13. Something for everyone - reflection, book-ended by exuberance.

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Do you think that classical music is not for you and you don't know where to start? Or maybe you're a fan already and would welcome a fresh approach. You've come to the right place. Perfect pitch is for everyone, beginners or experts, whatever your age. Lend Nick Healy Hutchinson your ears for his weekly dose of classical music that will enrich your life.

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It's been very encouraging for me to know that a number of younger listeners have picked up this podcast and realize in so doing that there are not only no barriers to this genre of music, but that you can just as easily listen to it alongside Stormsey or Jammer and much else besides. Apologies to the older generation if you've not heard of Stormsey or Jammer. Let's just say that if you think their weather terms on the Skippy forecast, you're in the wrong waters altogether. Last week, we concluded the podcast with a final movement of Recap Strates by Lincoln Chetter, which Donald Toby had described as a pollinate for polar bears. Today we're going to start with a very different kind of pollinate, the one which introduces the final act of Tchaikovsky's opera Eugene O'Neagin. I'm not going to bother you with the synopsis here today, because we're going to revisit the opera another time in more detail. But this is high-spirited and good cheerful stuff. So it doesn't really need any introduction. Just enjoy it for what it is. This is the orchestra of the Royal Opera Cotton Garden, conducted by George Shelby. I don't know if Shelby had a particular thing for the brand section of the orchestra. All I do know is that under his direction, they always get a good and prominent airing. He was principal conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for 22 years, and their sound with him is instantly recognizable for that particular aspect. And it's centre stage here too. So don't hold back on the volume. In the very first podcast, I played one of his impromptos, and today I'm going to play another one of his panel pieces, which might just as easily have been included in the impromptu set. Written in the closing months of his life in 1828, these pieces were left untitled until Brahms discovered them and gave them the highly original title of the I Clavier to the three pen of pieces. Because, well, that's exactly what they are. And it's the second of the three, which we're going to hear now, played by Alfred Brendel. Here is the master tune of it, starting with a very simple and innocent melody, which then gives way to a different key and subscribe more stormy passages before returning to the original. If you listen carefully, you'll notice Hubert's extraordinary skill for shifting from major to minor key and back again without any lengthy transition period. It's done in a couple of notes and shows how happy and sad moods fit so closely together in his music. I can't think of any other composer who does it with such ease. At its very heart is this perfectly gorgeous melody which just keeps coming back and which you simply cannot get enough of. Her colourful lifestyle ensured that she was a frequent focus of media attention, especially later in her life when she became associated with Aristotle and Assis. She possessed all the qualities you might expect for a true diva. Amongst them a soprano voice with enormous range, but equally important as a data presence, which totally held the attention of her audience as well as her reputation for the occasional tantrum. Music lovers are divided about the quality of her voice, and her technique was certainly found wanting from time to time. But the power of it is beyond dispute until it waned in the 60s after a sudden weight loss bringing her career to an early end. Of the roles she made her own, few were more dramatic than the doomed Tosca in the opera That Name by Puccini. We're going to listen now to possibly the most famous R in the Atar opera Vicky Darte taken from the second actor. It's a moving plea in which she concludes Oh Lord, why do you reward me like this? She can hear as her lover, Cavardotti, is being tortured by the henchman of Scarpia, the chief of police in Rome, to reveal the whereabouts of an escaped convict. Well, she's having none of that. In a nutshell, the Arya says, I've lived for art and love. I've been a good girl and said my prayers. So why, Lord, are you rewarding me like this? Sadly, her please fall on deaf ears, as it all goes horribly wrong for everyone. If you've not heard this before, you're in for a treatment. Puccini is another of those great action writers. Be patient. It's a slow lament, but at only just over three minutes long, it's worth a wait. It's all about a steady buildup of a wonderful high E flat. A note the callus reaches without the slightest strain that she was actually capable of going a few higher. There are obviously many renditions of this piece. I chose Callus for two reasons. First, if you ask any opera lover to name a famous opera, Callus would undoubtedly feature more than anyone else. And secondly, it's not just her peak which is tremendous here, but also the way Khalas sings the two glorious notes which immediately follow it on the way down. The power of her voice is quite extraordinary. When the opera was first performed in 1900, it led one critic to describe it as a happy little shocker. But with its cocktail of love, passion, jealousy, murder, and revenge, it's now become one of the repertoire's favorites and most widely performed. The ending sees that Osaka realize that her lover has not participated in a fake execution as a promise of it, but that Sagia, whom she has previously stabbed, has ensured that it's a real thing. The curtain falls as Oscar flings herself off the pirate in despair. The opera has something of a macrobatic curse about it, in that it's famous for a number of things going wrong. The soprano Ava Turner admitted to being the recipient of the most famous and comic disaster, which until then many had assumed was apocryphal. We can't be sure of the reasons, whether it was for safety or some kind of revenge. But her stage crew replaced the cushion to take her landing one night with a tightly strong trampoline. Safety might well have been guaranteed. But if it was for revenge, come up and thus was quite literally achieved. Anyway, back into this gorgeous music. I can recall very clearly the first time I was introduced to the music of Handel, born in Germany, but later a naturalized Brit, who is buried in Westminster Abbey. In the same way that I try to bring pieces which I enjoy to your attention, the schoolmaster was keen to enlighten a small group of us with a great man's music, and did so with one of the briefest and most exhilarating passages ever written by anyone. It had an innocent effect. Handel and Bach, born in the same year, came to epitomize that category of music which we now call the rock, a period roughly spanning 1600 or 1750. Bach seemed to enjoy most of the glory of his days, but Beethoven heralded Handel as the greatest composer that ever lived. I would uncover my head and kneel before his tomb. His thirty years in London brought him great wealth and popularity, doubtless associated with my being a favourite, eventually, of George III. His wealth might also be attributed to the fact that he was a very private man who never married and had no children, unlike Bach, who found time at Father Twenty, of whom ten survived adulthood. There are dozens of pieces which could be said to embody the Baroque period, but of the short ones, the arrival of the Queen of Sheba takes a song beating. The Queen of Sheba was a biblical figure, whose visit to Solomon in order to exchange all manner of gifts and riches has been widely covered in a variety of texts. But it handles a musical narrative which grabs the most attention nowadays. It owes his exuberance with just a handful of strings and a woodwritten. Uplifting joystick. It's a small wonder that it is often used to announce the arrival of a bride at her wedding. For this humble enthusiast, it's perfect. It's lively and fresh, but with a controlled momentum and especially fine playing by two oboists on original instruments.

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