Hello I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.

For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk.

Radio 4. The My castaway this week is the conductor and composer Harry Rubinovitz.

His list of credits and collaborations read like a who's who of 20th century music

Gracie Fields, Charles Asnivore, Andrew Lloyd Weber, Matt Monroe and Barbara Streisand are only

a handful of the stellar names who've benefited from his talents.

He's conducted a lot of movie scores too, including Chariots of Fire and the Talent at Mr Ripley.

Indeed, the late director Anthony Mengele described him as the UK's best kept secret.

It wasn't an illustrious start.

His first job was playing sheep music for prospective customers in a Johannesburg department store. He was fired after six weeks. His first

go at conducting was enhanced not by an elegant baton of the finest maple wood but

a rolled-up old newspaper. He's almost a hundred years old now,

and as befits a man of his years

seems prone to the odd bout of planes speaking.

He says, underneath this hard exterior,

there's a heart of pure granite. I don't stand any

nonsense from players and singers. So welcome Harry Rubinovitz. It's

delightful to meet you. You say a heart of pure granite, it's a good line but I'm not sure I believe it because much of your conducting is a very particularly in the movie scores very lyrical and quite romantic sounding music. Do you really have a soft centre?

It's the nicest statement I've heard for some time. I work as fast as the devil

will allow me to do. I can get through scores and memorize etc in no time at all

and if I think there's a good bit of sentiment available I exploit it and so yes I'm partially connected to the words you used.

...