David Rendall

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Music, Society & Culture, Personal Journals, Music Commentary

4.3 • 14.3K Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 1984

⏱️ 35 minutes

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Summary

David Rendall, the tenor, is singing in the new production of Madame Butterfly at the Coliseum in London, just one of the many engagements around the world which fill his diary until 1988. In conversation with Roy Plomley, he recalls how, in only six years, he jumped from being a clerk in the BBC Gramophone Library to singing principal roles at Covent Garden, and he chooses the eight records he would take to the mythical island.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Die Schone Mullerin No 7 by Franz Schubert Book: The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran Luxury: Wine - Chateau Lascombes 1966

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello I'm Kirstie Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For Wright's reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in 1984 and the presenter was Roy Plumlee. Our castaway this week is the tenor David R. David, how do you face the idea of a desert island?
0:37.0	With enjoyment, I'm sure that it's going to be a wonderful place to get away from the pressures of this life.
0:44.8	I mean, sort of being in this profession.
0:47.6	I think I could get to grips with coping with being on my own and using that time for self-improvement.
0:53.8	Did you find it hard to choose just eight records to take with you?
0:57.4	I did.
0:58.4	When you're involved in music for a living and being in it completely sort of day after day and not only doing
1:06.5	it but living it sleeping it to pick eight gramophone records it was hard I want another eight and then another eight.
1:14.0	Well you have narrowed it down.
1:16.0	I'm sure it was pretty.
1:18.0	What's the first one on top of that pile though?
1:20.0	The first one is going to be the soundtrack from the Charits of Fire by Vangelis.
1:24.7	Why?
1:25.7	I've chosen this because when I was on one of my tours away from home in America at the
1:30.2	Metropolitan I went and saw this film and was very, very homesick for England.
1:36.0	My family wasn't with me at that time and I just needed to be with England and part of it and this took me home. Oh, An excerpt from the soundtrack of Chariots of Fire. David, are you a Londoner?
2:13.0	Yes, I was born in Hampstead of a mixed parentage.
2:16.6	My mother is truly Welsh and my father, well he sounds like a cock, but I don't think he is.
2:22.6	He's a Londoner, but not a true cockney.
2:24.6	A big family?
	...

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