14. Bygone loves. Another joke. And remembering loved ones.

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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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Those of you who listened to my first podcast at the end of June, when I introduced the percent of perfect picture, namely to demonstrate that as long as you like a good tune, everyone could like something in classical music might also remember that I was happy to admit there are still composers I struggle with. By the way, if you did miss it, it's still there with all the other episodes. But one such composer, a shock horror to some of you I know, is Benjamin Britton. I have a couple of difficulties with him. The first is that he thought Verdi was a rubbish composer. I mean, really? And he was no less generous about Brahms, nor his fellow compatriots Elgar and Vaughan Williams. But the fundamental difficulty I have with him is that most of his music is how can I put this lacking in melody. There are exceptions, of course, there always are. The Simple Symphony, the Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, although of course that wasn't his tune, the completely wonderful Sea interludes, the operas Billy Budd and Peter Grimes. But generally, and I accept it is a huge generalization. I can't really get to grips with it. But of the exceptions, many of his songs fall into that category. And here is one, Foggy, Foggy Dew, sung by Matthew Rose with Ian Burnside at the piano. Britain's setting of what, to be honest, is a rather unseemly little tale, adds an element of charm and almost turns it into a wistful reminiscence of a bygone love.

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And the only, only thing that I did that was wrong was to woo a fair young maid. I wooed her in her winter time and in her summer juice. And the only, only thing that I did that was wrong was to keep her from the foggy, foggy dews. One night she came to my bedside as I lay fast asleep. She laid her head upon my bed, and she began to weep. She sighed, she cried, she damned me a tide. She said, What shall I do? So I rolled her into bed and I covered up her head just to keep her from the foggy, foggy dews. Now I am a bachelor and I live with my son, and we work at the weaver's trade, and every single time that I look into his eyes, he reminds me of the fai and made. He reminds me of the winter time, and of the summer two, and of the many, many times that I held her in my arms, just to keep her from the foggy foggy deal.

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You might also remember from an earlier podcast that I said if I were to use one non-musical word to sum up the huge output of Joseph Haydn, it would be humour. We then listened to part of his surprise symphony, number 94. These little jokes were far from isolated incidents. So let's listen to another one in the second movement of the previous symphony, number 93, The Largo Cantabile. I'm not going to give you the punchline up front, just in case you haven't heard it before, beyond the saying that George Sell, the conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra in this recording, was well known for hamming it up. When you expose your senses to any kind of art form over a reasonable period, they become trained to identify different styles, be they musical, visual, or literary. Without knowing it and without even trying, we develop an instinct that enables us to assert with some confidence that sounds very like Beethoven, or looks very like a Cezanne. Instinct doesn't always work, of course. Over a few decades of listening to music with my late father, there were inevitably times when something tuneful and seemingly recognizable would leave us frustrated. Possibly because the melody appeared to sound like one composer for a few minutes, then somebody completely different the next. In time, we soon realized that when such a situation arose, a fairly reliable guest would be Antonin Dvorjak, whose music we've already listened to. One of fourteen children, he was expected to follow in the footsteps of his butcher father. Happily he had other ideas, even though he took some persuasion from the likes of Brahms to spread his wings away from his birthplace, some twenty miles north of Prague. In due course, his travels would take him to the USA, where classical music hardly featured, and where he can take much credit for the subsequent research and its popularity. His New World Symphony is now amongst the most frequently played in the repertoire, having been composed over a couple of years and then performed in New York in 1893. Devorjak wrote some good tunes. Some really good tunes, in fact. And here's one. His Rondo for Cello and Piano was written in 1891 to show off the skills of the celloist Hans Bihan, to whom he later dedicated his cello concerto. And that, by the way, is a really fabulous piece, but just a little too long to be on the podcast. So I urge you to seek it out if you enjoy what you're about to hear. If you've not heard this rondo before, you might easily think it could be by Brahms, for it has much of that man's nobility. But in the end, you will land up thinking, well, Devorjak, probably because it has a playfulness about it, which you would struggle to find in the music of Brahms. And actually, now I come to think of it, I'm fairly certain that when Brahms heard Devorjak's concerto, the first thing he said was something along the lines of I wish I'd known it was impossible to write something like that. Some have said that the theme of the rondo is sad and even morose. Devorjak hardly gives it a piece of time to dwell on sadness and instead skips it along with a brief diversion to display the virtual side of the instrument. But the opening tune is never far away. Mikhaila Fukushova is on the cello with Ivan Kalansky on the piano. Warning. It adds up to a few minutes of a very addictive melody. We started the podcast with a song, and that's how I'd like to close today, with what's almost certainly my favourite of all those I've heard by Schubert. There'll be some out there who will claim to having hurt most of them, but as the total runs to about 600, I'm not even going to pretend I've got anywhere near that. Allah Zeelen is a short song to commemorate the Feast of All Souls in the Christian calendar at the beginning of November. But we all remember and commemorate the loss of those dear to us every day of the year. The last couple of years, furthermore, may have been harder than most. Johann Jakob's words translate as May all souls who have departed hence rest in peace. So you might want to stop whatever you're doing to savour these few minutes with your memories.

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That's it for now. Thank you for listening to Perfect Pitch with Nick Healy Hutchinson. He'll be back again next week with some more treasures for you. So please do join in then. And you can subscribe to this podcast by clicking on the link below.