73.A mixture of familiar and unfamiliar.

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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.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Well, hello. Loyal followers will know that I've been off air for a while, thanks to a major meltdown moment in the IT department. I hope I haven't lost you in my absence, and that we are now back in situation normal. Let's reopen with something rousing and a little different, but not completely off-piece, as I think I can demonstrate. Who determines, I wonder, what defines something as an opera and what a musical? The latter may seem straightforward enough, but Mozart's magic flute is technically a Zingspiel, literally translated as a play with singing, which most of us would now call a musical, although it's never been referred to as anything other than an opera. Scroll forward just over a hundred years, and much the same goes for Gertrude's Porgy and Best, where there's plenty of dialogue interspersed with music, and yet we call that an opera as well. On the other hand, Westside's story remains categorized as a musical, and actually I'm quite happy about that, because it allows me to assert it as the best musical ever written, and nothing will persuade me otherwise. But move on a few more decades, and Stephen Sondheim's musical Sweeney Todd is now more often referred to as an opera. Not many will associate the word tuneful with a Schoenberg. But have you heard of another Schoenberg whose first names were Claude Michel? Respect if you have. Even if you haven't, you'll almost certainly be familiar with his music, as a composer of Miss Saigon and Sweeney Todd's near contemporary name is a Harb, which is still classed as a musical. Almost everything is sung, so the passages between the songs could, I think, be quite reasonably called a recitative, as it is in opera. So it's my guess that the musical historians of the future will come to refer to it as a late twentieth century opera. Its Frenchman composer, Claude Michel Schoenberg, was actually a pop star, but also a bit of an opera nut, especially Puccini. And Les Miserables is certainly operatic in scale. I remember when we went to see it in a theatre, we were too late to buy a programme. After an hour and a quarter, I just assumed, and I must confess I ardently hoped, that that was the end of it, only to discover that we were less than halfway through. And yes, I have tried the film, but I'm afraid I didn't have the patience to persevere despite its stellar cast. And I found it was a lot easier to turn off the television than it is to walk out of a theatre. All this is a very long preamble to justify playing a couple of extracts. There are so many to choose from, obviously. I dreamed a dream, and one day more are two outstanding candidates. But I'm going with stars sung by someone more closely associated with opera, Brentafel, in the part of Javert, the prison guard turned policeman determined to pursue Valjean, who has slipped through his fingers again. And then I can't resist playing Do You Hear The People Sing? Is this really such a far cry from some of Verdi's not very thinly disguised political choruses? I make no political comment now, beyond observing that it seems appropriate today as it ever has been. And what a great tune it is, anyway.

SPEAKER_03 4:27

Fallen from the prey. God be my witness. Till we come face to face, till we come face to face. He knows his way in the dark. Mine is the way of the Lord. Those who follow the path of the righteous shall have their reward. And if you fall as those in a fair, you fall in float stars in your multitudes, scarce to be counted, filling the darkness with order and light. You are the sentinels, silent and sure, keeping watch in the night, keeping watch in the night. You know your place in the sky. You hold your course and your aim, and each in your season returns and returns, and is always the same. And if you so it is written on the rate of paradise, and those of all so far as Lord, let me find him that I may see him safe behind the people singing, singing the song of angry men.

SPEAKER_08 7:23

It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again when the beating of your heart echoes the beating of the drums.

SPEAKER_07 7:36

There is a life about to start with tomorrow, cards. Will you join the state who will be strong and stand with me? Beyond the badge, oh long to see the fight, you don't fight. We will live again in freedom in the garden of the Lord. We will walk behind the plows, we will put away the sword. The chain will be broken and come and will have everyone.

SPEAKER_06 9:56

We will be fine, stop.

SPEAKER_01 10:54

That rousing chorus tells of people who will not be slaves again. Verdi's opera Nabucco, written nearly 150 years earlier, and the opera which undoubtedly sealed his reputation, contains perhaps the most famous chorus ever written, the pensiero, known as the chorus of the Hebrew Slaves. The words are based on Psalm 137 and conclude, let me cry out with sad lamentation, or else may the Lord strengthen me to bear these sufferings. It's sung here by the chorus of the Royal Opera House Copengarden, accompanied by its orchestra, conducted by Bernard Heiding. It's a bit of an irony, really, because for a time it was reckoned to be the most popular after its first performance and approval which lasted well into the nineteenth century. It's now known as the Coronation Concerto, as a result of Mozart playing it in front of Leopold II, being crowned as Holy Roman Emperor. So it's a bit of a hidden masterpiece. One particular oddity is that Mozart left out large swathes of the left hand in the score. In fact, when it came to the second movement, it didn't bother at all. Here is the first movement, played by Mari Pirah with the English Chamber Orchestra. It's lovely playing of a much underrated piece. We've had quite a mix today. At the start of this episode, I mentioned most art of magic photo. So let's finish our contrast of overplayed and underplayed by listening to one of the most famous and famously difficult hours sung by the Queen of the Night in that opera. It's not hard to tell she's in a rage, in this case with her daughter Amina, charging her with killing corruption on paper by the same. Apart from having to convey another drop, the finger is confronted by some fairly horrendous acrobatics right at the top of the scale. And I can only imagine that in a live performance, it must strike even more turn into its finger than its target. It's always an air-biting moment. Here is a recording which combines rage and technical pride at its best.