Ian Bostridge

Desert Island Discs: Archive 2005-2010

BBC

Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 804 Ratings

🗓️ 26 October 2008

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the tenor Ian Bostridge. He is regarded as one of the great Lieder singers of our time and has delighted audiences in opera houses and concert halls the world over. But for him, music wasn't a straightforward career choice. He started out as a historian, and for years led two parallel lives, spending term times at Oxford, writing about witchcraft and magic, while in the holidays he'd throw himself into an operatic production.

Eventually, his book on witchcraft was finished just before his debut with the English National Opera. Magic appeals to people in a way that is both mysterious and irrational and so it is, he says, not so different to music.

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

Favourite track: Last movement of the Piano Sonata No.31 in A flat by Ludwig van Beethoven Book: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy Luxury: A solar computer loaded with pictures of my family and friends.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast, but this is about something else you might enjoy.
0:05.4	My name's Katie Lecky and I'm an assistant commissioner for on demand music on BBC Sounds.
0:10.7	The BBC has an incredible musical heritage and culture and as a music lover, I love being part of that.
0:17.4	With music on sounds, we offer collections and mixes for everything, from workouts to helping
0:22.7	you nod off, boogie in your kitchen, or even just a moment of calm. And they're all put together
0:28.7	by people who know their stuff. So if you want some expertly curated music in your life,
0:34.9	check out BBC Sounds. Hello, I'm Krista Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.
0:41.8	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:44.9	The program was originally broadcast in 2008.
1:06.5	Music My castaway this week is the tenor Ian Bostridge.
1:10.0	Regarded as one of the great leader singers of our time,
1:14.6	he has delighted audiences in opera houses and concert halls the world over. But it wasn't a straightforward career choice.
1:18.6	He started out as a historian and for years led two parallel lives,
1:23.6	spending term time at Oxford writing about witchcraft and magic, whilst in the holidays, throwing himself into operatic productions.
1:32.0	Magic appeals to people in a way that is both mysterious and irrational, and so it is, he says, not so different to music.
1:40.5	Ian Bostridge, it is a very curious combination.
1:42.8	You're someone whose approach to work, obviously your academic work,
1:46.8	had to be very thorough, very studied.
1:50.1	And yet your approach to music, I suppose, has to be emotional.
1:54.9	It has to be an emotional response that's not necessarily intellectualized and thought through.
2:00.2	Yeah, I think that's true.
2:01.0	I mean, music is a sort of release for me, I think.
	...

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