Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Arts administrator and director of the National Galleries of Scotland; saved Canova's The Three Graces and Botticelli's Madonna for Britain.
On the island
Eight records
it's a celleste aida, which is a most moving and beautiful piece of of singing, sung by Placido Domingo, and I think this particular record is a a total delight.
the next record is um The Rolling Stones singing Get Off of My Cloud, which is throbbing with life and vitality, and I think so wonderful with it.
Regimental Slow March of the Coldstream Guards
The Band of the Coldstream Guards
I love military music. When we were living in London we couldn't miss the Trooping of the Colour, and I think one of the most staring things of all is the band of the Coast Dream Guards playing their regimental slow march. One wants to feel the crunch of the gravel under their feet and see their bearskins and their scarlet tunics. It's magic.
Kyrie (from Missa Papae Marcelli)
Choir of King's College, Cambridge
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
the next one is the Kyrie from Palestrina's Missa Papale Marcelli. Palestrina. The great musician of the Counter Reformation and this particular piece of music an entirely appropriate background ready for the sublime works of art that were being produced in mid sixteenth century Rome.
The next piece of music I I suppose might be dedicated to my daughter Pandora, who's getting married quite shortly. And it's Vare's Wedding, and it's played by Jimmy Shand and his band. It's a delightful reel, and it will remind me of endless jolly parties in Scotland reeling.
Tosca: Act I - Duet: 'Ah! quegli occhi!'
Maria Callas and Giuseppe Di Stefano
this is uh Maria Callas as Tosca uh and uh Giuseppe Di Stefano as Carradosi, singing their first duet in Puccini's opera, and uh this is uh again an incredibly tense and moving piece of uh uh of music.
Don Giovanni: Act I - Duet: 'Là ci darem la mano'
Thomas Allen and Marie McLaughlin
really how one can actually have eight records without having all eight by Mozart, God alone knows, because I adore him so much. And I've chosen here this Thomas Allen as the Don and Marie McLaughlin as Zelina, singing their duet from Act One of Mozart's Don Giovanni. It's so moving and so beautiful.
Götterdämmerung: Act III - Siegfried's Funeral March
the last record is um again rather sad, I suppose, and couldn't be more sad. It's Siegfried's funeral march from Act Three of Wagner's Gottadamerum. You have the feeling of the ravens and Valhalla and there's grandeur here and there's Tremendous spirituality. It's a moving piece of music.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:43What does it mean to see works of art in their natural habitat?
Well, what that really means is that if you're looking at a picture by, for example, Caravaggio, I don't want to see the Caravaggio sitting in a picture gallery on a white wall hung at belly button level. I actually want to see that doing its job properly in a church, sitting in a chapel properly lit with all the context round about it, so one actually necessarily goes down on one's knees in front of it and venerates it.
Presenter asks
2:44What had you done [to the National Gallery of Scotland] that critics said made it look like a tart's boudoir?
All I had done was done what I thought was a thoroughly respectable and honourable thing to do. I had actually gone back to the history of the building, found out how the hack the pictures were originally hung, and redecorated the building exactly the way it looked when it was opened in the eighteen fifties, and re hung it in a very similar manner.
Presenter asks
3:43Is it true that as a small boy you took your parents on a guided tour of Rome and you'd never been there before?
Uh I've never been there before. No, but you see, the thing is, Rome is one of those cities that belongs to all of us, all sort of, dare I say, civilized human beings. They must know about Rome before they've been there.
The keepsakes
The book
Marcel Proust
I want again something now that's going to be a long read, 'cause I'm expecting not to be discovered on this desert island for quite a long time... I wonder what I might have something like, for example, Pruthes la Recherche de Temperdieu, or yeah, that'd be all right.
The luxury
I don't think it's a luxury, I think it is an essential thing, but there's a very beautiful casket... by Giovanni Bernardi... I want not only the box... but inside it I think I will have a ravishing small group of sixteenth century and fifteenth century Italian drawings, which I can leaf through from time to time in the shade.
Presenter asks
7:11What would you say is the cleverest find that you've ever made?
Got it, I mean I'm afraid there'd been quite a lot of those sort of things. Yes, I mean, not very long ago we bought a very beautiful Bernini drawing, which was um wrongly attributed, and we bought it for, relatively speaking, a song.
Presenter asks
13:24How easily did you get in [to the Courtauld Institute]?
Oh, that was no problem. I was interviewed by Anthony Blunt, the famous spy, who was utterly enchanting, as you can well imagine. And there was Dr. Janetki as well, the two of us interviewed me, and we just never stopped talking about art. And as I was going downstairs, Anthony turned to him and said, Shall we put it Timothy out of his agony? So I I said I wasn't in any agony. He said, Well, you're you've got a place there if you want it. Which is very nice. And I loved it. I mean, it was it was such fun because I was for the first time in my life a square peg in a square hole.
Presenter asks
20:30Do you want to tell the story of the Getty gaffe?
Basically, what happened was that it was alleged by the press with alarming regularity all day when we acquired this work of art that the reason why Mr. Getty in those days, now Sir Paul Getty, had given this money to acquire the great sculpture, was because of some relationship to his father and wanted to stop the Getty Museum getting it. Well, either you ran the Getty Museum, who actually owned the Getty Museum, and all I did was every time somebody said, but surely the reason really why Sir Paul Getty or Mr. Getty is giving you this money is because of his relationship to his father, I repeatedly denied it and repeatedly denied it. And I think I had something like 26 interviews that day. And on about the 26th interview, I said, well, I suppose there might be an element of truth there. Wallop! And I jumped straight into the elephant trap, you know, the heifer lung trap. And they were thrilled, it was on Reuters, on everything else like that. But then the awful thing was that Mr Getty then got in touch with me and sent me a fax. But you know, modern things. And said he wasn't going to hand over his million pounds.
“I want people to react. with all their heart and mind and souls to these objects. It's so sad. We're such a constipated race, aren't we, don't you think, in a funn in a funny sort of way? And you know, we really must let ourselves go as far as works of art goes.”
“A work of art is rather like a battery. It has a huge amount of power.”
“I love less than happy things. You know, for example, Pietouse are the most moving and wonderful things. The thing that really annoys me is is happy pictures, like, for example, that ghastly picture by Franz House of the Laughing Cavalier, who I'd love to sort of throw a potato at or something. He's so frightful. Um but you know, I there's something austere and grand about art, which I think that smiling is the is the wrong thing for it, absolutely wrong.”