colin Davis
Michael Tippett has become one of my really favourite composers. It was a huge thrill to do his opera The Midsummer Marriage and to attract big audiences to it and see the piece firmly established as the masterpiece that it is. I would love to hear his second symphony.
Tristan und Isolde (Act III excerpt)
John Mitchinson with the Orchestra of Welsh National Opera, conducted by Reginald Goodall
One of the great joys of recent years has been to get to know Reginald Goodall, the great Wagner conductor, and to be able to play a part in setting up some of his, I think, most exciting performances.
In conversation
Presenter asks
4:09What was the first opera you saw?
I think it was the Barber of Seville at the De Montfort Hall in Leicester, performed by the Karl Roser Company. And um sad to have to say that it did put me off opera for quite a number of years.
Presenter asks
4:55As a schoolboy, what was your ambition?
Church music became my great love, really, and I became an organ scholar latterly, going to Cambridge. I had always wanted to be a cathedral organist and had seen my future in that way.
Presenter asks
6:39Tell me about your other occupations in Cambridge.
Well, music was a, I suppose, a full-time occupation. I was the only music student in the college and was expected, therefore, to organise the musical life of the college, which was terrific. I also ran the college choir. I did a limited amount in university music generally, but I mainly confined my activities within the college.
Presenter asks
9:21The keepsakes
The book
Ludwig van Beethoven
And I think for those purposes I'd love to have the complete piano sonatas of Beethoven.
The luxury
So, down from Cambridge, what next? You nearly joined the BBC, didn't you?
I did indeed nearly join the BBC. Having uh finished my Cambridge career and not got a job, I was rather in the doghouse with my college, I think... On the day I was due to sign the contract I received a telephone call. From wonderful man Jimmy Gibson, who was the head of music staff at Covent Garden then, who asked me if I would be interested in auditioning for a place at the London Opera Centre as a trainee repetitor.
Presenter asks
10:52How does the prompter work? Does he sing along with the singers or does he keep slightly ahead?
You're basically giving the words for most of the lines ahead, usually giving them in a rhythmic way so that it's quite clear when the singer has to sing. And often in some particularly difficult pieces, giving hand signals as well as to when to sing, when not to sing, or correcting a singer who may have gone wrong with a series of policeman-like signals. It's quite a difficult job.
Presenter asks
17:10When and how did [the Welsh National Opera] start?
It started just after the war with really two amateur choruses, one based in Cardiff and one based in Swansea, who wanted to sing opera. And they got together, formed a wonderful chorus and invited people to sing with them and orchestral players to accompany them. And it built from that.
“I hated the singing, and I found the conventions of opera, as came across to me in that performance, to be quite unacceptable.”
“I'd never seen the WNO at all. I went on the promise of two performances to conduct and the bargain was that if I showed no talent in those performances then I got no more conducting.”
“It was terrifying and of course in so many ways I didn't have the qualifications at all.”
“I love the concert hall. The thing that strikes me always first and foremost, and that most of my experience has been in opera, is how short concerts always are. I never really feel that I've done done an evening's work.”