76. Tragic Nobility.(Tip: for maximum benefit, let go, submit. Perseverance is rewarded!)

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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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It's been well over a year since we listened to some music by Anton Bruckner. On that occasion, it was a one-off episode, unnumbered, between 19 and 20, if you haven't heard it, to mark the death of Bernard Heidek. I didn't talk about Bruckner then, so we will revisit him today after listening to his nemesis, Johannes Brahms. Bruckner was actually quite an admirer of Brahms' music, even dedicating his Seventh Symphony to him. But their styles were very different. Brahms, steeped in the rules of the classical romantic tradition, in an attempt to be the successor of Beethoven, and Bruckner, considerably more exploratory and complex. It's a bit ironic that Brahms was so disparaging of his being his contemporary, because between the two of them, they had very few fans in their lifetimes. And their music, although firmly established in the repertoire nowadays, continues to divide opinion to this day. In 1880, Brahms wrote two overtures, the Academic Festival and The Tragic. One, he said, laughs, the other, cries. I think we've listened to the Academic Festival overture before, so today we will start with a tragic. Brahms gave it that name to reflect its melancholic mood, so it wasn't in response to any personal experience nor particular literary character or event. It may have a sombre tone, but it also has a certain majesty as well as a very symphonic feel. In fact, if he'd got round to writing a fifth symphony, it's not hard to imagine this as being an opening movement. His life, which cannot in any way be said to be reflected in his music, was unexceptional, if perhaps a little strange. An organist by training, he was well into his thirties before turning his hand to composition. He never married, but that was almost certainly down to the fact that his devout Catholicism caused him to make multitude engagement proposals to teenage girls, because he could be fairly certain of their purity. But when you're still doing that in your 60s and beyond, that doesn't really turn out a great method. None of that can inform my opinion as if it is music. But with a little guidance, I've come to realise that I may have been listening to it with a wrong approach. Once you become familiar with the works of the big and famous names, you realise that one of the reasons you enjoy them is because you can almost always identify a beginning, a goal, and ultimately a destination. Bruckner's nine symphonies have an average time of over an hour. For somebody with such a huge inferiority complex and doubting its own ability, that sort of scale might appear a bit of a contradiction. But the letter in itself would not bother me. All foreplay and no climax. Gustav Mahler can also take us on long passages, but you always know that the weight is going to be worth it. In my bird high-tech tribute, I selected one of the movements from that paper. And today I want to leave you with a second, a slow movement, which many now agree to be the central part of the symphony, and apparently composed on hearing of the impending death of Richard Wagner. This time, he does deliver what you want, even if not the first time. You'll see what I mean when you hear it. But later, on the second occasion, so Bernard's eye would have been happy with that, you get an accompanying cymbal crash. So this is the approach I take now when I listen to his music. And I'm passing it on to you now in the hope that it might help. In the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Derek Cook writes Brookness music has no need to go anywhere, no need to find a point of arrival because it's already there. Experiencing Bruckner's symphonic music is more like walking around a cathedral and taking in each aspect of it than like setting out on a journey to some hope-for goal. A couple of things to mention. The brass is jaw-droppingly exciting, with Bruckner making use of the so-called Wagner tuber, a hybrid instrument which that man had invented to bridge the sounds of the trombone and the French horn to try and get a more noble sound. And secondly, nobody can doubt that the theme is not only truly gorgeous, but that its overarching mood is one of enormous nobility. So I hope you'll trust me on this and allow a really glorious sound to enfold you. You will struggle to find a better rendition than this. Mary Janssen's had an extraordinary gift for bringing out the voices of every single instrument in the orchestra. So the second movement of Bruckner's seventh symphony, the lyric, is played here under his direction by the Royal Konsercava Orchestra.

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That's it for now. Thank you for listening to Perfect Pitch with Nick Healy 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.