Saturday’s (9/7) Daily Mail (London) includes a celebrity Q&A with actor Tom Conti, who says his prized possession is a grand piano and that he regrets “that I didn’t become an orchestra conductor. Music was my first love, but then I joined drama school.” Conti’s self-described fantasy 24 hours includes listening to a rehearsal in Berlin of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony by the Berlin Philharmonic and a Paris concert at the Salle Pleyel. “The song that means the most to me is ‘Caro Mio Ben,’ sung by the Italian tenor Beniamino Gigli. It reminds me of my father, who used to play it on his gramophone in the 1940s.” Conti’s unfulfilled ambition, he says, is “to play Bach’s 48 preludes and fugues, probably the greatest things ever written for the keyboard. It’s a distant dream.” Conti also confesses to a fascination with quantum physics, a wish to “follow Vladimir Putin around the Kremlin to see what he gets up to,” and, at his funeral, to have Brahms waltzes played and have readings from works by Richard Dawkins.
Posted September 11, 2013
