S2.E101. Technical wizardry in Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto 3, Wagner's Siegfried Idyll, Tchaikovsky May, a Strauss Polka.

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Welcome back to Perfect Pitch with Nick Healy Hutchinson and his fresh approach to the world of classical music. Whether you're an expert or a beginner, old or young. Perfect Pitch has something for everyone.

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It's a rare thing these days to see a turnout and a cannon concerto having the music in front of them. Up until Clara Schumann, everybody used to do that. But she was probably the first to dispense with it. Since when we've all got used to paint this time by heart. So it can be all too easy to take what is a phenomenal achievement for granted. Last time I mentioned how Rat Manner's third kind of concerto had something like 30,000 notes in it. I'm not sure if a literary equivalent is a valid comparison or not. But the matter of I think it's literally Allison's Adventures in Wonderland or George Gall's Animal Farm, each with about 30,000 words, by heart. I never once talked cardiac about a conductor that's core in front of him. And when you think of something on the scale of a Marlis symphony, there has to be a memory akin to knowing all the lines, or the very least, all the cues, for each character in a takes their play. These people have lines not like the rest of it. It's a time to third kind of competitor, or many typical RAC III, which is exacerbated by the need for a truly phenomenal physical power in order to provide some 40 minutes of play, almost non-stop from begin to end. I doubt that the more exhaust compete in the repertoire. The third competitor first performed by the compositor of the United States in 1909 was not the instant of the second. Funny enough was almost word for word what the Paris priest told Gabriel Foray after the composition of his requirement. Those are just two examples of people getting spectacularly wrong about PCF, which would one day turn out to be global blockbusters. That's the most famous picture, Dr. Berlier, who went to his gray believing that Carmen was doomed to be consigned to the opera Kompos. Tchaikovsky, a great hero of Rachmaninoff, was the still voice predicting its future popularity. His first company had been such a critical disaster that he was unable to compose or perform for the next few years. So there's a good reason that photographs of the composer finally are rarer than Rockin' World when they are. But a second performance that compared to with Rachmaninoff once more the keyboard, this time with Gustav Malikonducking, who had insisted on the Earth forensically, meant that it didn't take long for it to be recognized and become one of the great titans. But given that Rachmaninoff had left his birthday after the 1905 revolution, nostalgia is hardly surprising. The open melody is full of piny melancholy, a really lovely theme in its competitive, which belies the vast array of emotions and acrobatics to kind of another thing that's demanded at is a so-called Ostia cadenza, towards the end of the movement. Ostia accounts in Italian meaning alternative. So the pianist actually has two options that one, a technical brute, or another one which Rackmanov wrote called the tocarta cadenza. No dynamic soloist is going to offer anything other than the first to display their master of the instrument. So here is the first movement of Rack III, with its vast array of emotions of technical wizardry, played by Yujar Rang with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. Unsurprisingly, we tend to associate Wagner with grand opera. But there are works on a smaller and gentler scale, too, which demonstrate a more intimate side. Wagner's wife, Cosmer, noted that she hadn't got anything for her husband's Christmas. And they didn't look as if he had for her either. Written at the Joint Birthday Christmas event in celebration of the birthday year previously. Wagner had persuaded 50 musicians from the Tornhala Orchestra to assemble on the stairs in their villa. Cosimo was obviously thrilled, although I do wonder what the wives of the musicians thought, for there wouldn't have been any women on the scene, when each was informed something along the lines of, Sorry, darling, won't be here on Christmas morning as I'm delivering a present to Cosimo Wagner. And what a present it was. A charming, peaceful hill, full of the sounds of the forest, birds on the lore, and the famous leitmotif which Wagner would use in his opera Siegfried. Don't expect anything typically Wagnerian in this. There aren't any really big moments. It is, as the composer himself said, just a quiet joy. It's nearly twenty minutes in length, but if you shut your eyes and let your mind wonder, I'm fairly sure you'll be disappointed when it's over. Siegfried Zidl is played here by the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, conducted by Claudio Abado. My editor isn't being strict enough for me today. So if you're still listening, thank you. And if you're listening in the UK, the likelihood is that you would have been enjoying my career and during rather exceptional. So let's finish today with a small raindance in the form of Johannes Strauss's Thunder and Lightning Balker played by the Venom Philomonic Orchester.

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