37. Baroque on piano, a 'new' voice, and violin acrobatics.

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I think it's time we revisited the Baroque period. That era which began in about 1600 and ended with the death of Bach in 1750. It's easy to forget when we hear keyboard music today that pianos were not at the disposal of those composers. While much of it sounds lovely on the original instruments, Barker's Brandebert concertos are always going to sound best on the harpsichord for me. The modern piano has a lot going for it too, in terms of colour, clarity, and volume variation. And here, I think, is a good example of what I mean. This is a favourite keyboard piece composed by the Anglican handle around 1720. The Harmonious Blacksmith is the title given to the final movement of a four-piece suite. There are all sorts of theories as came to acquire that name, and they're all rather boring. So let's not bother with that, especially as it was not titled us by the composer. But it's an infectious little tune, which on first lighting appears could be forgiven if the thinking looks pretty simple. But over the course of the variations which follow, with a tune always at its heart, it gets progressively harder, before ending on a jubilant flourish. The harmonious blacksmith is played here by Wilhelm Kempf. Another Baroque composer whose life coincided with that of Handel was the Frenchman Francois Couperin. I can't find any evidence of him having known or met Handel, although his music was much admired by Bach. But just listen to this and see if another time you could correctly identify who composed which of the last two canopy pieces you've just heard. The Couperin is considerably shorter and composed almost at exactly the same time, but one of them must surely have known of the other, because I always get them mixed up. Couperin's Les Barricades Mysterieuse is played here by the Hungarian George Schiffler. Listen out for that left hand, which gives real meaning to the melody. The Italian Niccolo Paganini lived around the same time as Beethoven, bridging the close of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth. Although known as one of the greatest violinists of all time, Paganini actually started his musical life with a guitar. When he did take out the violin, it was not long before he was a parting author. But he's a teacher's teacher. And it's not exaggerating to say he was a true phenomenon at his art. Everybody would have liked to see him perform wherever he travelled, not leaves because he had a highly unusual appearance as a bindly figure with extraordinarily long fingers, possibly as a result of suffering from Mouthhand syndrome, an ailment which often manifests itself in long limbs. During his life, he met and became friends with Rottini, and it was he, the famous who said that he only cried three times in his life. The first time when his earliest opera failed, the second time when, with a boating party, a traffic turkey fell into the water, and the third is the time when he first heard Paganini play. Paganini's most famous composition was a group of solo pieces called Twenty-Four Caprice. Listeners of a certain age may remember a programme on TV called The Tapture, for which Caprice number 24 was a theme music. That excerpt was obviously just a tune in a jazz that first. So now I'm going to play what it sounds like in its original format on the violin. In an earlier podcast, we listened to the second level because there are two romantics of violin. I only mention it now because of the way it starts. The violin in that piece starts on its own with something called double stopping. Double stopping is a term used for playing two strings with two different melodies at the same time. It's not the same as playing two notes on the piano. Any fool can do that. But using a bow across two stringers to play two different tunes is something altogether much harder. Preset number twenty-four opens with a familiar theme, followed by a number of variations, many of which have a double, a triple, and even quadruple stopping. Which means that there are sometimes two, three, or even four different tunes happening at the same time. You don't need to be a violinist to appreciate how technically difficult this piece is, especially if you listen to it attentively. It's a little wonder that this is known as a virtuosic piece it is, and the American violinist Hilary Hahn gives a crystal clear performance. It was certainly that voice alone which made him the most commercially successful tenor of the last hundred years. Because acting was not one of his strongests. In fact, I think he'd have struggled to scrape a grade at the Roger Moore School of Eyebrow Raising. But his deserved success means that others were dwarfed. It also means that while you may have the right vocal range, it doesn't automatically make you the best qualified to a particular part or area. If you're new to classical music, and perhaps even if you aren't, you may not have heard of the now retired Francisco Arita, a Mexican teller, whose earlier focus was in the operas of Mozart and Rossini, later branching out into larger Italian rules, and then Ian Wagner, who is now an acclaimed teacher and judger. We've already listened to that gorgeous trio from Mozart's Curti Fantasy in an earlier podcast. An opera all about the joys and pains of love. Since it's not littered with numerous memorable areas, this little gem is an easy pick. Fernando thinks he is winning the bet with a bitch of his Alfonso about the fidelity of Dorotobella, while he is supposedly away at war. I think he has burned the advances of William and sings when Aura and Oliver has a breath of love in her praise. Listen to this lovely voice, and in the context of his opera about love, to the heart, the warmth which Eliza brings to the word. It deserves to highlight how different all these interpretations in every field can be. It is perhaps what stands music apart from most other art forms, and why I so enjoy selecting what I think is the best, but not necessarily what is just well known. And so back to Paganini. Paganini was truly a one-off. Rumors were rife that either he or his mother had sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his precocious gift, which is why the violin has always come to be known as the devil's instrument. His last idea of data enabled him to be a notorious womanizer, despite suffering ill health almost all his life, as well as having this really peculiar physique, which wasn't exactly taught with a head of extraordinary beauty either. But he was certainly a master in his craft, as well as introducing listeners to new sounds on the violin, such as bouncing the bow on the strings and plucking them. Things which we might be used to hearing now, but were very much new in 1819 when he premiered his first violin concerto. So let's listen to some of those revolutionary techniques in abundance in the final movement of his first violin concerto, played by Itsac Pellman with a royal philomonic orchestra conducted by Lawrence Frost.

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