Sir Alfred Ayer

1.Question and Answer

Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by George Weldon

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

I chose it purely for sentimental reasons, because it's a tune that my mother used to play. She hoped that I would learn the piano, and she failed to teach me, but she used to play this very often, and I remembered it for that reason.

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2.If You Were the Only Girl in the World

George Robey and Violet Loraine

Nat D. Ayer

My second record is, I suppose, sentimental, and it's from a show I might have seen. In fact, the earliest show I did see was Chu-Chin Chow, and this is from The Bing Boys, which was composed by a namesake of mine, Nat De Air, and it's a sentimental song if you were the only girl in the world.

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3.L'italiana in Algeri: OvertureFavourite

Academy of St Martin in the Fields, directed by Neville Marriner

Gioachino Rossini

this ties up with my Oxford life because my friend Isa Berlin said it reminded him of my character. ... not so much my character as my lecturing, a kind of sudden burst into exuberance with a quiet beginning.

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4.A Room with a View

Noël Coward

My fourth record comes in fact from a slightly earlier time, uh from time I was at Eton, when we used to get up to London at uh well, long leave we called it, in the middle of the half, and I was a great admirer of Noel Card.

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5.Der Rosenkavalier: Waltz Song

Manfred Jungwirth, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Georg Solti

Richard Strauss

goes back to the time when I was in Vienna and went very often to the opera. It's the first time I really took a serious liking for classical music. And among the pieces put on was the Rosen Cavalier and what I particularly liked was the Wolf song sung by Baron Ox.

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6.Irgendwo auf der Welt

Lilian Harvey

Werner Richard Heymann

we go back again to Vienna, because I used to go lot to the cinema there ... And there's one song I remember very vividly, Somewhere in the World There's Little Happiness ... which I always attributed to a film called The Dry from the Tangstelle, three from the petrol station. But in fact, I've just discovered comes from a different film called Der Blonde Traume, The Fair Dream, and it's sung by Lillian Harvey.

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7.Take Him

Vivienne Segal and Beverly Fite

Richard Rodgers

there because of my continuing pleasure in musical comedies. This is something that began when I was a small boy and something I never lost, and what I've chosen is the concluding, almost the concluding song, from Pell J.

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8.Là ci darem la mano

Ingvar Wixell and Mirella Freni

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

My last record is chosen because it comes from my favourite composer and favourite opera, Mozart Don Giovanni.

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