Gyorgy Pauk

Desert Island Discs: Archive 2005-2010

BBC

Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 804 Ratings

🗓️ 30 May 2010

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway is the violinist Gyorgy Pauk.

In a career spanning fifty years, he has played with all the best orchestras and continues to teach masterclasses around the world.

He grew up in Hungary and, after both his parents were taken to labour camps, he was brought up by his grandmother. His parents died during the war and it was, says Gyorgy, a miracle that he and his grandmother survived in the Budapest ghetto. For years afterwards, he says, he would carry food with him because he was so scarred by the hunger he'd felt.

His musical talent was his passport to the West and, when he was 22 years old, he fled first to France, then to Holland and finally to Britain where he has lived for nearly fifty years. Of his early years, he says: "There were times when you were punished if you were listening to the radio. That's when it started to get to me - realising that I was not free. Music is international, it has to be worldwide."

Record: Bach's Andante from the Second Sonata in A Minor Book: How To Be An Alien by George Mikes Luxury: A N'espresso machine

Producer: Leanne Buckle.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi, it's Nicola Cochlin. Young people have been making history for years, but we don't often hear about them. My brand new series on BBC Sounds sets out to put this right. In history's youngest heroes, I'll be revealing the fascinating stories of 12 young people who've played a major role in history and who've helped shape our world. Like Audrey Hepburn, Nelson Mandela,
0:22.4	Louis Braille and Lady Jane Grey, history's youngest heroes with me, Nicola Cochlin. Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:30.4	Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4.
0:36.7	For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.
0:41.2	For more information about the programme, please visit BBC.co.com.ukes slash Radio 4. My castaway this week is the violinist George Pouk.
1:08.3	His aptitude in music was first spotted when he was three years old he used to tell
1:12.8	his mother off when she played a duff note on the piano. That was in Hungary, a country already
1:17.8	fiercely anti-Semitic, which ended up a battleground for German and Soviet troops. More than
1:23.5	half a million Hungarian Jews died during the war, and it was a miracle, says George,
1:28.1	that he and his grandmother survived in the Budapest ghetto.
1:32.3	His prodigious talent allowed him to travel to the West, and eventually that was where he fled,
1:37.5	first to France, then Holland, and finally to Britain, where he has lived for nearly 50 years.
1:43.5	He became the violin professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London
1:47.0	and Professor Emeritus of the List Academy in Budapest.
1:51.1	Now aged 73, he continues to give master classes around the world.
1:55.6	He says there were times when you were punished if you were listening to the radio.
2:00.5	That's when it started to get to me,
2:02.3	realizing that I am not free. Music is international. It has to be worldwide. So much to talk about,
2:10.2	but first of all, we should get your name straight. I called you George Pauk. What should I have called
2:15.6	you? In Hungarian, it's called Georg.
2:19.1	But I have had a lot of problems with how to pronounce my name.
2:24.3	But finally, I'm resigned to.
	...

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