Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Tenor known for his many recordings.
On the island
Eight records
It's a song which I might like to think was sung to me by my mother, except I don't think my mother would altogether have approved, and I know that my old uncle Stuart wrote to me quite soon after the record was published that it wasn't at all right for me to be singing such a song. I disagree with him. I think it's a sweet song and charming.
English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Benjamin Britten
Well, this is Shepherd's Hay, one of my favorite pieces of Percy Granger's arrangement, and played by Benjamin Britton and the E. C. O.
Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten
Well, this one is from the vintilizer. a remarkable song, In the Village, which gives a picture of the singer going on with his journey, while the dog barks at him through the snow.
Julian Bream, I've been lucky enough to do a lot of concerts with him marvellous player, marvellous accompanist. And this one i've chosen is one of my favourite of all the lute songs. It's by Philip Rossiter, who only wrote one small book of songs, but they are all gems. And this one in many ways is the best of all, I think.
Dawn (from Four Sea Interludes, Peter Grimes)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, conducted by Benjamin Britten
Yes. One of the C interludes. There are four interludes, and this is the one which is Dawn.
Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten
This is one of my favourite English songs, which Ben Britton arranged very slightly for his own playing. to give us a slightly stronger atmosphere than Charles Dibdin did in his rather stilted late eighteenth century version.
Ostinato (from String Quartet No. 3, Op. 94)
It's part of Ben's last string quartet, which I think in many ways is the finest thing he wrote.
The Sprig of ThymeFavourite
Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten
This is one of my favourite tunes, which Percy Granger arranged most beautifully, I think, and it's called The Springer Time.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:43What part of the country do you come from?
I was born in Farnham, but only, I think, more or less by chance, in the sense that my mother and her family had taken a house there for a short time. I wasn't resident there for long years. It was really only, I think, for quite a few months I stayed there. I regard myself as a typical product of the Raj, really. My parents were abroad all my youth. My father hardly met me, nor I him, until he retired when I was thirteen, I being the youngest of seven.
Presenter asks
3:44Was there any musical tradition in the family?
A certain amount. My old uncle Stuart himself was a very good organist, and he had the distinction of conducting the first performance in the subcontinent of India of the Mozart Requiem when he was living in Madras, working there. I think that's quite a record.
Presenter asks
4:28What were you good at at school apart from music?
I like to consider myself reasonably good at cricket. I had a certain distinction, a unique occasion. When I played at the Oval... I was playing for the young amateurs, so called... for the young amateurs of Sussex against the young amateurs of Surrey... and I was really a bowler. So I was put in last, as far down as I could be at number thirteen and to my great joy and triumph I made far and away the biggest score I'd ever made when I went into bat. I made eighty one not out.
The keepsakes
The book
E. M. Forster
Expensive, but very well worth having. Full of his thoughts and his family's thoughts and um jottings.
Presenter asks
13:44Where did you first meet [Benjamin Britten]?
Well, I met him very briefly at a rehearsal at the BBC when I was in the BBC Singers. We sang a piece of his called A Boy Was Born in nineteen thirty four, I think... And then I I met him later. We had a mutual friend who was killed in a crash and I met saw him over that occasion and gradually got to know him better.
Presenter asks
29:39Was [Benjamin Britten] a disciplined writer? Did he write certain hours each day?
Oh, very much so. He got up um on the early side and worked all morning till a late lunch at one. and then always went for an hour walk at least an hour, sometimes some more, and then went back to his desk again for at least a couple of hours in the evening and if it was a question of orchestration or instrumentation, he would have gone later well into the night. But the main work was always done in the morning.
“I regard rather as going to the desert island, as going on the way to the descent to Avernus into Hades and so on, and don't know that I shall ever get back from my desert island.”
“I've been very lucky,'cause I've really virtually only sung the music that I loved.”
“Well, you know, wha if one lives with a composer, one can't help having ideas for what comes next.”