65. Lightness, Comfort, Drama.

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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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It's not a bad thing to mix things up occasionally. And in that spirit, I think it's time to pay a nod to the importance of percussion. Another friend of mine was asked once, do you play a musical instrument? To which he replied, Yes, I play the drum. Back came a supplementary. Okay, but do you play a musical instrument? That's a fairly damning and ignorant understanding of the importance of percussion, especially in a large orchestra. A Beethoven symphony without timpani, or a Marlow one without cymbals and all sorts of other gadgets convey the right sound, would be unthinkable. And whatever your views are on Ravel's rather silly piece Bolero, oops, just let my head slip through there. Although a live performance is always quite exciting, it would be nothing without those two drums at its heart. Don't panic, I'm not about to fill your ears with a few minutes of drums, but the xylophone comes into this category, and there isn't a great deal of classical music which makes for easy listening. So I'm going off piste a bit to start today with a tribute to the Golden Age of Ragtime to demonstrate a few minutes of quite brilliant dexterity. On the xylophone is Maria Lelikova, and on the piano, Pavel Zupov. We don't know a huge amount about him, but what we do know is that his mother was English, but his father was Sierra Leone. And that's actually where he was evicted without even knowing that Samuel's unmarried mother was pregnant. And it was she who gave him the name Samuel Coelerge Taylor in honor of the poet Samuel Taylor Coeridge. His mixed race brought with it some unpleasant predictors, as you might expect around that time. And yet his music was widely popular in the States, especially with African Americans, so much so that he even contemplated staying there. In fact, his popularity was enough for him to be attended to President Theodore Roosevelt, a rare thing indeed from Anamic's race in those days. In the UK, he'd been a talented enough violinist to go to the Royal College of Music, where he won a scholarship, and was even encouraged by none other than Edward Elgar. So let's stay with the lighter side of life for a few more minutes and listen to one of the four moments of its African suite, originally composed for piano. Dance Negre has lots of African swing in it, with a charming love theme at its heart. It's also, I think, got more than the hint of Arthur Sullivan in it, as in Gilbert and Dance Negre by Samuel Coleridge Taylor is played here by the Chicago Sinfonetta, conducted by Paul Freeman. Written in the year of his death, 1791, Mozart could not have had any idea that his twenty-seventh piano concerto would turn out to be his last, and yet the piece has so much melancholy throughout that it is hard not to wonder whether he might have sensed the end was near. This slow movement, the Largetto, a passage of the utmost simplicity, is played by Friedrich Goulder, accompanied by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Claudio Abardo. Stand by if you're feeling a little sensitive. We're going to finish today with some proper drama. When the Italian composer Rossini died in 1868, a number of other composers got together in the hope of writing a requiem in his honour. Verdi's participation in the project was the Liberarme, but the whole thing got abandoned just days before its premier. When the writer and humanist Antonio Manzoni died in 1873, Verdi set about writing its own requiem in his honor. It's a colossal piece of some 90 minutes. Requiring four syllabus and quiet. It's not really surprising. But despite its early days, it left a bit until the 1930s. Nowadays it's one of the most widely performed records of the concept of listened to the day on an earlier occasion. Today, we're going to listen to the passage which starts at the whole thing off. If you've not heard this before, don't be put off by its tempestuous opening. Almost desperate in its force. It is, after all, the plea to be freed from eternal death. It progresses to the very familiar refrain from earlier in the piece. But the real gem is the passage which opens quietly with the word requiem. You'll not coming after a single note on the open. I don't know how many times I have heard this piece, but I can honestly say that I have never heard the five-minute requiem passage sung so exquisitely. Let me explain why for a minute. The last of those is an octave leap. That's a jump of eight notes from B flat to high B flat. Everyone has heard of the term top T in music. Well, the B flat is one and a half notes lower. This is the moment which makes this a standard recording. In music, if you want to indicate a soft, quiet sound, you mark the score with a P for piano, meaning quietly. If you want it quieter still, you mark it with P P and if you want it fairly audible, you mark it P P P. As if the leap isn't hard enough. PPP It's what Verdu requires of its earlist on the second requiem. If you manage to achieve it, and it's always a tense moment in a live performance. Listen to the absolute perfection, which Frady brings to this moment. A note which then sustains without wavering for fully ten seconds. I could hardly beat my ears on the head the first time. The last thing to say about this the final passage of the piece is it embodies the previous 65 minutes. Even though the other three thirds do not participate, all the drama, fear, and tenderness of the whole Requiem are summed up in this passage. As a whole, Verdi's Requiem was the first piece of music which made me really realise the wonder and versatility of the human voice.

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