59. Comfort, Joy, Majesty.

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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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If you'd been around in the late 1600s or early 1700s, names like Molinari, Galilei, Carroso, Roncale will have been very well known to you. But I doubt they're familiar with many of us today. The Italian composer Ottorini Raspighi, who lived between 1979 and 1936, is most well known now for his three Roman tone poems, The Fountains of Rome, The Pines of Rome, and the Roman Festival. These, alongside with his tone poem The Birds, are pretty well all the exposure he gets these days. But as well as being an accomplished musician and popular composer in these days, Vespig was also a musicologist with great interest in past Italian masters. Written between 1917 and 1936, his ancient airs and dances are free sweets based on original loot compositions by some of these past masters. The idea was a simple one, to transcribe them to orchestra to make them more appealing to a modern audience. The third one is called For Strings Alone. It's got a slightly more melancholic feel to it than its previous two, but I like it for its gentleness and strangely English rather than the Italian feel. Occasionally it even feels stately. Ultimately, I think it's very comforting as well. It's played here by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra conducted by Neville Mariner. The work in its totality covers all the major and minor keys. So that's 24 in all, and serves both as a sort of exercise manual, but also as an extraordinary collection of compositions in their own right. It would be hard to exaggerate their importance in the keyboard repertoire. As you can imagine, there are countless recordings of it. And the variety, especially in the speed, is quite staggering. But I stumbled on this one played by Alexandre Tarrault, which immediately grabbed me. The speed is perfect, as isn't the variety of volume, and the result is therefore deeply expressive. Once more, giving lie to the myth that Barker's music cannot stir the soul. Staying on the small scale, but raising the tempo a little, here's the lovely minuet from Schubert's Third Symphony. A symphony which doesn't get anything like enough airing in my view. It also has this delightful trio right at the heart of it, in the style of a late 18th century dance, the so-called Lendler. It's played here by the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, led by Florian Dondera. That final emphatic note, underpinned by the kettle drum, leads me to the final movement of another symphony, which makes good use of that instrument. I talk of Haydn Symphony No. 94, The Surprise, which got its name from the second movement which we listened to in an earlier podcast, played by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Mars Jansen. And it's to them that I'm turning again because they produce a really playful sound, so in keeping with the humour of its composer. That thump on the kettle drum in the second movement, the Paukenschlag, is recalled albeit in a different context, with resounding affirmation. So now seems as fitting a time as ever to play this version of the national anthem, arranged by Benjamin Britton in 1962. It's not to everybody's liking, but it is to mine. And apparently it did have the approval of the Queen when she heard it for the first time, reportedly saying to its composer something along the lines of, and as you know, I have heard it a good number of times. The first verse has his almost a prayerful start before a jubilant and joyful second. And in that respect alone, it seems to me to be the perfect way to mourn the passing of one monarch and acclaim the arrival of another.

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