Hello, I'm Kirstie 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 1986, and the presenter was Michael Parkinson. A castaway today is a remarkable young man and's described as an unusual combination of classical musician and way out jazzer, a cross between the Houdim menuin and Stephen Grappelli.

He's an altogether unconventional fellow when he made his debut at the

Festival Hall he was observed wiping his violin with his Aston Villa Scarf.

He's played concert halls, jazz clubs, pop venues and subway stations.

Here's Nigel Kennedy.

Nigel, your background is thoroughly musical.

Could you just tell me exactly what it was in your family, who played what?

Yeah, my dad was a cellist. By the way thanks for the intro I'll give you the five or later and my

granddad was a cellist too. There was a lot of string stuff going on in the family

before I turned up and my mom was a piano player so I got

into piano in the beginning you know and started playing that when I was about four or five.

There kind of be much doubt then what you're going to do for a living,

could there? I think there's a lot of doubt what anyone's going to do for a living in this country.

But like, there was, I didn't ever question it until I was a like about 12 or 13, what I was going to do for a living because you just don't worry about that when you're a kid.

But I was interested in music and loved doing it.

The house was obviously full of music all the time.

Is there any early musical memory you have one particular piece that you remember from those days?

Well, certainly piano is very close to my heart because there was so much piano music going on and that's what I started playing and

Possibly one of my favorite pieces which I'll always remember is the show pun not turn which we're going to hear played by Arthur Rubinstein who is just such a beautiful pianist because there's such a timeless aspect to his playing he's not in a hurry to finish or just aiming at getting things technically right

he's like communicating what he deeply believes in right so that's your first choice I think it'll do

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