Sir Keir\u2019s first choice on Private Passions is a moment from Tchaikovsky\u2019s 1877 ballet, Swan Lake. \u201cI grew up with music all around us,\u201d he says. \u201cMy mum loved Tchaikovsky, and she loved ballet and Swan Lake in particular.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sir Keir\u2019s mother suffered from a rare and aggressive form of arthritis. Despite benefiting from pioneering steroid treatment, she was unable to walk by her 30s, when Keir was a teenager. \u201cBut there was something about her: the more difficult it was for her to do something like ballet, the more fascinated she was by this sort of brilliant art form \u2013 the physical element as well as the music,\u201d he remembers. \u201cIt took her to a sort of special place and allowed her, through somebody else, to enjoy all the things that she couldn’t do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, his father listened almost exclusively to classical music. \u201cHe was an incredible man: totally, totally devoted to my mum in every way,\u201d Sir Keir says. “But he didn’t have much emotional space left for his children and therefore there weren’t long discussions with my dad.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sir Keir\u2019s father loved Beethoven \u2013 and his sixth symphony, \u201cPastoral\u201d above all. \u201cI probably got to know this piece of music better than any other piece of music because he played it so often when I was growing up,\u201d he says. \u201cIt’s a beautiful symphony, you know, with all the mixture of seasons and moods, but it has a lightness to it as well towards the end. And through that, I sort of tried to reach my dad’s emotion. What would he be thinking when he was listening to this?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sir Keir\u2019s first choice on Private Passions is a moment from Tchaikovsky\u2019s 1877 ballet, Swan Lake. \u201cI grew…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242692,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,136],"class_list":{"0":"post-242691","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}