Francis Humphreys
speaker
112 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 6 Jun
Francis Humphreys’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
There were the prisoners, the wounded prisoners came in and they were on stretchers in the front row.
They were all wearing more or less rags because, you know, they'd been there for so long.
I want to go to another Russian composer, this time Shostakovich.
Tell me about this piano quintet, when it was composed and what was looming.
It was composed in 1940.
So war had broken out in Europe, but Hitler hadn't at that stage invaded Russia.
In fact, he promised he wouldn't.
It's wonderful that those two awful dictators, that Stalin actually trusted Hitler not to invade.
But anyhow, the invasion was on its way.
Shostakovich wrote that quintet.
It started as a string quartet, the story goes, but he turned it into a piano quintet so that he could go touring with the string quartet around Russia.
I think you'll play, I'm not sure which, the slow movement is that you're playing.
We'll hear it now.
Okay.
That's quite a haunting piece of music.
Isn't it just?
Yes, it's for all the dead, of course.
Because, of course, since the mid-30s, Stalin has been massacring his population.
You hear the thread of the funeral march in the background and the haunting lament.
Yes.
Showing 61–80 of 112 · page 4 of 6
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