68. Patriotism to Jubilation.

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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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Before we get on to the music, you might like to know that I now have a dedicated email address to which I invite you to send feedback of any kind, whether they be questions or even requests. And I'll do my utmost to answer them. The address is nick.perfectpicture podcast at gmail.com. The link is also in the description of today's podcast, but you'll have to copy and paste it to use it. Onto the music. One of John Williams' finest predecessors in the art of film school was William Walton. We've already heard an excerpt in the previous podcast of his music for the film Henry V. And there's little doubt that the man was in his element in this field. Leslie Howard approached Walton for his 1941 film For the Fugue. The music was so popular that the composer put together a piece the following year, and the result is a spitfart prelude and fugue. The prelude, I'm sure, will be familiar to you, but sometimes the fugue doesn't get an airing, because the opening stands well enough on its own and works for any rising occasion, just as it did at the wedding of the then Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. But the fugue passage which follows it is there to illustrate the assembling of the spitfire in the workshop with a brief solo violin passage to commemorate its designer, Reginald Mitchell, who was forced to stop working on it through illness and died of cancer at the age of forty-two. The final moments reintroduced the original theme to bring the piece to a triumphant and patriotic conclusion. Walton's bit of a prelude and fugue is played here by the Sinfonia concertante, conducted by Paul Daniel. As a result, there are plenty to choose from. But this one, number K380, is one of my favourites of the ones I've heard for its simple and catchy tune. It also has an unmistakable military feel about it, in trumpet sounds in the right hand and a distinct beat in the left. Yuja Wang gets the balance between simple tune and military absolutely perfectly. He was viewed as the natural successor de Verdi, and didn't write a great deal outside opera, but he did leave a four-string quartet. Among them these horrible six minutes composed overnight in 1890 on hearing of the death of his friend, the Duke of Savoy, formerly the King of Spain. You'll notice two clear themes in this elegy, which Piccini thought good enough to include in the subsequent operas. We started today with something upbeat, so let's finish in the same way. Unlike many of his preceding symphonies, number eight by the great Czech tunesmith Anton Devorjak is unremittingly cheerful. This final movement may have plenty of tension in it, but it is always uplifting. And it's played here by one of my favourite orchestras with whom I'm very proud to have an association, the London Philharmonic, conducted by Charles McCarrash.

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That's it for now. Thank you for listening to Perfect Pitch with Nick Keely Hutchinson. He'll be back again next week with some more treasures for you. So please do join him then. And you can subscribe to this podcast by clicking on the link below.