Hello, I'm Christi Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For Wright's reasons, we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1984 and the presenter... Was Roy Plumley. Our castaway this week is the composer Miklos Roja. Probably principally known for the many film scores he wrote in the great days of Hollywood. We are dumping you, unsympathetically, on a desert island. Could you endure loneliness? I can try. Would eight discs help? I think so. Eighty would be better. Of course. Plan in choosing this position? Well, facetiously I would say eight works of mine, but that's what I want.

Wouldn't have been true because I never listened to my own records. You don't? Because I have about 50 records and when I hear them again, I said why didn't I do it this way? Why is it so fast? Why this, why that? So I rather not listen. What's the first one you've chosen? The first I've chosen is a Chaconne by Bach. Now I started out as a violinist. Played the violin when I was five. When I was seven I played in public and I grew up with a violin. Later I wrote two violin concertos, one for Heifetz. And he definitely played better the violin than I did. But the Chaconne was one of the pieces that impressed me most. I think it is... The greatest violin music. And I chose a recording by Adolphe.

Bush. Not only because he's a great violinist, but I heard him in Leipzig, I started in Leipzig at the Conservatory, you see, when I... I was born in Budapest and went to Leipzig. And I heard Bush playing it in... Gewandhaus, and a solo evening I was tremendously impressed.

Adolf Busch playing the Bach Chaconne BWV 1004. Now you began to play the violin when you were five. What's the- Was there a lot of music in the house? Yes there was, because my mother was a pianist. Pupil of Professor Thormann, who was a pupil of Liszt. So I heard a whole Liszt repertoire that she had to play. Not only the Rhapsodies naturally, but all the consolations and so on. I grew up partly with that and I had an uncle who was a violinist, the first violinist in the opera.

Was a colleague of Aunt Aldorati's father. And I became a pupil of Aunt Aldorati's father. father and studied chamber music with him. I told you took to music so well that you could read music before you could read words. Oh yes, I could read music with five. School with six so by that time I could read music but couldn't read normal writing. You told us you went to study in Leipzig. Why did you go to Germany? Well, it's very difficult to say. My father had a very large estate in Upper Hungary, and his idea was that I will take that one day. More naturally. And I should become a chemist. And I did not want to become a chemist. However... The question was, if I stay in Budapest after finishing school, I would have to go out to the university and study chemistry.

Because he explained to me you can't make a living with composition and how right he was. I thought if I go to Leipzig, because after all the Leipzig Conservatory was very famous. Then I am on my own. I can do whatever I want to. However, I must say, I was honest. I went to Leipzig and immatuated in chemistry. And in musicology. That he allowed. That was, you know, a science that was perfectly alright, nothing to do with compositions. And I went in every morning, eight o'clock, to the laboratory in a white gown, you know, and worked there. And I had to pass the test. Us a great building and on the building it says, Präitkopf and Herstel. This was a very... Old publishing firm, probably the oldest in Germany. And I thought, Breschkopf-Wentheier. Maybe one day they will publish my music. But I had to go to chemistry.

And I got analysis to make. And I came up to the 16th analysis, and that I couldn't solve. And that was... Assistant Dr. Meyer and when I came towards him, he was shook his hand. He said no, it's not I went back and for that nothing came out. So they said, Enough. I never went back. You gave up chemistry. I gave up chemistry. I went to the conservatory. I was accepted. I came home. I told my father honestly. He wrote a letter to my professor who was Hermann Grabner, pupil and successor of Max Räger, and he wrote back a letter. That if anybody has the right to study composition, it's your son. And that did it. That's brilliant. What's there to be when I was in Leipzig? I wrote everything of course and

I had to write a motet, it was a Benedictus. And I showed it to, or my professor showed it to Karl Strang. Who was the successor of Johann Sebastian Bach of Church of St. Thomas. I went to see him and he said it's very good music, but it's completely unsinkable. And I said, Well, what shall I do? He said, You come to my choir in a gewandhaus. Every Thursday, and you'll sing. I said, But I have no voice. I said, Who cares about your voice, but you will be sitting there. I did that. For three years and I learned the repertoire and wrote... A lot of choral music, some of them even performed in the BBC two years ago, which is singable now. And I sang all the great concerts, but sang again in quotations. I just opened my mouth and followed the music. Now...

