25. The Spanish Mozart, high spirits, and power.

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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 Keely Hutchinson your ears for his weekly dose of classical music that will enrich your life.

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I've said in the past, but it bears repeating, that one of the great thoughts about classical music is that it's an endless discovery. And there's so much out there to enjoy, which we'll never hope to reach. A number of years ago, when I was showing my enthusiasm for Tubert, someone said to me, Have you ever come across the music of Ariaga? And of course I haven't. Juan Cristostormo Ariaga was born in Bilbao in 1806 and was nicknamed the Spanish Mozart on account of two things his unquestioned status as a child prodigy and also the brevity of his life. Mozart may have reached his 30s, but Ariaga died just days before his 20th birthday, possibly as a result of a lung ailment exacerbated by overwork. His father was also a musician and very happy to support his son in his endeavours, even if not to the extent of Mozart's helicopter dad, Leopold. Dying at only 19 means that we have little of his work, but there's a fair amount of change in music, and certainly enough to see that Europe was deprived of a huge talent in its early demise. He also managed to squeeze in one symbol. It's a work which I think either Mozart or Jupiter would have been very proud to have written. It seems to be so much in common with Jupiter, especially in the context of paper melodies and quite sophisticated orchestration for someone so young. It's particularly clear, I think, in a minuet, the third movement of the piece, and then the finale. A passage which starts in a slightly gloomy minor key but marches towards a triumphant F and then also finish F in a major F. I love the way the woodwind punctuates the strings in the opening of this final movement. It adds a sort of urgency to it. It's really exuberant music. So we're gonna listen to both movements now. The minuet and the Allegro from Aliaga's only symphony is played here by Il Fondamento, conducted by Paul Dombrecht. I hope you enjoyed as much as I did the first time I heard it. Too many notes. Almost everyone will be familiar with those withering words, which were attributed to the Emperor Joseph II in the 1984 film Amadeus. After hearing the first performance of Mozart's opera Feel. Aside from the frivolous and quite ludicrous nature of his observation, it does prompt me to reflect if not too many neighbours. Certainly very many, however. We're now so used to the massive output and creativity of classical music over the last few hundred years that it can be easy to overlook the fair labour involved in transcribing these mental sounds onto paper. Think for a moment on the implications of no electricity in this context. No electronic keyboard with the luxury of a backspace, probably the most used button on my laptop to delete or replace. No means of recording. In short, everything. Absolutely everything, including the lines of the music itself, giving us the word score, had to be done by hand. Nowadays, you can sing a tune into any number of githubs, and before you've gathered your breath for the next inspiration, you'll have a beautifully produced manuscript fully orchestrated and ready to go. That's not political the efforts of contemporary composers, merely to highlight the extraordinary achievements of their predecessors. It's all the more remarkable for the fact that music, unlike say painting, relies almost solely on the hand of its creator. There are plenty of examples of composers or students finishing off works of their masters. But because you can't hear what is going on in anyone else's head, nothing can have the authenticity of the originator. An artist can direct his followers much more easily. That makes the feat of writing music down a monumental task. At one end, the solo instrument may present a few problems, but imagine at the other end of the scale conveying the sound of a full opera or a mass with all its singers and every single instrument in the orchestra. It's no wonder that so many composers died young. Regardless of what they've been suffering from, exhaustion must surely have played a part. All those notes all by hand and for hundreds of years with a quill and ink. I have no idea how many notes there are in this electrified piece by Mendelssohn, his Orondo Capricosa for piano, published in 1830 when the composer was just twenty-one. He would not reach forty. In the opening bars, you might be forgiven for thinking it's the introduction to a Topert song, and it certainly does a thing, or maybe help her in the way the hands are occasionally kept well apart. The real action starts a couple of minutes in with a thrilling presto, which a professional pianist will secretly confide sounds harder to play than it is, which is why it's something of a toe beat and often used as an encore. If you're familiar with his music for a Midsummer Night's Dream, there is definitely a hint of that rhythm here. And if you're not, well, that's a good excuse to dig it out. Anyway, I am now certainly guilty of too many words, so over to the music. The soloist here is Jan Lysetsky. Okay, so why should you dig it out when I can provide it for you very easily? And anyway, I can't resist it. So here it is, the scherzo from Mendelssohn's incidental music for a Midsummer Night's Dream. The woodwind alone will bring any cheer you might need right now. It's played here by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jane Glover. We started today with a first and only symphony by a composer, and we're going to conclude with a finale of another first. Beethoven's. Unlike the young Aliaga, Beethoven was 30 when the symphony got its first airing. It's worth putting this in a very brief context. Mozart had been dead for nine years. Haydn universally acknowledged as the father of the symphony had a few years to live, but his 104 symphonies were now behind him. Beethoven may have taken on the mantle as their natural successor, but, as we all know, he was an innovator and his own man too. There are plenty of conventions which are adhered to in the first symphony, but Beethoven is happy to dispense with others right from the very first note. And the final moment, which we're going to listen to now, had its own little twist. No finale in the symphonic repertoire had opened in anything other than a lively and vigorous manner. It certainly opens with an emphatic chord, but after that, Beethoven teases us with his own brand of wit, with a quiet scale, which tantalizingly never reaches the top before embarking on its flourishing haste. So it was quite a way to open his symphony account. The final movement of Beethoven's first symphony, starting Adagio, meaning slowly, and then Allegro Molto Vivace, meaning very quickly and lively, is played here in a fantastic recording by the Dresden of Taco Cabello Orchestra conducted by Herbert Blochett.

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