Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Intellectual and philosopher, analytical master of 20th-century ideas, and wartime diplomat whose dispatches Churchill delighted in.
On the island
Eight records
Clock Scene from Boris Godunov
Fyodor Chaliapin, London Symphony Orchestra, Max Steinmann
First choice: "The very first piece of what may be called important music. Good music, in fact, to which I was exposed. was in Petrograd… And in the Malinsky Theatre… The song with the main part was sung by Shredapin… I remember nothing at all about it. I was six. Except for one thing. When he sees The Ghost of the murdered Prince Dmitri whom he disregarded. As heavy murdered. He becomes very frightened. And Shrellapin crawled under the table. pulled the table cloth over his head, and sang from underneath the table. That, a child, would remember, and I always have. Hence this is the scene, or portion of it, which I would like to hear again."
Ah, fors'è lui from La Traviata, Act I
Renata Tebaldi, Orchestra of the Academy of St. Cecilia, Rome, Francesco Molinari Pradelli
Second choice: "My mother had a very pretty voice… She wanted to be a singer… She got the composer Arimsky Korsakov to admit her to the concertoire in Petersburg. Her father was a religious bigot… He wouldn't have a piano in the house… So she couldn't go. … And my mother used to sing this at home, I thought, very beautifully. And what she sang very beautifully was this particular aria… But it made a deep impression on me at that period. I loved Verdi… She never sang Puccini, which is why I acquired a definite permanent distaste for him."
Violin Concerto No. 2 in E major, BWV 1042: II. Andante
Isaac Stern, English Chamber Orchestra, Alexander Schneider
Third choice: "After Verde and that kind of thing. I had a sharp reaction against this and decided that this kind of music was popular and cheap and vulgar… Bach is what I went for in a big way… It seemed to me marvellous, because Bach seemed to me The one composer… His like was daily bread. One could listen to it forever. If I was left with only one composer in my life, it would have to be Bach. It's basic. It's absolutely foundation of all musical life, it seems to me, in the West."
Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111: II. Arietta
Fourth choice: "Now, why I chose that is because Schnabel was a pianist who transformed Musical understanding. by playing Beethoven Schubert. I'd never heard it played like that. … I suddenly realized what the depth and the nobility of composers like Beethoven and Schubert were. Schnabel had a radical effect. On my musical taste. I've never really looked back from that."
Overture to L'italiana in Algeri
Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra of New York, Arturo Toscanini
Fifth choice: "I suddenly thought well, as all the previous works were rather grave. and deep and serious. Something ought to be done about my return to Belcanto… Rossini never ceased to please me… There's a kind of electric tempo in Rossini. Some kind of unceasing forward movement which exhilarates one beyond that of any other composer."
String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 131: III. (third movement)Favourite
Sixth choice (favourite): "That again. Shaped. my sense of how instruments could be played. They were persons of unimpeachable integrity. They didn't seek to please. They had no virtuosity, but they played marvellously. They were totally dedicated and serious. and here patient played by them had a direct moral effect on one."
Piano Sonata in B-flat major, D. 960: II. Andante sostenuto
Seventh choice: "Alfred Brendel in my Estimation is the equal of Schnabel in our days. He too is a wonderful pianist of remarkable gifts. Extremely profound. Reveals deep layers in the composers whom he plays. … He is also a highly educated man… Both intellectual grasp. and a profound emotional understanding… And that I think is an absolutely wonderful thing. … I think art is communication. by one human being to others, and to understand a work of art is in some sense to be spoken to. To be addressed. And that's what Brendel does beyond any pianist now playing, in my view."
L'ho perduta, me meschina from Le nozze di Figaro, Act IV
Margaret Price, New Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer
Eighth choice: "Mozart, after all, is a divine composer… it seems to me that Figaro, the marriage of Figaro, is the best opera ever written by human beings. But there is one idea in it. Not often particularly noticed. which is at the beginning of the fourth act. where the girl of Barbarina is looking for a pin… It's a most wistful Melancholy, beautiful. Said. But exquisite area in the entire opera in some ways. I think it's wonderfully beautiful and very, very, very touching."
In conversation
Presenter asks
5:54You were living in Petrograd in 1917 when the revolution broke out. Did you witness or experience any of it?
The First Revolution was like um something on the stage. Great crowds, people walking about with exalted faces, every one very happy. I don't think perhaps the Tsarists were very happy, but my family was, because they were sort of ordinary liberal bourgeois. … Then let me see the thing which I remember painfully on that occasion. Was Uh the fact that though the man Sort of caught by a lynching bee. Let me explain. The only people remain loyal to the Czar. We're the police. That's not in the books, but it is true. And they sniped in the revolution is from roofs or attics and things. And um This man was dragged down obviously by a crowd, was being obviously taken to not very agreeable fate. And I saw this man struggling. in the middle of a crowd of about twenty, dragged off. Well, I didn't realize it was a policeman, I was told that afterwards. But that gave me permanent horror of physical violence. which has remained with me for the rest of my life.