Symphony by Beethoven twice with four tinglers and once with Bruno Walter. And these were memories I shall never forget. I think the 9th Symphony is the greatest music ever composed, especially the first movement, but the last movement is just incredible. It's one of the greatest achievements of the human mind. The last movement of the Ninth Symphony by Beethoven.

part of the last movement of the beta... Of Ninth Symphony, Furtwängler, conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Composition was published while you were still a student? I was still a student and my... This one is a string trio. And actually in the first performance at the conservatory, of course... Played the viola. I must tell you how worse performance couldn't have been done on the viola than mine. Graduated what did you do? Did you stay in Germany? I stayed in Germany until 1931. To Paris and gave a concert and the concert was in the Ecole Normale de Musique. And there were many people like Arthur Honegger and...

Many musicians and It was a tremendous success because I got three four columns in the papers the next name say long the jewel rule. And I always say this, C'est le pla de joue. The man of the day... That's right. So I thought this is it. I stayed in Paris. Now to earn a living, I believe for a time you... Who wrote some pop songs to be played in cinema intervals. - Yes, under of Sudanee. I was terribly ashamed of that, but that's all I could do. I didn't want to put my own name on it, of course, because... That Montero was playing my music in Paris, and it would have been impossible that you go to a Montero concert and you... Hear my music of mine or to achieve a music concert. And there was a foxtrot written by Miklos Roszó. So I chose a name Nick Tomé. I don't know how I chose it, but it was idiotic enough.

Not to resemble my own name. Let's have your third record, what will that be? Well, I was very fond of the music of Brahms and... I'd agree with Bülow who said when he heard the first symphony by Brahms that this is the tenth symphony by Beethoven. It is just as great. Bruno Walter became a very close friend of mine. He played my music in Austria and Holland. And finally in America and New York. So this performance is by Bruno Walter, who I think was one of the great conductors of our times.

An excerpt from the fourth movement of the Brahms First Symphony in C minor, Bruno Walter conducting the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

Quite soon you came to London. In 1935 I came to London. To write a ballet. There was a very good company, Markova in Darlene. Excellent company, excellent And there was a lady, Dera de Moroda, and she... Wanted to do a Hungarian ballet called Hungaria and wanted a Hungarian composer. Now this is again one of those things I come to London and suddenly somebody was a Hungarian composer. That doesn't happen every day. I bought this ballet based mostly on folk music, which suited me greatly. And actually that led me to the cinema. You'd got to know a clever young French director, Jacques Faidert. Jacques Federer met in Paris and his wife was Francois Rosé, a very fine actress.

And I knew them very well both and one day he invited to his house and I said, Why don't you improvise something? He said, Well, what? See anything you like I said, why don't you give me a theme? So he gave me a theme a dramatic theme The city is in uproar, the people are running around and so on. The piano and played it in uproar. And he said, Fine, that's all I wanted to know. Nothing happened to us. A year later I read in the papers that he is in London. He stated the splendid... On Green Park. It's not there anymore. And I called him. And he said, This is wonderful. Could you come right away to the hotel because I am in great trouble?

So I ran over to the hotel in a taxi and said, What's the trouble? He said, These idiots don't understand my French and my English is not good enough. I want to have my laundry by tomorrow morning. Explain this. Well, I did. So he said, Now we go out for dinner. I said, I'm sorry I can't go out. For dinner because I have to go to my ballet. Oh, you wrote a ballet, he said. He said, Yes, it just came back to me. Glasgow, it's playing at the Ukeviorg Theatre and I have to go there to see Shape it is. Can I go with you? Of course. So he came and he was enchanted. He just loved it. He said, This is it. And now we go out to celebrate. I didn't do celebrate, but we went to Quilino's. And he ordered champagne. I don't know. Drink. He drank one bottle, he ordered a second bottle, and as every gulp went down, his evaluation of me as a composer went up.

At the end I was the greatest composer ever written any music. But I thought, that's fine, he'll focus it back tomorrow. I took him home to his hotel and he said, Tomorrow, Francois is coming, my wife, and you come to lunch. I'll call you at ten o'clock. I was sure he'd forget it. He didn't. And he said, Francoise, we expect you at one o'clock. So I was in his hotel, one o'clock, and we waited. One, one thirty, two, two thirty. Lunch and I said she's late but she's coming and she came a lady I didn't know very elegant, with a tremendous head, and the gentleman, her husband. And they were introduced as Mr and Mrs Sieber, S-I-E-B-E-R. So Mrs. Sieber sat on my right at the table and Jacques Federer on my left.

