50! A quartet of jollity, perfection, comfort, and playfulness.
Mahler, Mozart, Bach, Brahms.
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.
SPEAKER_03Today marks a mini landmark for Perfect Pitch. I can scarcely believe that I embarked on this little mission in June last year. And apart from a brief break over Christmas and New Year, my ramblings have been rolling out every Monday since. So if you've managed to stick it out this long, my heartfelt thanks and welcome to the 50th episode. It prompted me to look back and see what we've covered. In short, about 180 different pieces of music from about 65 different composers. Today we're going to start with a sprightly movement from one of Marla's ten symphonies. The first to be published turned out to be one of the shortest, at under an hour in duration, which is a bit of an irony as it acquired the nickname Titan. But it also happens to be my favourite of the lot. The piece itself is full of the sound of the countryside, not just bird song, but cattle bells and country dancing. The second movement in the symphony is traditionally a slow one, although of course Beethoven had already broken that convention three times. But Mahler waits until the third movement for that. His second one is a lively passage, and I really can't improve on this description of it by August Beer, who talked of it as transporting the listener to the village pub. It has the title scherzo, but it is an honest to goodness peasant dance. The piece is full of healthy realism taken from everyday life, with purring, buzzing basses, shrieking violins, and squeaking clarinets, to which the peasants dance their stompa. The second movement of Mal Assembly No. Her recording of Mimi in Puccini's opera La Bohem with Luciano Pavroti as Rodolfo in the early 60s remains, in my view, unsurpassed. It really is heart-melting stuff. But she was also a wonderful countess in Mozart's opera The Marit of Figure. The Aria Dove Soro is one of the showcase numbers for the Countess. No, I hadn't heard of that word until recently either, but it sums it up absolutely perfectly. Which brings purity and real emotion to the aria in which she laments her philandering husband whilst clinging to the hope that she can somehow win him back. The first one and a half minutes are a prelude to the aria itself, and you will know the tune proper is coming after Framey concludes her introduction with an absolutely gorgeous note. Another thing to listen out for here is the genius of Mozart's orchestration, especially with the woodwind. The Aryat would survive perfectly well without it, of course. But it's a tiny, inspired, almost delicious in its sweetness few seconds, which helps to add the melancholic message. I marvel at it every single time, and happily you get to hear it twice. But oh boy, what a voice. Dove Sono from Mozart's opera The Marriager Figure is sung here by Mirella Freni with the orchestra of the Rome Opera House conducted by Franco Ferraris. When Bach was appointed music director in Leipzig in 1723, he was expected to produce new music for Sundays and feast days. So he set about his task by writing a shed load of cantatas, in the end, probably something in the region of two hundred. And that's a fair amount of pressure when you don't have the luxury of the playback button. Many of them will be familiar to you, none more so I suspect, than cantata number one four seven, titled Herz und Mund und Tat and Leben Heart and the Mouth and Deed and Life. Never heard of it, I hear you say, until I tell you it includes the chorale Jews of Joy of Man's Desiring. Everybody knows this lovely chorale, but when it's performed like this, it's almost a comfort blanket. Here it is, sung in the original German by the choir of King's College, Cambridge, with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, conducted by Neville Mariner.
SPEAKER_00That'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.
