YouSaid · the spoken record

Sir Simon Rattle

lines on the record: 34
first: 2008-01-13
most recent: 2008-01-13
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio 4.”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You may have it, and I'm going to ask the impossible. You have to choose, of course, just one track if you could only take one.”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Your partner, Magdalena Kozna and Skerza Infida from Handel's Ariodante, so of course I will give you the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and one other book, what will your book be, Simon?”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You think he would have gotten over the fact that you were never quite the great jazz musician you should have been? Tell me about your final track then.”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he didn't live to see you take on the Berlin philharmonic sadly. What do you think he would have made of the greatest job?”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And what about the rest of your life, the real world out there? You have two marriages behind you. You are now living with a beautiful young Mezzo soprano Magdalena Kojina. Do you have much space for a family life with a young child? You have a son?”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who does that reflect when it comes to your relationship with them? I mean, one can't obviously be seen to be obviously currying favour, but it must make it a tricky balancing act.”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Barbara Bonney and the Monteverdi choir would sleep on and rest in dreams from Schumann's paradise in the Perry with the revolutionary and romantic orchestra conducted by John Elliot Gardner. So you are five years into this tenure contract at Berlin. Is it the case that the members of the orchestra decide if they want to keep you on at the end of the contract?”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“After those sort of critical maulings, though, you not only have to restore your own confidence, which I'm sure, well, from what you said, it does take a bit of a battering. You have to then go in and restore the confidence of your players. That's doubly hard.”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A great work is completed from Haydn's creation performed by the Arnold Schoenberg choir and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra conducted by Nicholas Arncourt. So Simon Rattle you won huge plaudits for taking the Berlin Philharmonic into areas that they hadn't explored before more modern work, taking them out into Berlin and beyond to meet people that wouldn't normally associate with an orchestra. But you also, as you said, got some withering reviews, people saying you were insubstantial in your work, insipid that the bite had gone from your baton. What did you make of the criticism? Do you care about that sort of criticism?”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, let's talk about those opinions then. I mean there are many stars in this orchestra in their own way they are all stars. They are all people operating the absolute pinnacle.”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's talk then about Berlin. It was september two thousand two that you finally got to take up the baton there. There had only been five other people in that post in the one hundred seventeen year history of the orchestra. That's ludicrous, isn't it? Yes. Was it exhilarating, terrifying, daunting, thrilling? All the above. still is Sting said to me Wha it's Rail Madrid, isn't it? It is the most extraordinarily gifted group of musicians all put together I have ever come across. And I must say that most of the greatest musical experiences in my life have been there.”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“for Mozart's serenade for thirteen wind instruments performed by the Berlin Philharmonic. Listening to the pieces I've chosen, I hadn't realized, but so many of them have this extraordinary quality of classical music, which is to be able to convey happiness and sadness at the same time and in equal measure. Is that something as somebody who has clearly highly articulate and enthusiastic? Are those things that you would have difficulty expressing merely by words? I mean, you've spoken about your passion for English and your enjoyment in studying it. What is it about music that is able to travel beyond that for you? I think music reached us before language. Words are very, very useful as aids, but in a way they're like the bottle or the label of the real wine is the music.”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, I was very lucky they really knew that they needed to change and that they needed to develop, and so they were hungry for this I was twenty five they were taking a huge risk. and it seemed to have paid off. Tell me about your next piece of music then. Anyone who's seen the play or the film Amadeus about Prince Mozart and Salieri were the very good but composer of not genius was his contemporary will remember the moment where Salieri realized what the difference between being good and a genius was where this music from the Adagio of the Serenade for thirteen wind instruments came on written by the very young Mozart Mozart just watched his mother dying in agony writing What seems to be a mixture between an extraordinary lament and almost set of wings to centre up into the air.”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I had really an extraordinary year. In fact it coincided with my first year in Birmingham. But I did the university terms at Oxford, and the holiday times in Birmingham, but each two month term time I did make myself a rule that I would not listen to music, and just see whether something else would have an equal weight, and indeed the work there did what I discovered through. literature and poetry was yes it could, and that when I went back to music it came with a redoubled force. So for the best part then of two decades it was what around eighteen years you were with the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, credited of course with turning it from this provincial workhorse into a far finer, fitter animal It was a pretty damn good orchestra already It's just we all grew up together.”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wanted to see if I could survive without music, whether anything would replace that. I wanted to know I wanted to know what it felt like, because I think this is part of feeling like a strange duck, of wanting to know whether you could walk without that crutch, and also very selfishly I'd left school at sixteen, I'd finish my A levels, and I'd always thought that I would go to university and study English. And St. Anne's was the only place crazy enough to say yes, you can be a postgraduate without having done a degree.”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The end of Yanich's the cunning little vixen with Delaboy Yedlichka and Peter Sharai with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Sir Charles McKerris. So in nineteen eighty your relationship with the city of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra was already pretty much underway, but you decided to do what could be regarded as quite an unusual thing. You decided to branch off and find in a way this other life, this real life that had nothing to do with music. Why did you do that and what did you do?”