Suddenly she turned to me and said, Is my song ready? I said, What song? C.F.E.D.E.R. told me that you were going to write a music for our film. In the meantime, I felt that F.E.D.E.R. is pushing my left side. Well, the song is not quite... Ready, but I'm working on it. And I turned to Fred here, you know, Soto Voce whisper. Says, Who is she? And he whispered back, You is. Idiot Marlene Dietrich. No, she was. Be doing a song for her that nobody had told you. And that was your first piece of film writing that song. That's right. That was Night Without Armor with Robert Donaldson, Mahler and Dietrich. Well, there we are. We've reached the point of your first film conversation. Let's have your fourth record. I knew very little of Le Bissi before I went to Paris, but suddenly a new world opened up to me, which is French.

Impressionism and I choose La Mer La Mer. .

Between Wind and Sea from Debussy's La Mer, the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Toscanini. You wrote that song for Marlene Dietrich. You began to work quite a lot with the studio that made that film, the Korda studio, Alexander Yes. I did about 10 in England and then four in America. The first one was Night Without Armor, which he liked. I didn't meet him until it was finished and he came to me. To me, I said, I like your music. You're going to work for me. What took you to Hollywood? Alexander Korda. We started the Thief of Baghdad here in London in 1939, summer '39. And suddenly on September 3rd, something unpleasant happened. No more money to follow with a film. We recorded as much music as we could.

And Alex went to America. He was a member of the United Artists Corporation. And came back and said United Artists is putting up money in America to finish the film. And I have to take... Over the key man, you are one of them. And actually, I asked, How long will I go for? He said, Two, three months. There since 44 years. Well, it was very difficult to get back, I presume, the war being on. Does the composer conduct the recording? Well, in England I did not, but I was studying conducting in England. I must say I was very grateful that I had this idea. Trinity College because in Leipzig I didn't study any conducting. I was composing. Not interested. I said that somebody else can do that. However, here I thought this That I studied. I went to Trinity College of Music, a Mandeville place.

And I was a pupil of Kennedy Scott, who was a great choral director. And then when that finished, there was a pupil of John Fry who conducted the... And I had to conduct a school orchestra too. Mostly my own compositions to start with but then I Conducted both Elgar symphonies, conducted the planets and anything you know which was spectacular and you can learn from. From then on I conducted every score of mine. Record number five. I was in Paris when I first saw Daphnis and Chloé. I've I first heard the music Monty conducting, who gave the first performance as well, in 1912. And then I heard him many times and it of course is us. Of orchestration, of color and imagination.

And I think it's a great, great work. Let's hear it. The closing person...

Of Ravel's Daphne St. Chloe, the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Montreux, and there's also the choir of the Royal Opera House, Carton Garden. Looking down the long list of about 120 movies... You seem to have had spells of being, as it were, typecast as a musician. You had a kind of oriental jungle phase to start with. Was because I came with the Thief of Baghdad. And the Thief of Baghdad led to... And the John Graham book, and the Four Feathers before. All oriental subject matters. And some first rate... Psychological thrillers you did quite a section of. Yes, the first one was Sperband for Hitchcock. And after came the last weekend. - Double indemnity, I remember. - Double indemnity, and so on, about 10.

Pioneer in the use of electronic music and fillers. Yes, as a matter of fact, I was the first one who used the electronic music, which was the theremin. Yes. Hardly known at that time. It was a French invention. No, it was Russian. Theremin was a Russian physicist and he came to the West in 1922. It is instrument everywhere, in England, in Paris, in America. And it was... Fantastic instrument, quite out of this world sound. And finally I came to Spellbound where Mr. Hitchcock said, I want a new sound. I said, Telemin. And Mr Selzinko, the producer, said, Is that an Italian dish? But as he explained… The next phase of your music…

You became an authority on the music for historical epics. You did Ben-Hur for example, which must have been... Well that is going to come soon. There was another episode in my life and that... Was the gangster film, the film noir. And actually I became the Al Capone of Hollywood music. Then came finally in 1950, the first historical... Or say we say, bibliohistorical film, for vátis. Now whether I succeeded or not is not for me to say, but I try to re- The music of the first century. How many Oscars did you win? Three. Have you won? Three. For which films? The first was for Spellbound. I must say in brackets that Mr. Hitchcock was nominated, but he did not get an award, so he did not get an award. Send me a telegram to congratulate me. The second was...

