48. Reflection to Flourish.

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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 Hutchins in your ears for his weekly dose of classical music that will enrich your life.

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I sometimes get asked if there's a particular theme to this podcast. For those of you who've been kind enough to stick with me all this time, although it isn't just a lot of music I wanted to share it with you. I prefer to keep it in a rather random way because it means that you never know what you're gonna get. In fact, sometimes I don't know either. But if you do have any thoughts or suggestions, please do send me a message on Twitter. With a mouthful of a name like mine, you won't find it too hard to find me. Gabrielle Foret was quite a philanderer with an eye for the ladies. In the mid-1890s, a composer set of six canopies for four hands to celebrate particular dates for a daughter, a dolly, uh, whom he defathered with one of his mistresses. The first one from the Dolly Suite, Bessers, meaning a lullaby, was adapted from an earlier composition and was for her first birthday. A gentle rocking cradle is very sweetly illustrated in this recording by Katia and Mariel Labeque. Not long before that was written, the Norwegian composer Edvar Grieg wrote two elegiac pieces for string orchestra. The second of these is called Last Spring. And unless you're listening to this in November, this seems a good time to hear it. Come to think of it, it's titled Last Spring probably makes it out almost any time of the year. It's quite a mellow composition, but it's a lovely melody and has an instantly soothing effect. So if things aren't going quite according to plan right now, I'll take a few minutes out with this. Played by the Northern Symphonia Orchestra conducted by Paul Tortelli. So let's go back to the piano and eighteen thirty nine, when Robert Schumann was going through a big low both mentally and professionally. He was some distance away from his beloved Clara Vico, whom he would eventually marry despite overwhelming protestations from her dad. Of all composers, perhaps the one who bears his soul on the page or any other. But at the same time, he was capable of writing really gorgeous tones in a simple, almost childlike manner. Written in the key of C major, the most elementary lot, his arabic of a piano brings a longing as well as a sense of urgent frustration together. It also has this wholly unexpected and exquisite finish at the very point where you think the principal melody is about to be repeated a final time. Schumann's arabescancy is played here by another of my favorites, the now retired Portuguese pianist Maria Juan Puris. Actually, we can't be certain it was composed for the lute, but that has now become accepted wisdom. We're going to hear it now in full, in the typical fast slow fast movement format. The slow movement is particularly lovely and rather meditative in feel, and I expect you may well recognize it. It's played here by the almost incomparable Julian Freedom. Having started today in a slightly reflective vein, let's finish with a flourish. I played you a taster of the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns a few months ago, without telling you anything about him, and said we'd come back. Strange as it may seem today, thanks to the music which he's most known for, he was universally recognised as a child prodigy. In 1845, at the age of ten, he gave his first concert, which featured a Mozart piano concerto and also Beethoven's third piano concerto. I wonder if one of the reasons his music is viewed in some circles as light or even lightweight, is down to pieces like Carnival of the Animals, a composition which he even thought would damage his reputation as a serious composer, so much so that he would not allow it to be played during his lifetime. His organ symphony, famously used in the film Babe, was the work of a highly accomplished organist, and he was recognized as such all over France. Franz Liszt even went so far as to say he was the best in the world. Along with Anton Bruckner, he would open the Albert Hall organ on one of his visits to London in 1871. He was in fact very well travelled, the result perhaps of a disastrous marriage with the terrible loss of two infant children within weeks of each other. Before all this, his own father had died while he himself was a baby. So despite having suicidal thoughts in later years, his music is almost unfailingly cheerful. Azorski is supposed to have told him, You will fool no one with your pretty tunes. Well, he's fooled a fair few of us. And we're in good company too, as Gabriel Fore, whom we listened to right at the beginning of today's podcast, was one of his pupils and admirers. We're going to listen now to his rondo and capricioso for violin and orchestra. After opening with a measured and pretty melody, the piece then launches into a passage of joyful drama. It's dedicated to his friend, the Spanish virtuoso Pablo Sarasati, and it's definitely got a Spanish flamenco-like spirit about it, all of which is brilliantly conveyed in this recording by Joshua Bell at the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. One little nugget about Sarasati, while I remember, he refused to play the Brahma's violin concerto because the second movement opened with and gave the best tune to the oboe. Sarasati said he was damned if he was gonna stand there with his fiddle for two or three minutes while someone else got to do that. Anyway, he didn't have to wait long here.

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