Presenter asks
13:58After the crammer you went to Saint Paul's, not Westminster School. Why not Westminster?
Well, I'll tell you. It's a funny story. … I went to grammar for Westminster. Christmas thought that my Latin wasn't very good. My mathematics went up to it. And at a certain point my grandma said to me, Your name is Azar? Yes. Do you know it's a funny name? Very few people in England have it. I think the boys Might Be a little bit Mocking about that. They might tease you about that. Don't you think you could change it to some nice old English name, like James, or Alfred, or something of that kind? For some reason I know I am very by nature not prone to be rebellious in any way. But on this occasion I suddenly thought, No, I don't want to go to a school. Where this was the case, it seemed to me the whole team is obviously too stiff and too conventional.
The keepsakes
The book
The Works of Pushkin in Russian, in one volume (prose and verse)
Alexander Pushkin
The book I should like is The Works of Pushkin in Russian, in one volume. Prose and verse. That is inexhaustible.
The luxury
A large armchair with many cushions and a waterproof cover
I'd like a large arm chair with a very great many cushions, and rather like a sit down chair, a sort of cover on top. I presume, if possible no, I think almost certainly of some kind of impermeable cloth, so that rain doesn't penetrate and the sun doesn't penetrate. If you give me that I'll ask for nothing more.
Presenter asks
23:52After the war you returned to Oxford and changed from philosophy to the history of ideas. Does deep understanding of everyone else's viewpoint prevent you from adopting any one as your own?
No, I don't think. I can say that it scatters one's attention in that way. The reason why I took up this particular feel was because I wanted to know about the Russian Revolution. So I began reading. The Forerunners. of the Russian Revolution in the nineteenth century. and some of them, my hero, Alexander Hurtson, wrote a most marvellous autobiography. of the nineteenth century, the most wonderful book in the world, called My Pasts and Thoughts. I came across it accidentally in the London library. And when I read it I knew that that's what I was interested in, even while I was still teaching philosophy.
Presenter asks
28:19You said you are nervous before, during, and after a lecture. Is it true?
Thank you for your praise, but let me say I've never enjoyed giving a lecture in my life. That is the truth. I'm a nervous lecturer. I prepared it very carefully. Forty pages of manuscript. Then I boil it down to Eleven pages. The eleven pages then become three pages, and finally a postcard with headlines in case something goes wrong. I cannot look at the manuscript when I lecture. Nor can I look at a human face. Because I'm too nervous about the audience. The face might smile, or frown, or cough. or low contemptuous, or something terrible may happen. or have any kind of reaction. Whatever it may be, even if it smiles, no good. So then because it stopped me dead? The only other person about whom I know this is true is the philosopher Kant, to whom I don't compare myself.
Presenter asks
32:27You said Britain is the best country in the world. How do you justify it?
Well, and what can I say to you? I think it's civilized. I think it's fundamentally liberal. I think it's unsqualid. Even its economic life is not as oppressive and as unjust as in some countries we can think of. I think on the whole So speak people are more tolerant. And if liberal civilization is what we're in favor of, That I think. It is of the great countries of the world. I think perhaps comes top of that. No doubt other countries may have other qualities.
Presenter asks
33:12What characterizes that liberalism for you, beyond civil liberties? What is the greatest example that strikes you?
I think one of liberalism means. that different people pursue different ideals. That if you pursue one ideal, even if you are opposed to somebody else's ideal, you understand it, which means you can understand what it would be like. Pursue this purpose, which in fact you are against. If we don't understand it, then no communication. A liberal society is a society which tolerates a large variety of opinions, provided they are not directly destructive. It means that people are left to do whatever they please and go wrong in their own way if need be, provided they don't obstruct, they don't simply get in the way of other people too much.
“I only think, I think, when I read books. and react. Or when I talk to people and react. Simply to sit in a chair and think is not at all my habit.”
“That gave me permanent horror of physical violence. which has remained with me for the rest of my life.”
“The idea that Ultimate values are often incompatible. and therefore the idea of a perfect world in which all good things can be got together can't be true. … Justice and mercy You can't combine. Liberty and equality, completely. Complete liberty means that the wolves eat the sheep. Complete equality means people who get above other people have to be kept down. … The two things can't be had together, but they're both perfectly noble ultimate ends. and one has to choose in the end.”
“I've never enjoyed giving a lecture in my life. That is the truth. I'm a nervous lecturer.”
“I think it's civilized. I think it's fundamentally liberal. I think it's unsqualid.”