Episode 5. A Prodigy, The Voice of an Angel, and a Happy Tune

SPEAKER_02 0:15

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_00 0:42

If Felix Mendelssohn, who lived between 1809 and 1847, were able to assess his own life, his only justifiable grievance would be its brevity. One of four children, a sister Fanny, was almost as talented as her brother in composition and piano playing. Mendelssohn led a charmed existence. He was handsome, highly educated, well read, a talented artist, as well as being an accomplished piano player and organist. So good, in fact, that on one occasion the organ he was playing had to be switched off after a service as no one was going home. Composer, respected conductor, and as if that wasn't enough, he was also very rich. In short, a full package and a damn good catch. I suspect the fact that this child prodigy never had to struggle financially has contributed to some labelling his work as superficial, sentimental, and even mediocre. And I must confess to having been influenced that way for many years myself, for which I must lay the blame squarely on one of my journalist idols, Bernard Levin, who wrote so persuasively and eloquently about many subjects, a few more so than music. A passionate Wagnerian whose music will come too soon, Levin once wrote that he didn't really see the point of Mahler, rated Verdi as a rather ordinary musician, and questioned why, with all the other talents he had at his disposal, Mendelssohn felt the need to devote his life to music. Having for years heard nothing much more than his big hits or the first violin concerto, the Hebrides overture, incidental music from Midsummer Night's Dream, the Scottish and Italian symphonies, I had some sympathy with his view for too long, wrongly deciding in my own head it was all just too sugary. What a mistake. But one so easily made when not enough of his other choral and chamber music is played. And here's some evidence. Eight string instruments unfold almost half the piece with this beautiful violin melody, underpinned by an energetic momentum. And just when you think it's running out of steam on the final bend, there's a renewed sprint of the line. When you consider his age, this is the work of a genius. No question. It's not a degree, it's just a delight. And I know I must respectfully disagree with Bernard Levin on this, as I do with his views on Verdi, however much I admired his writing. And I took some pleasure in combling across his quit from Wagner about Mendelsm in an article entitled Judaism in Music in 1850. Mendelsm has shown us that a Jew may have the amplest of talents, the finest and most varied culture, the highest and tenderest sense of honour, and yet these qualities cannot help him even once to evoke in us the deep heart-searching effect which we expect from art. I wonder if even one of my journalistic idols may himself have been susceptible to the views of one of his own Mendelssohn incidentally converted to Christianity. Mendelssohn was only thirty-eight years old when he died, after a couple of strokes which were brought on from overwork. We'd much have to thank him for, not least editing and conducting Baths and Matthew Passion nearly eighty years after that man's death, as well as reviving his music in Europe generally. And it was also Mendelssohn who conducted the first performance of Schubert's Great Teamer Symphony in 1839, a work as composer never heard played, and my all-time favourite symphony. The purist do not give him the credit he deserves, and we'll hear much more of his music in future podcasts. It's almost universally fresh and life-enhancing, as you're about to hear for yourself. The first movement of Mendelssohn's octet, the work of a sixteen-year-old remember, is played here by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. The legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini, who lived between 1876 and 1957, was so widely lauded in his craft that he may have felt he had acquired a godlike status. So when he used the term about the Italian soprano Renato Tobaldi, most would have sat up and assumed he knew what he was talking about. She had one of the most beautiful voices of the twentieth century, and perhaps unusually during her prime, she was no sludge when it came to acting. Such a combination meant that the press were quick to make comparisons between her and Maria Callis, with whom she supposed to have had a lifelong rivalry. There was something in that, no doubt. But I suspect that if both were alive today, they would say that this was a myth, which suited both of them rather nicely, thank you. Competition between two big players in any field rarely does either side much harm. Their voices, although in the same range, were very different. But today I'm going to concentrate on Tobaldi. What is the first thing that enters your head at the mention of the name Bellini? I wouldn't believe you if it wasn't cocktail. Maybe art lovers will think of the 15th century Italian painter Giovanni Bellini. But Vincenzo Bellini, who lived between 1801 and 1835, would be the right answer here. A Sicilian composer whose short life left an operatic output which is right at the heart of the repertoire today. Whether your part in one of his operas was a goodie or a baddie, you were always assured of the best of possible tunes. He just wasn't all that interested in characterization. The music was everything. Here is a prime example. We're going to listen to a famous Aria from Norma. It's an opera with all the necessary and slightly unbelievable ingredients which make up a good tragic drama. Two women, both druid princesses in gold, and therefore bound by an oath of chastity, and yet both in love, initially unknown to the other, with the same man, who just happens to be a vice-consul in the Roman army, with whom war may be imminent. One of them, Norma, the High Priestess, seems to have forgotten her vow of chastity and been a little callous, and lands up having two sons with the Roman. I need hardly tell you that this is not a story where everyone lands up living happily ever after. Before that, Norma pleads with the gods to avoid war and the inevitable consequences which a liaison with the enemy would bring. I've no idea if this is the voice of an angel or not. But if it's the first thing I hear when I close my eyes for the last time, I shall feel mildly encouraged. I can't imagine who will water. Which colour is a thing that we're going to do. And whatever you take a music or more than all of those components are something that makes it happen. I wonder, for example, if you look at the moment I don't know, we're even capable of writing a lot of it. And whatever I do. I have this real sense of letters wanting to return to the next second opportunity. But every note it seems to me as a means of getting us back to that opening button. It's unloaded happening. I can't believe you could have heard it. Well you would certainly have been cheered had you done so. Maybe you'll have sense. Because apparently the angels play Mozart when they get together. It's played here by Alfred Bendel with the Academy of Martin in the Fields, conducted by Neville Mariner.

SPEAKER_02 37:47

So please do join him then. And you can subscribe to this podcast by clicking on the link below.