YouSaid · the spoken record

Lady Natasha Spender

lines on the record: 29
first: 2007-01-07
most recent: 2007-01-07
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Well, there's a very amusing anthology called Desert Islands by Walter Delamere with illustrations by Whistler, and it tells of at least forty desert islands of Daniel Defoe, of Robinson Crusoe, and many more, and I'd really enjoy the fellow feeling with all those inhabitants that I joined some kind of club of enthusiasts.”
2007-01-07 · Desert Island Discs · Lady Natasha Spender · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now it's really to do with family life because our family is very musical. Lizzie was a very good leader singer. Matthew has always played the clarinet, and I particularly love when he plays either The Brahms or the Mozart Clarinet Quintet, and I thought let's end with Mozart.”
2007-01-07 · Desert Island Discs · Lady Natasha Spender · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yes, rather amusing things, really literally the day before he died. Stephen suddenly launched out in a hilarious description of Lyton Stracher. Well, I did think it extraordinary that you're married for fifty five years and you don't hear one of these really super anecdotes.”
2007-01-07 · Desert Island Discs · Lady Natasha Spender · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's much more what shall I say episodic If you think going back to Stravinsky and Elliot Elliot used to have lunch every Tuesday of his life with Herbert Reed and Frank Morley, and there was steadiness in friendships and the same thing with Stravinsky. Now we have to snatch at seeing our friends.”
2007-01-07 · Desert Island Discs · Lady Natasha Spender · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About Natasha. What was it? Yes, it was that in fact almost the last work that I played Before I was ill was the Stravinsky Capricia. And we've become great friends. And we introduced him to TS Eliot, and those two Elliot was very deliberate and reflective and old possum, and Stravinsky was very quick and very lively, and was very funny about Elliot in an affectionate way. He said to me You're Mr Elliot is not an exuberant man.”
2007-01-07 · Desert Island Discs · Lady Natasha Spender · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yes. I learnt his piano sonata and indeed gave the first performance of it in London, and this was in forty seven, of course, before I was ill. He recorded it with horror, and I remember his playing a tape to me of it, and Horowitz getting something wrong, and they both collapsed with laughing, and I thought how can those two distinguished people just laugh?”
2007-01-07 · Desert Island Discs · Lady Natasha Spender · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was very difficult but I in one way, but I was prudent also in one day. Any work that I'd learnt but not yet perform, for instance I'd learnt the Brahm's second concerto with Clifford Curzon, but a not yet had a date for it. So if that was on the wireless I turned it off, but otherwise I simply got on with the next thing.”
2007-01-07 · Desert Island Discs · Lady Natasha Spender · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A concert pianist. In fact, well what happened was that When was it it must have been nineteen forty? sixty three, I think I suddenly felt frightfully tired, so I decided to take a sabbatical what it turned out to be was that I was so phenomenally tired because I had cancer, so I had various operations, and since I had extremely radical surgery, a concert, a career was out forever. I remember The physiotherapist came into my hospital room on the first day and said I've had what you have, and there's nothing I can't do, and then she said rather doubtfully Well, there's one thing I can't do, and that's cut bread, and this movement back and forth, you see, could no longer be accurate.”
2007-01-07 · Desert Island Discs · Lady Natasha Spender · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, one of the new friendships with Lenny Bernstein, who was wonderful in that he was very loyal, very funny, but he could be outrageous, and I do remember a time when Ted Heath was at the height of his powers, the beginning of his premiership, and he gave a party at Ten Downing Street for Lenny, and Lenny sailed in. Gave Ted a smacking kiss on both cheeks which rather disconcerted. Ted, and then said, And how's your tottering government? All the conservatives there, of course, were furious.”
2007-01-07 · Desert Island Discs · Lady Natasha Spender · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I thought he was so courageous, I mean, if you think nowadays, when people make a great song and dance about the troubles of being outed and so on, Stephen could have been put in prison. He could have been put in prison for illicit relationships and also for writing about.”
2007-01-07 · Desert Island Discs · Lady Natasha Spender · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Say it is perfectly true Husbands are not possessions, and I've never felt possessive about Stephen. I've never raised any shout about it, for instance, about anything that he wrote. He's totally free to write what he likes, and I don't want the sort of love that is demanded at pistol point, as it were. I don't want to own my husband, I want to be devoted to him.”
2007-01-07 · Desert Island Discs · Lady Natasha Spender · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But it was difficult thus we did think children's education was important and shouldn't be interrupted, and so right at the end of his life when somebody said what are you proud of, most proud of, he said bringing up my family in the same house because it was steady, you know.”
2007-01-07 · Desert Island Discs · Lady Natasha Spender · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh yes, I did I spent a day playing to him I expected him to be very technical and say you did this or that wrongly, instead of which he said You're an artist don't ever enter into the pupil relationship again. If you have a difficulty ask a colleague ask me I'll tell you anything I know”
2007-01-07 · Desert Island Discs · Lady Natasha Spender · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, said Weller not with Stephen. He'd gone on ahead and I'd stayed in order to do the last night of the proms. But what was nice was that with our year near New York was full of”
2007-01-07 · Desert Island Discs · Lady Natasha Spender · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In nineteen forty seven I played at the last night of the Proms, and it was the first concert in the world to be televised. I remember that I had a very nice florally printed dress, and the television crew came and made me up before the concert. And then at the interval the television crew came bouncing around and they said it was absolutely wonderful and I said well it's a lovely concerto and they said every single flower on your dress came out in the”
2007-01-07 · Desert Island Discs · Lady Natasha Spender · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and I didn't know his circumstances enough, I mean I think that in fact he was divorcing from his first wife one day in Oxford I'd given a concert, and a student came up to me and said congratulations and I said did you enjoy it? And he said Well I'm congratulating you on your engagement I thought is this a student prank and if so who's been teasing me about it? So I felt very embarrassed when I met Stephen in London the following week and said about this curious event and he said Oh darling, didn't I tell you I told everybody else?”
