69. Music to lift the spirits.

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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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Whenever you're feeling a little low or bleary-eyed, this rousing overture by Carl Maria von Weber will put you right in no time. Weber died just a year before Beethoven in 1826 at the age of 39, and he certainly found a champion in that great man. But his music also paved the way for Richard Wagner. We've already listened to his Invitation to the Dance and the Finement of his clarinet concetto. So you will know that his music is lively and cheerful. His opera Orienti, which you are more likely to hear pronounced wrongly as Urianthi, was first performed in 1823, and you'll struggle to see anything other than a concert performance of it nowadays, as it's very rarely staged. So that saves me from having to delve into the plot. I did actually see it in a concert performance when I was 15 in Hamburg, where for the first time in my life I was required to wear a black tie. As a student, that kind of outfit was not even in my small collection of clothes, never mind as a travelling one in my luggage, so I had to make do by boring, with rather comic, ill-fitting results. But while the opera itself has never been popular, the same can't be said of its sprightly overture, full of exciting rhythms and different harmonies, which I'm sure explains why Wagner warned him, and on top of that, an absolutely gorgeous tune at its heart. So let's listen to it and enjoy it just for that. Weber's Oberture to Oriante is played here in a live performance by the Viola Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Carl Burma. In 1780, Mozart took the theme and then wrote twelve variations on it. One can only imagine the fun he must have had. You think you'd get bored after War and II, but can't, because the genius of Mozart just leaves you smiling in admiration. Mozart's twelve variations in C major, to give them their proper title, are played here by Karl Fienn. Between them, they collaborated on fourteen operettas, but like all partnerships, it had its ups and downs. Despite enormous commercial and financial success, neither partner really thought that the work of the other was good enough for their own specializations. And Sullivan took the view that his music was too good to be compromised to the trivialities of Gilbert's parody and libretto, especially as much of it was mocking the very establishment that Sullivan was trying to cozy up to. He had, after all, received knighthood for his serious stuff. As a result, there were frequent bust-ups and reconciliations, and by the time Sullivan died, they were no longer on speaking terms. In order to disguise, albeit very thinly, their mockery of contemporary Britain, they would have set their works in different countries. The most famous and most successful, the Mikado is set in Japan, and there's absolutely nothing Japanese about it whatsoever. The operetta has loads of very charming pieces, and we're going to listen to one now. Coco singing to Yum Yum about a titwillow who plunges into a river below when his love is unrequited. The birders among you will know that there is no such thing as a titwillow. There is indeed a willow tit, but that did not reach these shores until the year of Sullivan's death. Nor are they especially known for eating worms, as Gilbert's words suggest, but none of that really matters. On a tree by a river, a little tomtit, or simply titwillow, is sung here by one of the best of his day, John Reed.

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On a tree by a river, a little tomtit sang willow, titwillow, titwillow. And I said to him, Dickie Bird, why do you sit singing willow tit willow tit willow? Is it weakness of intellect, birdie? I cried, or a rather tough worm in your little inside with a shake of his poor little head he replied. Oh willow tit willow tit willow He slapped at his chest as he sat on that bow, singing willow tit willow. Willow tit will o and a cold perspiration his brow Oh willow tit will o tit will o And he stopped and he sighed and a gurgle he gave and he plunged himself into the billowy wave and an corps from the steps grave Now I feel just as sure as I'm sure that my name isn't Willow Tip Willow Tit Willow That was blight and affection that made him exclaim Oh willow tit Willow Tip Willow And if your impulse and obdurate I shall perish as he did and you will know why Though I probably shall not exclaim as I die Oh willow tit willow titwillow The diminutive impeccably dressed chainsmaker Maurice Ravel was widely regarded as the greatest living French composer in the nineteen twenties.

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Although initially on close terms with his fellow Frenchman Claude de Busy, their rivalry turned out to be of an unfriendly nature. Ravel's output was not a big one. He didn't, for example, write any symphonies, nor as an atheist any church music. Before you get either excited or exasperated, let me tell you now that I'm not going to play it here. As you can't relive on the dead, I'm happy to go on record and say that it's a really very silly piece. And that's not really being some kind of a musical snob. Rebel himself remembered his excess and commented, I've only written one masterpiece in my life, and it has no music in it. Monero is little more than a 17-minute repetitive crescendo. Crescendo you'll remember meaning a gradual build-up in volume. And I can't put the life of me think why anyone would deliberately put it on with the intention of actually listening to it. A live performance, on the other hand, is altogether different. Because there's always a certain tension in the monotony of the drumbeat. But a much larger scale work altogether. There's lots of teasing here before the strings come in with a fabulously large melody, which is followed by lots of pushing and pulling in the timber. Don't try dancing to this because you'll land up as a heap on the floor. Which is right to me.

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