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The forester, who has had a whole lot of life experiences through the opera, which started in what might have been a dream by a little frog jumping on his face, finds himself in the forest, woken up yet again by a little frog jumping on his face saying to the frog just a moment that's you again and the frog says no indeed this is not me again that was my grandfather who jumped on you last time. He always used to talk to me about you and it's at this point in the opera where you realise the whole cycle of life. and only Yanach could do it with a baby frog and a last orchestral tooty lasting less than a minute.”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You've been careful to try to do that, and I want to talk to you about that in just a moment, for now tell me about your next piece of music.”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, let me ask you about that. You once intriguingly said music is one little bit of life, it's not life, and it's very easy to be persuaded otherwise by the way most people live in our profession.”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So no experience, no knowledge, and yet launched on this professional career. Do you think the musicians resented you, disliked you?”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Beginning of Bach's Brandenburg in Shuttle No. 1, played by Giardino Armonico. So at nineteen then you were launched into this professional life as a musician. The thing that launched you was the John Player International conducting competition. The prize money six and a half thousand pounds. Do you remember what you did with it?”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And is that what music does for you? It brings life into vivid strong focus, it makes life more real than it would otherwise be.”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and hearing the marler in nineteen sixty six then I described it as a moment of epiphany. I mean it literally was it a moment when you thought this is my certainty, this is my truth”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You joined the Merseyside Youth Orchestra as a very young, untypically young percussionist, and there you found your sort of people that must have been a wonderful discovery.”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Juni Mitchell, and sometimes I'm happy. So Simon Rattle, there you were, a busy little boy, a bossy little boy, a bright little boy, you were playing percussion, you're also playing violin. Were you conscious that you were somewhat out of kilter with the kids around you, that there was a world inside your head that was potentially a lot more complex than the one they were experiencing?”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Somebody once said to me that conductors are like the people who always order in Chinese restaurants that's insufferably bossy people I must have been. My father and my sister in a long suffering next door neighbour. come and play every Sunday along to records and we would bang the hell out of all these different percussion instruments. Did you always give yourself the best bits? Absolutely, and I order in Chinese restaurants it's horrible Tell me about your next piece of music then. I always love jazz. Jazz was the first music I heard. A jazz band in Oxford in the fortist. people like Dennis Healy never used to miss a dance. Now for a whole lot of my generation Joanie Mitchell. wrote the sound track anyway. A few years ago she said she wanted to do what she Recording really with an audience.”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then they tended to move out very fast. Is it true that you used to construct little concerts? That would be, the family would have to take part in whether they wanted to or not.”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“serious lessons with a wonderful old man called Douglas Miller. That was wonderful doing that together, I must say. He bought you a drum kit, or the family bought you a drum kit when you were four. Do you think he had in mind that you might one day be a fabulous jazz musician? I think he hoped I would be. I admire jazz musicians more than anything because they really compose it as it happens. That's the point. It's in their head, and out it comes. It's reacted at the moment. The rest of us need more time. Can you remember what you made of that little drum kit when you were four? Blood sweat and tears it didn't last very long the symbol I still have The drums went within days the skins went because my neighbors were very, very long suffering.”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“but did what he really wanted to do. And he learned the piano as well. Didn't you both learn at the same time? Well, he'd, I mean, he played very well. He was a very good jazz pianist, but we went both and had”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“climax of the first movement where you can hear this extraordinary sound in full cry. of the Andante from Marlow's Ninth Symphony performed by the Brellin Philharmonic, conducted by my castaway Simon Rattle, as I said in the introduction Simon, you grew up in Liverpool. What was life like? A fantastic city full of football and poetry and culture and pubs, and look, I'm a scouser, so it's the greatest city in the world. What can you say? and I spent All my time playing. And your father was a businessman, but in his fifties, interestingly, he had a complete change of career what happened. Well, he'd always wanted to be a school teacher, and he went back to teachers training college. English, in schools also taught the piano.”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you heard that Claudio Bada was to step down, did you think somewhere secretly in your head it will be mine, this job? Not in this or any other existence, no. How did it happen? Because of course it is an orchestra that gets to choose its own conductor. One of those very rare creatures it has a secret part. They What they wanted before who they wanted. I heard in a phone Very extraordinary moment And the first thing that occurred to you was what? Thank God I'm going on holiday to Africa tomorrow. Tell me about your first piece of music as you said, and I still feel in a way like the kids who had the Paul's vision on the road to Damascus I hear want to take care of me conducting and my musical family playing. Just to remember the And this is Marla's ninth”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Royce of Orchestras. Seems to me that's not quite right. It's not one of those vehicles that anybody can drive and will faultlessly perform whoever is behind the wheel. It's much more spirited than that, much more like a maybe a formula one car.”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive for rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The program was originally broadcast in two thousand eight. My castaway this week is Sir Simon Rattle. He is beyond doubt the finest British conductor of his generation, and has been causing a stir for thirty five years. His epiphany came in Liverpool in nineteen sixty six, whilst most youngsters around the world were gripped by the music of four lads from his hometown, he was listening to a performance of Marlow's second symphony, and was gripped by the certainty that he must be a conductor. He was eleven. He led an orchestra for the first time aged just fifteen. Things have gone pretty well as a grown up, too. He notably transformed the city of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra from a provincial company hammering out old favourites in the town hall to one of the most capable, adventurous, and challenging in the world.”
2008-01-13 · Desert Island Discs · Simon Rattle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source