79. Fanfare the Janacek way; and some nationalism with Rachmaninoff and Sibelius.

Next week we'll have a new voice to Top and Tell the Podcast, and you'll also be able to listen in stereo, not just from then on, but on any of the previous episodes as well. In the meantime, I'm thrilled to be able to tell you that we now have a website, for which I must give all the credit to my techie son, where you can search your favourite composers or get in touch with comments or requests. Go to perfectpitchpod.com and check it out. Today I have three thrilling orchestral passages for you, the combination of which will take you through a range of emotions, the most prominent of which I suspect will be nostalgia. All thanks to music from a Czech, a Russian, and a Finn. We've listened in the past to the music of two of the most popular Czech composers, the Vorczak and the Smetna. And it's high time we listened to the third who makes up the triumvirate, Leos Janarchek. Even though he was barely acknowledged in his homeland, never mind overseas. Actually, it wasn't until after the Second World War that he established any kind of reputation, and nowadays his operas are staged frequently. Janarchek was born in 1864 in Moravia, and Moravian folk music coursed through his veins, a patriotism which was only enhanced when the country was absorbed into Czechoslovakia after the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918. Much of this comes out in his Sinfonietta of 1926, which is as good an introduction to his music as anything else. You don't often hear it in the concert hall because it requires a brass section of twenty-five participants. The piece is arranged in five movements. And the opening one, which we'll listen to now, is a fanfare scored for brass and percussion only. Interspersed, it has to be said, with some frankly fairly shocking and dissonant interruptions, all of which are happily brought to a harmonic and triumphant conclusion. The two movements are played here by the Halle Orchestra conducted by Mark Elder. But there's another orchestral work which deserves greater airing than it gets his Symphonic Dances of 1940 and his last completed work. After the Russian Revolution, Rakmanov and his family legged it to the United States where he was going to stay until he died some twenty-five years later. These symphonic dances reflect perfectly one of the composer's own observations. The whole world is open to me, and success awaits me everywhere. Only one place is close to me, and that is my own country, Russia. So it's a pizza oozing with nostalgia, and only when the strings participate fully do you get a taste of the romantic manner of the way. To be honest, it doesn't even sound like him at the beginning at all. And this unusual three-note rhythm dee-dum di-dum di-dum which starts on the timpani, sounds a little angry to me. There's a gentle reprieve heralded by the oboe and later those lust strings where you'll hear the rhythm repeated very slowly. But you can sense that the original is never far away, and Rachmaninoff duly obliges with a refrain. So let's listen to the first of them, played by the Bavarian Radio Orchestra conducted by Maris Janssen. It's really exciting stuff. That is usually an element of triumph about it. And it certainly makes you feel good about the world. It's played here by my favourite orchestra. The London Philharmonic conducted by Ed Gardner. That's it for me for another week. Join me again soon. And please do follow, rate, and comment on the podcast because it all helps to spread the word. Thank you.