Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Author, ballet critic and exhibition designer.
On the island
Eight records
Well, it has a special significance for me at the moment. Apart from being one of my favourite songs, I'm very interested in the Romantic period and in Victor Hugo, and it happens that Victor Hugo's great-grandson, Jean Hugo, who's a wonderful French painter, with whom I have worked on various exhibitions, he's a great friend of mine, and so is his wife, who's English.
Götterdämmerung: Act III Opening (The Rhine Maidens and Siegfried)
English National Opera Company, conducted by Reginald Goodall
Well, I think that Wagner's Ring is the greatest single achievement in music ever perpetrated, and I think that Goethe Demerung, The Twilight of the Gods, is the greatest work in the series. And it's so it's so extraordinary and so varied in its splendours that I've almost arbitrarily chosen the opening to Act Three, which is The Rhine Maidens and Siegfried.
Così fan tutte: Trio 'Soave sia il vento'
Sena Jurinac, Blanche Thebom, and Mario Borriello
The third record is also opera and it's Mozart, and I've chosen from Cosi Fantute the trio when uh the two men uh the sail away and the two girlfriends and the wicked plotter sing Suave sia ilvento.
Otello: Willow Song (Salce, salce)
Our next piece is again opera and it's from Verdi's Otello, which some people think put more marvellous characterization into the chief characters than even Shakespeare did.
Piano Quintet in A major, D. 667 'The Trout' (Slow Movement)
Alfred Brendel with members of the Cleveland Quartet
Well, we get down to chamber music at last, and of ... Isn't it awful? You see, I I haven't got room for Beethoven, but we've got something of Schubert, and I want to play the slow movement from the Trout quintette with Brandel at the piano.
Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, BWV 147: 'Jesus bleibet meine Freude' (Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring)
Choir of King's College, Cambridge, conducted by David Willcocks
The next record is Bach, and it is the cantata Herz und Mundt, which I choose because it has this divine tune in it, which we call Jesus of Joy of Man's Desiring.
Keyboard Sonata in F major, K. 474
One of my very favourite composers is Scarlatti, and I want to play one of his sonatas for harpsichord. Vander Landowska is playing it.
Les Noces (The Wedding): Closing Passage
Well, here comes the ballet, and of course it's by Stravinsky, and I think greater than the Firebird, greater than Petrushka, greater than The Rite of Spring, and greater even than Apollo ... is Les Nos, the Wedding. And this is the ending of it, which I think is one of the great moments in modern music.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:39Have you any musical skill yourself?
Absolutely none. I had a few piano lessons at school, and I gave it up because I didn't like the mistress who taught me and it's the greatest regret of my life, because I think to play the piano and to know Greek are two things I lack.
Presenter asks
3:07What did you read [at Oxford]?
I read English, but I didn't read it studiously enough, and as I was supposed to be getting a scholarship, which I failed in, because I was doing theatricals and enjoying myself, I ran out of money and had to leave after one year.
Presenter asks
3:29What did you want to be at that point [after leaving Oxford]?
I thought I was a genius, you see, and I thought you could do anything you wanted without working for it. I think a lot of young people may have the same idea, but I wanted to be either the greatest actor in the world, or the greatest director, or the greatest painter in the world, and I soon found that you had to work jolly hard in order to be the mediocre one of any of these things.
The keepsakes
The book
Thomas Hardy
the greatest tragic novel in English, which is also connected with the countryside where I live and which I love, Dorset.
The luxury
Presenter asks
How did your obsession by ballet come about?
By taking the train from Liverpool Street station on the way back from school ... I saw this book on the bookstore, and it was Romola Nizhinsky's Life of Her Husband. I'd never heard of Nizhinsky nor of Diyagilev, and I didn't know what ballet was. ... I was fascinated by this photograph of Nizhinsky in Le Spec la Rose ... And it did rather change my life.
Presenter asks
5:09Did you have any desire to dance yourself or to choreograph?
Well, funnily enough not. Although I'd wanted to be an actor and realized I couldn't, I never dared to suppose that I could be a dancer. I took a few lessons later on from Vera Volkova, who was such a marvellous teacher, private lessons. I was already over thirty when I did that. And when she said now you can draw in a class, you're all right, I didn't want to expose my aging body to the view of the young and I refrained.
Presenter asks
16:42How did you get involved [in the Theatre Museum]?
I suppose the story started with the Diagilev exhibition in 1954, but partly because of that it was suggested to me ... that the whole Diagilev wardrobe and curtains ... should be sold at Sotheby's. ... And on the very day of the first sale, I was enabled to spend £75,000 on dresses and scenery. ... and we somehow founded the Theatre Museum, which incorporated the existing British Theatre Museum and other collections.
“I thought I was a genius, you see, and I thought you could do anything you wanted without working for it.”
“I wanted to be either the greatest actor in the world, or the greatest director, or the greatest painter in the world, and I soon found that you had to work jolly hard in order to be the mediocre one of any of these things.”
“I should be writing all that I know about life and trying to write a masterpiece.”