2007-01-07 · Desert Island Discs · Lady Natasha Spender · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He is very attractive. He was very tall and very beautiful. I don't know what he made of me. I looked very old fashioned with plaits round my head and so on, but everybody disappeared very sharply after lunch, and there he was facing all the dishes, and so I stayed and helped him wash up, and then we took her a walk round Mecklenburg Square, and then we dined, and we couldn't stop talking. It was love at first sight, and from then on we just saw each other every day.”
2007-01-07 · Desert Island Discs · Lady Natasha Spender · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. When I looked doubtful, this young man said Oh come on, Ducky, you'll enjoy it. So I went to her horizon, and in fact met Stephen for the first time as he was the host, and I remember raking along his shelf of gramophone records and seventy eight records, and they were all exactly my musical taste, and I thought this is a kindred spirit.”
2007-01-07 · Desert Island Discs · Lady Natasha Spender · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and I used to practise the piano every day at a friend's house, and one day somebody came in and said We're all invited to lunch at Horizon tomorrow. I anyway thought I wasn't included in the conversation. Why should I be? Anyway, I was so ignorant I thought that Horizon was a pub.”
2007-01-07 · Desert Island Discs · Lady Natasha Spender · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, well now the war right at the end of the war I was doing a tour of Malcolm Clubs for RAF Malcolm Clubs in Germany and I was asked to give a concert at Belsen and it was one of the most extraordinary days of my whole life. It was mostly full of Polish survivors and there was a tremendous response from them. I mean almost too much they stamped their feet and so on and they liked assertive music. They weren't interested in romantic music and in a way you can understand it because did they have any romance in their future lives to go back to? They didn't know whether their families had survived in Poland. But you felt that the music was helping them Reassert their feeling that they were potent, that they could do something, that they had a willpower,”
2007-01-07 · Desert Island Discs · Lady Natasha Spender · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think there were pangs her whole life through right when I was nursing her in her final illness I mean it really came out”
2007-01-07 · Desert Island Discs · Lady Natasha Spender · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh I think she was very proud of me But of course there must have been some tension that here was I embarking on a performing career when she no longer had one, and she used to make constant dresses for me that she invariably left a pin in a crucial place which I sat on. As I was about to play in a gospel.”
2007-01-07 · Desert Island Discs · Lady Natasha Spender · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, now staying with the booths I knew a lot of chamber music, but I didn't hear singing You know I reached the age of sixteen without ever having heard an opera but in fact a voice I knew really only from records was that of Tiana Lemnitz and I was absolutely passionate for her used to play her endlessly.”
2007-01-07 · Desert Island Discs · Lady Natasha Spender · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mummy, as he called her in London. Well, she'd had a great tragedy which was to be struck deaf with typhoid fever, so she couldn't go on with her stage, career. She unfortunately was rather bad at lip reading or any of the things that exist now she wasn't able to do. Sometimes one would mouth words at her, you know. I remember saying Will you pass the butter, please? And my mother said Natasha, how can you say those dreadful words So that it did have its problems.”
2007-01-07 · Desert Island Discs · Lady Natasha Spender · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very eminent, yes and he said at the end of that you're very talented, and you should be a composer, and I'll get you lessons and he did take me to a very nice man I loved called Arthur Benjamin, who was a composer.”
2007-01-07 · Desert Island Discs · Lady Natasha Spender · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, she'd sort of build him up as a sort of wonderful figure and somebody I should not only respect and emulate, and when the door was open there was this huge, bearded man in crumpled clothes and carpet slippers, and we just stood staring at each other we wouldn't say a word. In fact, what happened was that he persuaded me to play the piano to improvise, and that was the first moment in which I felt I had some communication with him. It was the only conversation we had really.”
2007-01-07 · Desert Island Discs · Lady Natasha Spender · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, people who have absolute pitch they may feel that F sharp is like purple and so on, but there's no consistence between people. It's much more that they're almost like tastes and you don't ever confuse them. I mean to confuse a key would be like tasting salt chocolate or I don't know seeing purple grass I just wouldn't work”
2007-01-07 · Desert Island Discs · Lady Natasha Spender · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Will in just a few moments Oh my next piece of music is really reflecting the wonderful chamber music playing at Funtington, which was the booth's country house, and so I've chosen the Mozart string quintet in G minor, funnily enough. I think the extra violist is Cecil Aronovitz and I was a student at the Royal College of Music with Cecil. I love his playing.”
2007-01-07 · Desert Island Discs · Lady Natasha Spender · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And also she told me that after all my father was not dead but alive and tomorrow morning I'd got to go and ask him for some money, and she bought me a sort of idiotic little yellow handbag in order to look nice for this occasion.”
2007-01-07 · Desert Island Discs · Lady Natasha Spender · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source