Marguerite Wolff

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 15 November 2002

⏱️ 37 minutes

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Summary

Marguerite Wolff has dedicated her life to performing all around the world. Sir Arthur Bliss composed for her and she studied under Louis Kentner. Marguerite was born into a musical family in London in the 1920s. Her mother began teaching her the piano and would sit and practice with her daily. Soon she was getting up at six in the morning to practice, and continuing on her return from school. Her first public performance was in the Wigmore Hall when she was ten years-old, after she won a competition run by the piano firm Murdoch. At fifteen, she performed with Sir John Barbirolli. Later in her teens Marguerite went to study with Louis Kentner, who she continued to work with until he died in 1985. During World War II Marguerite toured the country entertaining the troops with a group put together by Walter Legge of HMV. It gave her a taste for travel and, after the war, a concert she gave in Paris was her first experience of foreign travel. She has since toured around the world and is well-known for her beautiful couture gowns, the first of which was by Norman Hartnell. Still performing, in June 2002 Marguerite was awarded an OBE for services to music world-wide. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: First act of Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Book: Liszt biography by Alan Walker Luxury: A piano

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disks Archive for rights reasons
0:06.0	We've had to shorten the music. The program was originally broadcast in
0:10.6	2002 and the presenter was Sue Lolley
0:22.5	My cost away this week is a pianist. She gave her first recital at the Wigmore Hall in London at the age of 10
0:29.0	At 15 she gave her first orchestral concert conducted by Sir John Barbaroli. She's been
0:34.2	enchanting audiences ever since. Beautiful, elegant and charming. She's devoted herself to her piano
0:40.7	practicing eight hours a day every day for as long as she can remember. She stopped performing
0:45.8	for some years during her marriage but returned to the concert platform after her husband died
0:50.5	and still tours the world today. Her clothes are as lovely as her playing. Her first concert dress
0:56.4	was made for her in 1940 by Norman Hartnell, to whom she took a length of material in a brown
1:01.8	paper bag. I'm almost an obsessional worker, she says. I do love the whole giving experience.
1:08.8	She is Marguerite Wolf. I think we should hear about that first concert dress Marguerite. What
1:13.6	was it like? Tell me about it. It was a marvelously made dress and the actual way it was made I
1:19.8	still have dresses made today for concerts. It had an underdress of silver larmy and then it had
1:28.2	a very large skirt that when you sit down you flick over the piano stool. It was very marvellous
1:37.6	but I never really cared for the bodice but I was too intimidated to tell the French fitter
1:45.4	that maybe it wasn't right. How many dresses do you have in your wardrobe? I don't have such an
1:50.2	extraordinary amount of dresses. I have dresses for an occasion. You give birth to a dress you might
1:57.8	say for a particular occasion. Then of course you use it a great deal but it takes a long time
2:07.1	to make. But they are all marvellous. They're very luxurious on their chiffon and organiser and
2:13.8	some are decorative. The fabrics are very good and they're also interesting. They want to be
2:19.0	strong and of course be able to sit on the piano. And so colour does matter. I know you were
	...

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