66. Fireworks, Remembrance, Statement.

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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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By the time the next podcast goes out, we will have celebrated two significant events in the calendar. Fireworks night and also Remembrance Day. So some of today's music is by way of paying recognition to both of those. But if you involve more than a hundred cannon as well, you're bound to add a little extra risk. First performed in that outdoor display in Green Park in 1749. The music part of the Jamboree was altogether far more successful, and has remained a favourite ever since. The overture is instantly and appropriately majestic, and we all like something very familiar from time to time. So here is that overture, played by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, conducted by Neville Mariner. Now it was something rather less familiar, but certainly no less touching. It's one of those times of surrender and shut your eyes a moment. As with Rosie Steps of the Morn, it is a heart-wrenchingly sublime melody from Hanel's most popular oratorio, Theodora. It's also a piece which is often staged, as it was to wide acclaim at Glymeurne in 1996 when the late Lorraine Hunt Eberson played the part of Irene, whose Aria this is. Irene sings, as with Rosie Steps of the Morn, as an effort to provide fellow Christians with courage while being persecuted in fourth century Antioch. As with Rosie Steps of the Morn, advancing drives the shades of night. So from virtuous tolls well born, raise thou our hopes of endless light. Some voices are easier to describe than others. In the case of Hunt Lieberson, it's actually very difficult because the normal and rather hackney superlatives just don't seem to apply. In 2005, one critic referred to her singing of Handel as I pull down the blinds, unplug the telephone, I can't talk right now. Beautiful. It's certainly the kind of voice which commands your attention. And as you're about to hear, hers was one of those voices which had an almost transcendent quality about it, with a purity and clarity unmatched by many. Having nursed her sister through a fatal breast cancer, she did herself succumb to the same illness only a few years later, at the age of 52. So in that context, I find the combination of Handel's melody and Hunt Lieberson's voice almost unbearably moving. She's accompanied by the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment, conducted by Harry Bickett. Let's conclude this week how it began with a little jollity. Beethoven presented his first symphony to Vienna in eighteen hundred. While very much in the Mozart hybrid edition, it's also making a clear statement that there's a new kid on the block. And there's little doubt that that is how it was received. The last movement opens quietly in an almost teasing way, climbing a few notes on a scale at a time, and not at all how you would expect a finale. But then it's unleashed into a dancing and playful Allegro di Archi. We often talk about how his third symphony, the Eeroica, broke the mould of symphonic writing. But actually, the signs of something different in music are already here in the first symphony. The final movement is played here by the Chamber Orchestra of Bremen, conducted by Paavo Yevi.

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