30. From Franckly lovely to outright nostalgia.

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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 always struck me as a little odd that the violin sonata only rarely includes the word piano in the title, because as far as I know, every sonata written for the violin has always had a keyboard instrument of some sort for accompaniment. Many of the big names, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, Hubert Strauss, and more, have included these in their large output. But we've already listened to all of these composers before, so it's a good opportunity to call on César Franck, who lived between 1822 and 1890. His fellow French composer, Claude Debouty, who lived between 1862 and 1918, observed that Franck was single-minded to have found a beautiful harmony that sufficed to make his day happy. Taken on its own, this is to simplify the voluminous work of a composer who had long-lasting influence in France. Franck was a particularly gifted organist, especially when it came to improvisation. Those moments when you have to fill the gap between one part of a service and another. His father was the ultima helicopter parent, making Leopold Mozart look like an amateur with his son Wolfgang. He's pushing us led to a breakdown of relations between them, but they were eventually reconciled. Despite not being appreciated during his lifetime, his compositions finally gave some gravitas to French music, long since the inferior to German. Not enough of his work gets an airing these days, and many of us will only hear his palis angelikus with any frequency. So back to that violin sonata, written in 1886 and the work which finally established his worth, and now possibly the most famous one ever written. My observation about the lack of recognition for the piano is particularly out for this piece, which is quite fiendish in parts. Franck had very large hands and may have underestimated the difficulty of the path for others. Here is the last movement, the fourth. All other movements have a common theme, and this last one is written in canonic form, where one instrument leads and then the other follows. Whatever is going on in your life just now, a few minutes of this only makes everything just a little bit better. The violinist is Kaya Damchowska, and the pianist is Christian Zemmermann. This applied to artists as well. There was no fixed number in any division, but it was always accepted that Suzanne and Rembrandt would feature high in Division I, now the Premier League, and I'm not sure how far down you'd have to go to even find Gilbert and George. I've had a quick look back, and I'm not sure we've yet listened to any of the music of Edval Grieg, who lived between 1843 and 1907. Although recognized as one of the great romantic composers, he can't sit alongside the lights of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Brahms, Schumann, Schopper, and a host of others. And accordingly, I'm afraid he would find himself in our division two, or what is now called the Championship. Hang on, I hear you protest. What about his piano concerto, one of the most popular of all? And yes, this, along with the peer game sweets, are enough on their own to guarantee him musical immortality. His music is to know as that of Sibelius was to Finland. He created an instantly recognizable Norwegian identity, drawn largely from folk song, and few would begrudge his influence, especially on the likes of the Frenchman Ravel. So here is a piece from the Piergind suite. Sung, rather than fully orchestrated. Solveig's song is a reminder that however awful we may be, and in Henry Ibsen's Vibe play, Piergind was about as amoral as it's possible to be, there is always the chance that somewhere someone is holding a candle for us. Solve was abandoned twice by Gint. But what a forgiving maiden she is. Here is the translation. The winter may go, and the spring disappear. Next summer too may fade, and the whole long year. But you will be returning in truth, I know. And I will wait for you as I promised long ago. May God guide you and keep you wherever you may go. Upon you his blessing and mercy bestow. And here I will await you till you are here. And if you are in heaven, I'll meet you there. This is a recording by the Russian soprano Ananda Tropko. It's a beautiful melody, the sort of music which his big fan Tchaikovsky must have had in mind, when saying, What charm, what inimitable and rich musical imagery, what interest, novelty, and independence. I'm not sure Tchaikovsky would have made the most riveting critic, but he did have other things going for him. Try joining in at the second verse. It's not that easy. Norway was a sparsely populated country, a mere two million when Grieg was born. A measure of his popularity and esteem in his homeland was that between thirty and forty thousand of them lined the streets at his funeral after he died of heart failure. There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. I, for one, am especially relieved because most of you listen to my ramblings on this device. In the late 70s, I recall reading with growing anger an article in the FT confidently asserting that my young hero, the still and much lamented Soviet Balasteros, was a flash in the pan talent which wouldn't stand the test of time. You rarely look clever. Rachmaninov's life between 1874 and 1943 expanded at tumultuous times in world history. He detested the Soviet regime and took his family to Europe and then the USA. Despite the huge success of his second piano concerto, probably now the most popular in the entire repertoire, he was plagued by a lifelong load of self-esteem across all his gifts of composing, conducting and performing. As a pianist, a few, if indeed any, have come close to his mastery and obsession for accuracy. He had enormous hands, which could cover a twelve-note bread. An inevitable consequence of that being the inability of many with smaller pause to play his music at all. He would barely move at the keyboard, rather like Vladimir Horowitz, to whom he once paid the ultimate compliment by saying he played his third piano concerto better than the composer himself. Nowadays we associate Ratmaninoff with big sweeping tunes, very much in the romantic nostalgic vein of Tchaikovsky, one of his outspoken supporters. His second and third piano concertos have been immortalized in different ways in the films Brief Encounter and Shine. If he were alive today, and certainly he'd be giving John Williams some stiff competition with film scores. It's a wonder he went on to compose a second symphony after the disastrous first performance of his first, not helped by a conductor who let alcohol get the better of him. But the second, first conducted perhaps as a safeguard by the composer himself, was an instant success. And it's the third movement I'm going to leave you with today. If you've never heard it, it's some of the best reflective music you could ever dwell in. It goes straight to the soul, with its mixture of melancholy, love, and farewell. The opening solo on the clarinet is a tearjerker in itself, but there are other moments to treasure as well. Crescendos are building to majestic climaxes. And even if you do know it, you're unlikely to have heard many better renditions than this. An orchestra is a whole, made up of talented individuals, and the individual talents here are as good as it gets. If you're driving, I suggest you say this until later. Whatever else you're doing, walking or cooking I've no idea what you do when you listen to me. Find a place to sit down. Because the best way to listen to this is to close your eyes and just let it go. The third movement of Rachmanenov Symphony No.

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We'll be back again next week with some more trades for you. So please do join in then. And you can subscribe to this podcast by clicking on the link below.