Episode 4. Jubilation and Passion

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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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After three episodes, you will know by now that the aim of this podcast is to share my love of classical music with you in exactly the same way you might recommend me a book, a play, or a film by way of demonstrating that there really is something in it for everyone, whatever your preconceptions might be. Which is why he came to be known as Papa Haydn. It is a triumphant and joyful passage from his oratorio, The Creation, first performed in 1799, which celebrates the creation as told in the book of Genesis. The heavens are telling the glory of God is a few minutes of pure jubilation. The piece was a huge success, performed about forty times in his lifetime. Turn up the volume a bit. This will make you feel that the world is not as bad a place as we might sometimes think. Almost everything about his work is playful and joyous, but that doesn't in any way make it trivial. His successors in Mozart and Beethoven owe him a great deal. But nowadays he's still viewed very much as a support act in a concert programme to be followed by something weightier like a Brahms or a Maller symphony. And that doesn't really seem to do him justice. Unless you've not heard this before, everyone knows what's coming next. But imagine being in that audience in Hanover Square in 1792. This will make the ladies scream, wrote Hyden. And was he ever right? The undante starts quite gently enough and then repeating the tune even more quietly. At this point, as a first-time listener, you are just as easing yourself back into your seat, perhaps even indulging in a little shut-eye to soak up some peaceful moments. And then out of nowhere, the entire orchestra comes in with a thumping chord with what the Germans call a pelkenschlag, a Greek word meaning kettle drumst joke. The joke is not repeated, but the entire minutes make up a series of lovely variations on the tune. And the conductor, Maris Jansens, was an expert in giving every instrument in the orchestra its own voice. In this recording, it's a little philharmonic. I honestly don't think you will hear a better rendition than this from the recording studio. It's as thrilling and note perfect as it can be. Compounding the problem. It's verding on the daft. Beethoven's enormous output in his miserable life had many landmarks, many firsts. His third symphony, the Eroca, changed symphonic writing for good. His ninth was the first to include a choir. I could go on. But if I had to single out just one piano piece which summed up the core frustration of his life, it would be his twenty-third of thirty-two pianosonata, now known as the appassionata. Writing or talking about music is notoriously hard, and some would say a little futile, because as I've said in the past, it's the hearing of it and the experience which is personal to each of us. But Beethoven, who once quipped that he would rather write ten thousand notes than a single letter of the alphabet, speaks to us so directly in his music, and this piece in particular, that it's not at all difficult to understand its message. Beethoven has something of a reputation for tumultuous, even balding music. Because of this, it's easy to forget that the man wrote some of the most exquisite and sensitive low moments in all classical music. So today we're going to listen to the second and final moment of the Apatronata played with appropriate passion and wonderful clarity by Valentina Lindsay. It starts with a simple theme, followed by three distinct variations before returning to the original. At first, it may seem a little pedestrian, but as it unfolds, Beethoven's mastery of counterpoint, that's the ability to have two or more tunes singing at the same time comes to the fore. It becomes five minutes of pure tenderness which grew on you each time you listen to it. As it comes to its close, Beethoven launches straight into the final movement without a pause. Listen to the way the notes go round and round in the first few seconds, which remains a theme throughout. Anger, frustration, desperation, turmoil. In the unlikely event,

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