67. A Quintet of Beauties.

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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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Many of you will doubtless remember the late Montalard Caballet, one of the all-time great sopranos, when she paired up with another huge voice of Freddie Mercury at the opening of the Barcelona Olympics singing, Well, Barcelona. I'm not sure that Puccini's La Rondine would feature too highly on many people's top ten favourite operas, but here's a cracking tune sung by the part of Magda, expressing a dream about Doretta, who falls head over heels in love with a pauper. Riches, he says, count for nothing against such overwhelming passion. I found an earlier recording, which may I be forgiven for saying so, found it a little bit scratchy on the higher notes. The contrast with this later one could hardly be greater. It's another beautiful example of superlative voice control, especially in the quietest places. Doretta's Dream is sung here by Montessar Cavalier, accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Charles McCarras. So let us turn our attention to one of Mozart's quartets, of which we wrote 26. The Hunt Quartet, as it came to be known because of its lively opening mimicking the sound of horns, is full of Mozart's ebaliant joy. And it's clear in this last movement that he's also just having a bit of fun. If you listen carefully, you can clearly discern four individual parts playing their own lines, a skill which Mozart perfected in his operas, as well as a playful exchange between two pairs. It has a script to it which can only make you feel good, and it's played here by the Emerson Quartet. And I want to go back to that piece now and play you the third movement in full. You will recognize the main theme as being lifted from the nursery rhyme Frère Jacques. But it's a music full of nostalgia for Mahler's youth, especially in the Jewish gig in the middle, which is the sort of thing you would have heard on the streets as a young boy. Marler did not have a happy childhood. One of 14 children, six did not survive infancy, and another later committed suicide. His parents were constantly at each other's throats, so it was not a happy household. That probably explains why there's always a hint of sadness to be found in his works. However, triumphantly they might conclude. His music wasn't really understood in his lifetime, much less appreciated. And he even said that he wished he could conduct his symphonies to audiences 50 years after his death. That observation turned out to be quite a present one. Nowadays, his works are played the world over to an appreciation he could never have imagined. Conducted by Bruno Walter. American Leopold Gadowski who lived between 1870 and 1938 was probably one of the finest self-talk pianists and composers of all time. But it's hardly a name which jumps into the household category now. One of the things he was famous for was transcribing the works of other people, rather like Liszt used to do. And Chopper was a prime candidate. We're going to listen to his transcription now of the Prelude Opus 10, number three. This is a really charming piece, which has an extra oddity about it, and I wonder if you can guess what it is. Rachmaninoff once said that Chopin was a composer for the right hand, and there are times when it does seem as if the right hand is doing all the work. On that occasion, however, you heard a transcription played by the French pianist Laurent Vagchard using his left hand alone. And now, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I expect you'll rewind that a bit, or even listen to it again. I certainly did the first time I heard it. The Mozart Quartet, which we heard earlier, along with five others, was dedicated to Joseph Haydn, the man universically acknowledged as having been the father of the spring quartet. Mozart may have written 26, but his mentor knocked out 68 of them. As we've had a spring quartet, I'm going to turn to one of Haydn's symphonies now. Number 85 was one of the physics of six, 82-27, which came to be known as the Paris Symphony, having been commissioned by the President's Olympic Masonic Lodge in that city. They made him in those immortal words an offer a current refuse, a fee for the six symphonies, which equated to more than his entire salary at the Hardy Court, as well as an orchestra at least twice the size he was used to, and the very finest of audiences made up of the great and the good. Composed in about 1786. It was only a few years before some of those very people would lose their heads in the French Revolution. The most notable victim was Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI, who had preceded her to the guillotine. The Queen is known to have favoured this of all the six, which is why it was promptly nicknamed La Reine. The fourth movement, the Presto, and it certainly is quick, is played here by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Herbert von Kerrian.

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