Ralph Kohn

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 21 March 2004

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week Sue's castaway is a man who's made a success of two entirely different careers. Ralph Kohn is a Jewish businessman who has won the Queen's Export Award for his work in the pharmaceutical industry and he's also a renowned Baritone singer .

Originally born into a privileged family in Leipzig, Germany, his family moved to Amsterdam in response to the anti-Semitic laws passed in Hitler's Germany in the 1930s. The Kohns finally settled in Manchester and Ralph excelled at school, eventually choosing to study pharmaceuticals at university, encouraged by the major drug developments of the 1950s. As a doctoral student, he met Alexander Fleming and went on to work with two Nobel prize winners in Italy. It was in Rome that Ralph's love of singing flourished; learning under the renowed teacher Manlio Marcantoni, who introduced him to the great Opera tenor Gigli. In the 1960s and 1970s Ralph worked for numerous major pharmaceutical companies including Smith Kline French and Robapharm before setting up his own company Advisory Services Clinical Ltd in 1969. In music he's appeared at the Wigmore Hall, The Queen Elizabeth and Albert Halls and John Smith Square as well as producing twelve CDs.

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

Favourite track: The Sinfonia from Christmas Oratorio by Johann Sebastian Bach Book: The complete works by Bach Luxury: A magic flute

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 rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in 2004, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a singer, he's also a scientist, a highly successful businessman, a multi-millionaire, and a philanthropist.
0:38.0	He was born in Leipzig into an affluent cultured Jewish family that fled from the Nazis, first to Holland, and then after a terrifying sea crossing to Manchester.
0:48.0	Although a passionate musician, he studied pharmacology and eventually set up his own pharmaceutical business,
0:55.0	but all the time he nurtured his love of music and singing, studying with eminent teachers,
1:00.5	recording and performing. Today, aged aged 76 he can claim to have sung in all of London's
1:06.3	major concert halls and he's still giving recitals. His voice, he says, is better than ever because
1:11.8	he hasn't overused it. I didn't know if I was good
1:14.7	enough to get to the top of the tree in music, he says. I thought that medicine looked
1:19.1	like a safer bet. He is Dr. Ralph Cohn.
1:23.0	In fact, in the end, you could say, Ralph, that you've had it both ways.
1:28.0	You've had a double life, haven't you?
1:30.0	Yes, you might say so. The trouble is I've enjoyed all the things I've done so much. I couldn't sort of give anything up. I thought I'd like to study medicine, but at the same time I passionately loved music and I
1:46.9	wanted to do something in music too. But which was your first love which is your
1:50.6	first love? My first love I think it's very difficult to answer that one.
1:56.0	Well which is your passion it's got to be music hasn't it? Well I think that I need both to lead a full life and I can't think of one without the other really.
2:07.0	But knowing what you know now, which is that you have got a wonderful and distinctive voice, that you can fill a concert hall, this
2:15.0	wonderful baritone instrument that you have. Do you wish that you'd had the
2:20.0	courage of your passion for music and actually followed that rather as
2:24.2	seriously as you have the science. I think we've got to go back to my early childhood
2:29.3	which was a rather difficult one.
	...

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