Hello I'm Krestey 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 the year 2000 and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is a composer and lyricist. He learned his craft from a master, Oscar

Hammerstein, and showed how good a pupil he'd been with his first professional success,

the lyrics for Westside Story.

Soon he was adding music to his words and in a series of often controversial works

established himself as the modern air to a great tradition.

The funny thing happened on the way to the forum, company, follies, a little night music and

Sweeney Todd showed how a serious artist could triumph in a frothy world, even if deep appreciation

rather than popular acclaim is the ultimate reward.

Their author has appeared to be content with this.

I'm essentially a cult figure, he once said.

My kind of work is Caviar to the general. He is Stephen Sondheim.

Sophisticated stuff for sophisticated people, Stephen, are you content that that's how your appeal goes.

Content is an odd word.

I'm not discontent, I suppose.

I think the major joy of writing songs

is that as many people as possible should hear them and therefore

I'm content in that more and more people hear the songs as the years go by and

see the shows.

But what is important to you to get from the audience in order of merit as it were,

do you like their respect before you want their kind of warm enjoyment? No, no, it's enjoyment. It's about it's

...