56. A few gems before a summer break.

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.

As we head for the holiday period, the podcast will take its own break for just a couple of months to allow you to catch up on previous episodes. In the meantime, let's see where today's takes us, and if it lands up being a little bit longer, so be it. This sultry aria seems a good place to start. The American poser George Gershwin lived just thirty-eight years between 1898 and 1937, but in that brief period made a remarkable impact on both classical music and the future of popular music. In fact, I wonder whether development of modern popular music could ever have unfolded without Gershwin. He was a prolific songwriter and gifted tunesmith. Some would say America's answer to Schubert. Unlike Schubert, he was a good looking man, and in much demand from the ladies. Little wonder he didn't see the point in marrying. A why buy a book when you can join a library sort of approach, you might think. Nowadays, his reputation tends to be limited to being the composer of Rhapsody and Blue. But that's to miss out on a huge and highly original output. His real legacy is that he achieved a successful crossover between the Broadway musical and opera and the most popular American opera of all, Porgy and Bess. 1935, in the midst of the Great Depression, was hardly the perfect year for its launch, and it was a commercial disaster. But now, largely thanks to a 1986 production at Gleimborn, it's firmly established in the operatic repertoire. It's riddled with unforgettable melodies, and summertime in a word is a belter. Stephen Sonnheim even acclaimed the lyrics for this and My Man's Gone Now as the best lyrics in musical theatre, written by DuBo's Hayward. The tune will be known to almost everyone, but you won't hear it sung better than by the American soprano Leontine Price, born in 1927. She had this wonderful, almost raunchy voice, which lent itself as comfortably to Verdi as it does to Buccino or Mozart. And this smoky rendition of over sixty years ago has few, if any, equals. She's accompanied by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Herbert von Carrian. Actually, there are only two verses, so I'll give you the lyrics because you don't want to be concentrating on the words, just relishing the voice. Fish are jumping and the cotton is high. Oh, your dad is rich and your ma is good looking. So hush, little baby, don't you cry. One of these mornings you're going to rise up singing, then you'll spread your wings and you'll take the sky. But till that morning, there's a nothing can harm you with daddy and mummy standing by. Well, there's no shortage of water in this piece. Just a few years after Porgy and Best was written, Disney's film Fantasia was released in 1940, comprised of eight separate cartoon phases. The aim was twofold. First, to revive the fortunes of Mickey Mouse, whose popularity was strangely on the wane at the time, and secondly, through the inspiration of Leopold Stokovsky, to introduce children to classical music by using it as a background to each separate part. The most famous passage is undoubtedly the third, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, based on the poem by Goethe. In it, a young apprentice is left alone by his master to carry out some domestic chores. Unsurprisingly bored by this request, he deploys some of his own magic skills to get a mop to collect a bucket of water and clean the floor. All goes to plan, except at the point when the job is finished, and the apprentice realizes he doesn't have the necessary skills to make the mop stop. In desperation, he chops it up only to magnify the problem because each piece then becomes a whole mop, which in turn fills its own bucket. Mickey Mouse is in a right panic, with a place about to be totally flooded, when his sorcerer boss returns just in time to save the day. Ducasse didn't compose a great deal and actually destroyed quite a lot of what he did write, as he was so self-critical. But this music by far outweighed anything else. It really is an ideal way to introduce classical music to the young, because even if you haven't seen the film, it's not hard to picture the chaos which the music conveys. The mops are well and truly on the march, and it reaches its climax as his boss arrives and sends them on their way. The brief passage of calm towards the end reflects a rather meek Mickey Mouse before he is himself shown the door by the sorcerer, with of course the aid of a mop. The Sorcerer's Apprentice by Paul Ducasse is played here by the Columbia Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stakovsky, who appeared in the film himself and took great pride in telling people that in it Mickey Mouse had shaken him by the hand once a potential disaster had been averted. So we're going to listen to a famous duet and then an equally famous Aria from two different operas. In Act One of Mozart's Don Giovanni, an opera we visited once before, the Lothario woo's Selina as his next conquest. He seeks to whisk her off with the words La Cidarem La Mano, meaning there you will give me your hand, which even she knows is likely to be a massive understatement. She plays hard to get with Vore a non vore, I want to, but I don't want to. But it doesn't take long for the charms of the Don for her to agree to his word Andyam, let's go. Which she repeats with an almost what the heck, surrender. Any hesitancy in the music moves to undiluted joy, a feeling Selena will come to change very quickly. By way of context, she's at her own wedding party and still in her bridal frock, so I'm not entirely sure who's the greater offender here, to be honest. In La Cidarem La Mano from Mozart's Don Giovanni, the part of the Don is sung here by Jerry Finley and Selina by a not especially reluctant Kate Royal. The second one I want us to listen to scrolls back to the beginning of the 18th century and Handel. It was pretty bad luck to have been born in the same year as Johann Sebastian Bach, because notwithstanding his enormous output, I'm afraid Handel's always going to come second fiddle in any list of the Baroque composers. But his music is of colossal importance, and all of us could roll out a string of his major works water music, music for the royal fireworks, Messiah, Zadot the Priest, and so on. One thing that Handel did do, which Bark did not, was to write opera and nearly fifty of them, some of them of considerable length. So here's one of his most famous arias from his opera Rinaldo. Lasha Kyopianga, listeners of a certain age may recognise as being the backing for an old advertisement for a sale at an upmarket nightry store. That one with green bags and gold lettering. It's obviously a very beautiful backing, but I did used to wonder what it's about this choice in particular. Then I stumbled upon the translation of its opening line, meaning, let me weep over my cruel fate. And wouldn't it be nice if it was a quite deliberate and amusing comment of sympathy for parting with an unexpected amount of cash? Almarin has been taken captive by the Saracen King Argante, and it is to him that these words are being addressed. Let me weep over my cruel fate, and let me sigh for liberty. May sorrow shatter these chains, for my torments are just out of pity. If you heard Joyce Di Donato singing this, the last thing on your mind would be letting her go. This is just the most beautiful sound. For those of you who are up to date with the podcast, I'll be back in a couple of months. In the meantime, strap yourself in that is almost relentless rent of the finish of eight of the Seventh Symphony until we meet again.