My dad grew up in Manchester, and as a young man became passionately interested in jazz, particularly New Orleans jazz. He played the drums, and to the horror of his parents – I imagine, though he never said this – he turned down a place at Manchester University to join a dance band. He went off to the War and when he came back he became a music publisher in Tin Pan Alley. Towards the end of his life – he died horribly young in his 50s – he ran a little company which made the jingles for commercial television. But his tastes were big band jazz, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington, so I grew up in a household where a lot of that was played. I guess that’s where my interest in music started.

To my disappointment these days, I think partly because my dad had been a professional musician, he always felt inhibited in getting my sister or me to learn an instrument unless we’d passionately ask for it. My sister was actually a very good singer and at school used to sing in a duet with somebody called Mary O’Brien – who subsequently became Dusty Springfield. But neither my sister nor I actually learned an instrument, which is a pity.

I suppose the first music I started to listen to which wasn’t big band or jazz was at school, Gregorian chant and so on, which I still love. But the piece of music that I listen to most is the Goldberg Variations. Not Glenn Gould actually but Murray Perahia. It’s such completely sublime music, and I could understand why it was originally designed to allow the sponsor to sleep well. Perahia doesn’t attack it too aggressively, which some people do a bit, I think. The arias at the beginning and the end he plays superbly well – that gentle and sensitive touch. I think he’s a wonderful pianist.

I’m very keen on opera, but rather traditional operas. I can remember the first time I went to a production of Fidelio. That wonderful quartet ‘Mir ist so wunderbar’ – when it ended I was in tears, it’s just a perfect piece of music with the words and the music suiting absolutely what’s being expressed. I’ve seen several productions over the years of Fidelio, and I think the best one was at Garsington four or five years ago, when the Prisoners’ Chorus went wandering off the stage into the vegetable garden. I of course love all the Mozart operas, and I don’t know anybody who isn’t swept away by that extraordinary trio in Così fan tutte. I went to an absolutely terrific production of The Marriage of Figaro at Garsington about six weeks ago – it’s a sort of joyful opera, funny in a sort of Feydeau farce way, and the music is beautiful.

I’m also very keen on Haydn. My favourite Mass is the Haydn Nelson Mass, the Missa in angustiis. There was a performance of it for my departure as Chancellor of Oxford. (I hope that they didn’t expect that there would be perilous times!) When I left Hong Kong some friends, without my knowing it, organised one of my last Sunday Masses – I went to the church and was surprised to see a full orchestra and lots of singers, and they’d organised the Haydn Nelson Mass too. I love the story behind the work, and it seems to me that it has some relevance to today. The fear of Napoleon – though I know that the time sequence isn’t quite right – which had swept across Europe, not least Austria and Vienna, and the relief that was felt by people when Nelson won the Battle of the Nile – it’s just a great story.

One of the people we gave a prize to at the Praemium Imperiale Awards recently was Wynton Marsalis. He’s an outrageously wonderful personality, whose thank you for the prize and for the hospitality he’d received was to produce his trumpet and a wine glass and play his ‘thank you’s! I think his recording of the Haydn Trumpet Concerto recording is terrific – I’ve listened to that a lot.

The Recording I Couldn't Live Without

Bach Goldberg Variations

Murray Perahia pf

Sony Classical

Wonderful music – it would be a strange week when I didn’t play this recording two or three times.

Lord Patten is the UK’s International Advisor to the Praemium Imperiale Awards – see praemiumimperiale.org

Explore all of this year's Gramophone Award winners in the 2024 Awards issue – out now. Never miss an issue – subscribe today