Ticket for my book, A Double Life, which was a very good film, a psychological film, again, with Ronald Coleman. And the third one was Ben-Hur. Now you took the title, The Double Life, you pinned the title of that wrong. I did pinch it but I left the A out. Because it is very applicable to your own professional career. That's right. Let's break off your sixth record. I was in London and wrote the music for the VIPs with Elizabeth Taylor and Burton. And the director was Anthony Asquith, a very fine gentleman. One day he said, I'm going to bring you tomorrow something. And he brought me the score, not the record, the score of Britain's war aquarium.

-I didn't sleep all night. I was reading that score, and I said, When is it going to be recorded? And he said, Very soon. Apparently, he was a friend of Britain. And finally I got the record too and I was...

Part of the Dies Irae from Benjamin Britten's War Requiem. I go to... Recording conducted by the composer.

Of your many compositions written entirely for yourself, which are your favourites? Which Well, they all belong to a certain period. My biggest success was... 16 variations in finale. The first performance was given by Charles Minch, then... Bruno Walter gave it all over the world and actually Leonard Bernstein made his debut with this work and it was played everywhere. There was 150 performances. And this is of course very close to me, but then I wrote five concerti, one for Heifetz, one for Piatigoski and Heifetz. One for American pianist Leonard Panario, then for Janusz Stark of Cello Concerto, and I had the first performance of my viola concerto in Pittsburgh, which I wrote for...

Pinkazooka Man and it was conducted by André Previn. What will that be? Record number seven is Stravinsky's Sacco du Prentam, The Rite of Spring. I heard this the first time in Paris, conducted by Montou. But I have to tell you a story that I was in London in 1963, May 29th, which was the 50th anniversary of the that I was in London in 1963, May 29th, which was the 50th anniversary. Of the date when Monty conducted the same work in Paris in the theater. De Champs-Elysees where there was a tremendous scandal. A riot almost. A riot. Avinsky jumped out of the window to save his neck. And now 50 years have gone. And in Albert Hall, Montauk was about '85 or '86 conducting these works. - Winski was sitting in a box with his wife and...

This old gentleman Montauk came out and I was afraid what is going to happen because he didn't. Looked that he's going to live through a performance, but it was a fantastic performance. The whole audience jumped up. There was a standing ovation. The orchestra jumped up. And everybody started, Stravinsky, Stravinsky. And there in a box, this old gentleman bowed. They wanted him on the podium, but he couldn't walk anymore. Everybody was standing, everybody was shouting, Stravinsky took bows. But no more, too. To disappear. Suddenly about ten minutes later, he came into the box. You know how large Albert Hall is? He walked around to...

Into

And the Don Sacral from the Rite of Spring.

The closing passage of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, the Columbia Symphony Orchestra, conducted by the composer. Himself. We've put you on this island. We'd give you a certain amount of help to make a hut and so forth, but could you look after yourself? Can you cook? Ever done any fishing? No. No. I'm completely impractical. The only thing I can do is write music, nothing else. What you're going to write music on or with, except we are going to give you a luxury. Would that be the most important thing? Would you like some manuscript paper? Yes, I would say so. And plenty of pens and ink. Yes, please. But I'm a little bit worried about how you're going to manage. Fish probably you can catch with your hands. Your last record. The last record is the Concerto for Orchestra by Bela Bartók. Bartók is...

Very close to me, not only because he's a Hungarian, but because he's a great composer, and because... Of this very tragic life. He lived his last five years of his life in America. Recording.

And I admire him enormously, Sir George Shorty.

An excerpt from Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra, Sir George Shelby conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. If you could take just one of them. Eight discs you played us Mr. Roger which would it be? Well I think the Beethoven because the... Symphony is the beginning and the end of music. You told us you're one luxury. You're allowed one book. You already have the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. Yes. One book. Well, there I have to ask you... Forgiveness because I'm going to ask for an Hungarian book. That's all right, that's fine.

Title in Hungarian and also in English. Well, I would like to have the collected poems of a great Hungarian poet, probably the greatest of this century, but unfortunately poetry cannot be translated. His name is Adi, A-D-Y, And he influenced me very much in my youth. I wrote a lot of songs on his poems, and I still would like to write more. Right. The Hungarian Poems of Adi. And thank you, Miklos Roja, for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you so much for asking me here. You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please-- Visit bbc.co.uk/radio4