Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Academic, statistician, banker; head of an Oxford College, and former civil servant and merchant banker.
On the island
Eight records
Daniel Barenboim, Itzhak Perlman, Jacqueline du Pré
I'll include Beethoven's Archduke Trio because it was one of those works I used to hear from under the stairs. Beethoven was at his most confident and noble.
Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude
It shows Kentner's poetry.
String Quintet in G minor, K. 516
Richard Strauss called it one of the greatest works of music ever written.
Fantasia in F minor for piano duet, D. 940
Alfred Brendel, Evelyne Crochet
I've played it with my father, with my mother, with all my three children.
Double Violin Concerto in D minor, BWV 1043
Perhaps particularly that incomparable slow movement which brings tears to the eyes.
Wotan's Farewell (from Die Walküre)
One of the most moving moments.
Monteverdi had the good sense of writing his greatest work, perhaps The Vespers, in 1610, in which Wadham College was built.
The Marriage of Figaro (sextet)
To me it's the greatest, the most perfect opera ever written.
In conversation
Presenter asks
5:42What do you remember about that period [after Hitler came to power]? How much did you understand what was happening?
I I think increasingly I I understood. … one couldn't help but see it all round one, the brown shirts, and we lived in a street very near … the Mall … And I saw Hitler dozens of times in Goebbels and Goering … parading up and down. And my father actually had decided as long ago as nineteen twenty nine that there was no future for us Jews … and he decided then that we would emigrate … We understood that we were in the firing line … we Jews. What we couldn't have understood at that time was that it was going to lead in 1938 onwards to six million deaths.
Presenter asks
10:52You and your father and your brother were interned in 1940. Why did you think you were there?
It was a real puzzle. We certainly understood that the British government were very worried about spies, but I think it was quite hard to take … that in order to catch a few spies, all the enemy aliens, as we were called, had to be put behind bars.
Presenter asks
16:58There's a contradiction about you: you're so cultivated and such a lover of the arts, yet totally at home in the dry old dust of statistics.
The keepsakes
The luxury
Concert grand Steinway piano and tuning fork
That's rather easy. Um as long as you're moderately generous. Um a concert grant, Steinway, um But of course. Thank you. Um tuning fork.
Yes, well, I don't of course regard it as dry. And I believe that statistics, good statistics, just like good writing … have a tremendously … compassionate … job to do in throwing light on the life of people.
Presenter asks
20:34Were you ever asked by your political masters to massage the figures?
There were a number of occasions when I had cause to be unhappy about ministers. But all my life I've believed in fighting for what I was doing … so I always fought. And there were actually two occasions when I resigned … I fought very hard … for integrity … of statistics … And on the whole we won.
Presenter asks
24:05You were urging your masters to put money into the arts while you were on the board of the Royal Opera House — was that ever compromising?
I don't honestly think there was any conflict, but it was the beginning, of course, for me … especially when I became chairman … of an absolute high point in my life.
Presenter asks
31:17Do you feel yourself to be British, or are you in your heart still German?
No, not German. I am … British, as we like to say, but deep down I still regard myself as not totally … English. I'm not, after all. … I'm partly foreign … I'm a European. Above all, I'm a Jew. I don't regard myself now as a refugee. I don't regard myself as without roots. I don't regard myself as insecure.
“I can see myself standing at the window and watching [the torchlight procession on 30 January 1933].”
“I realized what a prig I was. I really was. I'd had a very glossy youth and life and I hadn't really mixed with a wide range of people and in the RAF I did and I learned a lot from that.”
“I used to say, 'I'm also chairman of the Royal Opera House'. And then she'd suddenly become very friendly. It's so difficult to get tickets for Domingo and so on. And then I would turn the other way.”
“The only reason why I'm not playing or taking eight operatic records … to the Desert Island is that I worked out that during my time on the board I attended two thousand performances roughly. So I thought I'd have a bit of a break.”
“I thought for a moment that perhaps Mozart had written [The Marriage of Figaro] for me.”