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The point about great art, if one wants to use that phrase,
is that it's there for everybody,
that it is, you know...
..at the risk of being very cliche, it is universal.
And names that frighten, like...Dostoevski or something -
when you read a novel by Dostoevski
you realise he's your friend.
It's friendlier, it's approachable,
it's deeply human, it's felt.
It's not full of philosophy and dark and difficult thoughts.
It's dark and difficult
because it's about what it is to be human,
which is dark and difficult and can be shocking and surprising -
you know, a hell of a ride.
But he wasn't writing for clever people.
He wasn't writing for... You know, he's one of us.
And all artists are. They're our friends.
They're not there speaking, as the French say,
'de haut en bas',
from a height to the lower orders,
from some royal balcony.
I absolutely adore Tin Pan Alley.
I mean, I love the Great American Songbook
with a passion.
So anything by, you know, Kern and Berlin
and Porter and the Gershwins
will send me into dippy ecstasy.
And those musicals, I love.
I'm not fantastically au fait with modern musicals either -
you know, the big sung-through musical of the '80s and '90s,
the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical and so on,
is a phenomenon I can appreciate,
and there's some fantastic staging
and remarkable productions.
And I do love that.
And I love cinema.
And I like television,
and I like *** television from time to time.
But I am also, yes, very passionate about
what used to be called 'high culture'.
You know, I have a peculiar fondness for Wagner.
I just made a film about Wagner for the BBC,
and in fact, we've done an extended version of it
which is playing as a cinema documentary,
an hour-and-a-half version,
at various arts festivals and things.
And I'm aware that that's a very minority interest,
and indeed, one that people actively frown on,
either because they find him so bombastic and enormous
or because of the association with,
you know, Hitler's love of Wagner
and Wagner's own personal anti-Semitism,
which is deeply distressing and upsetting.
And that's really what the film is about,
trying to square that circle, if it can be squared.
And I'm passionate about all classical music
and about art -
I'm a trustee of the Royal Academy back in England,
so I'm very passionate about
painting and sculpture and things.
So, yes, I guess I do have a foot in both camps -
both in the 'camp' camp of the musical
and the more serious, if that's the word...
Isn't it odd that there isn't a real word for classical music
other than 'serious'?
You either call it 'classical music', which is ridiculous -
so much of it is contemporary
or, you know, only a hundred or so years old.
I mean, to call Britten and Stravinsky
right up to Tom Ades or whatever,
to call them 'classical' is silly!
And yet to call it 'serious music' is so...
You know, you're almost beaten before you begin.
"Would you like to listen to some serious music?"
"Ahh! No, thank you!"
Music is there to solace and enchant and delight you.