Vinyl or digital?
I received a wonderful, top-end record player as a wedding present many years ago and I still love playing my substantial vinyl collection on it. However, I travel a great deal and it is much easier for me to bring my music with me on my laptop or phone. I love vinyl for the sound and feel but I would have to vote digital for the convenience.
What was the first record or CD you bought?
My first classical LP was a recording of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony but I think my first pop record might have been Jilted John’s Gordon Is a Moron. We used to sing it in my a cappella boy band when I was an undergraduate.
What was the last piece of music you bought?
Embarrassingly, the most recent album I purchased online was an album of elevator music, a collection of cheesy Latin covers of traditional, middle-of-the-road standard, the sort that have you contemplating suicide after five minutes. I should explain that this was required for a Halloween extravaganza at my home and not something I would normally buy. I know I should have said something by Schnittke … but that wouldn’t have been true!
What’s your musical guilty pleasure?
I am a sucker for lush harmonies in any kind of music – classical, jazz, pop, it doesn’t matter. Sometimes I can’t resist even if the piece is a little overblown, such as Baïlero from Canteloube’s Chants d’Auvergne. Once that gets going, I’m reduced to a blubbery jelly.
If you had time learn a new instrument, what would it be?
When I was a classroom music teacher I was challenged to learn the tuba to take part in the school brass band. The conductor handed me the instrument, told me to go into a practice room and join the rehearsal when I had learned a few notes. So half an hour later, when I had managed to control my laughter at every loud, low note I produced, I took my place in the rehearsal beside a young tuba pupil who knew what he was doing and I played any note that I recognised as it came past. Maybe one day I’ll learn the instrument properly.
Have you ever considered a career outside of music?
When I was a teacher I particularly enjoyed the general studies lessons. I think I would enjoy teaching again, whatever the subject. I might also enjoy the service industry as I like people. But I also realise that I’ve not really been much good at anything outside music so I’ve not really thought much beyond that.
What one thing would improve the format of the classical concert?
Anything that helps eliminate the ‘‘them and us” dynamic works in my book. I’ve recently performed a couple of recitals in-the-round and I found the format hugely liberating. There’s something about a performer standing up on a platform, looking down on an audience, that can reinforce a them-and-us feel. Whereas when I was in-the-round with the audience on all sides as well as above me looking down, it required me to move from a single spot by the piano in order to sing to everyone in the room. There was no longer a sense of front row and back row; at some point, I was no more than a few feet from every single person.
If you had to pick one work to introduce someone to the wonders of classical music, what would it be?
Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring is a pretty good choice for its energy and drive. There are moments of serene beauty too, offset by moments of great violence. If this hypothetical person has rejected most classical music as being “boring”, then there’s very little that’s boring about The Rite of Spring.
Where is the most unusual place you’ve performed?
I used to be a member of a four-piece a cappella boy band; we were on Bob Says Opportunity Knocks in the days before The X Factor and managed to stay all the way to the grand finale at the London Palladium. Bohemian Rhapsody was our party piece. Because we were a cappella, we could sing anywhere – on the stairs, on a boat, on table tops in pubs. We honed our act singing on Paris Métro platforms and once serenaded the passengers as we walked the wrong way up an escalator.
What’s been your most memorable live music experience as an audience member?
That is a difficult question because the experiences that come to mind have been when I am performing, perhaps listening to others on stage around me. As for being in the audience myself, I’d like to describe one that I never attended but which has fired my imagination ever since. Some years ago Robert Hollingworth directed a performance of Monteverdi’s Orfeo that was staged in a disused power station in the middle of the Netherlands. The audience followed the singers up and down metal stairs and gantries, eventually crossing the River Styx in some dark basement space. But unbeknown to them, a team of actors had been surreptitiously separating the men in the audience from the women and the men eventually found themselves together with Orfeo, their female companions gone. They were only reunited in the car park once the show was over. It sounded quite an experience; I wish I had been there to see it.
What is the best piece written in the past 50 years?
I listened to Thomas Adès’ The Tempest on the radio at its first performance in 2004. I sat next to the speakers, pretty much breathless with admiration at what I was hearing and wondering if this might have been how audiences listened to the first performance of Britten’s Peter Grimes. I had a sense of how important the piece was going to be in terms of British opera. I felt the same at George Benjamin’s Written on Skin. Both pieces excited me for the future of contemporary British opera. I also feel that frisson when I hear James Macmillan’s The Confessions of Isobel Gowdie; it feels as though these are milestones in British music.
What was the last piece of music you danced to?
Pharrell Williams’ Happy is a piece of music to which I cannot sit still. We had it recently on the playlist at a silent disco and it filled the dancefloor. It’s heartwarming to see so many people with headphones on, each lost in their own world, inhibitions thrown over, all grooving to this infectious music.
Which non-classical musician would you like to work with?
Could I ask for six people rather than one? Please could I sing with Take 6, the American a cappella gospel group? Just once. It doesn’t have to be for very long. (Do you think they’ll read this …?)
Imagine you’re a festival director with unlimited resources. What would you programme for your opening event?
I’d commission a multimedia work that makes use of a particular space: a train station, an airport lounge (like the one I’m currently stuck in, waiting for a delayed plane), a shopping mall, a warehouse. And I would involve as many people as possible – local amateurs, professionals, dancers, children, the audience. It would be on a grand scale and owned and enjoyed by everyone.
What do you sing in the shower?
First thing in the morning when I get up, I often try I Was Born Under a Wandering Star pitched as low as I can go. If I can make some sort of decent noise straight off then I know I should most likely be OK once my voice warms up later in the day.
It’s late, you’ve had a few beers, you’re in a karaoke bar. What do you sing?
Let’s make it clear: the only way I would ever, ever find myself in a karaoke bar is after many beers! But, should it happen and there was no chance of escape, then I would be ready with Whitney Houston’s Saving All My Love for You which I sing at her pitch, with copious falsetto. That should soon clear the place.
Roderick Williams performs Fauré, Caplet, Honegger and Poulenc at Wigmore Hall, London, on 23 January at 1pm, broadcast live on Radio 3.
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