S2.E42. Two Firsts with a One-Off in between: Beethoven 1st Symphony, Rachmaninoff Sonata for Cello and Piano, Berwald 1st Symphony.

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I want to start today with a quick thank you. Don't worry, this isn't going to be one of those Oscar podium outpourings. I haven't won or been nominated for anything. But as I've said before, it never ceases to amaze and cheer me to see from where you are listening. The locations for the last episode are now the norm. So this is a huge thank you. If you are listening to me in the list, hold on a second. Okay, here we are, in no particular order later. United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France, Ireland, Australia, Japan, Germany, Netherlands, Taiwan, Portugal, Hong Kong, Mexico, Italy, Switzerland, South Korea, Croatia, Iran, Brazil, New Zealand, South Africa, Turkey, Belgium, Poland, Singapore, Israel, Seattle, India, Nigeria, Barbados, Romania, Ukraine, Denmark, Colombia, Bulgaria, Nepal, Estonia, Russian Federation, Lao, People, Democratic Republic, Belarus, Thailand, Tunisia, Hungary, and 43 countries in over 260 locations. The reach of the Internet is phenomenal. I'm not a celebrity. I'm what I call a non-equity with no spike production team behind me at this precise moment. Therefore, it's just me. And you if you want to get in touch, let me know where you are on the comments page. Your identity will not appear to anyone, including me. The circulation of it on word of mouth. A recent personal coup for me has maybe just been made available to the hospital broadcasting associated in the UK, providing free access to over 450 hospitals are now trying to do the same schools. And if you have to be in a position to enable that where you live, you might get a lot of people. And now in hand, when Beethoven conducted his first company, he was 30 years old. And the so-called father of the company, Joseph was in his quite with 140 names. In that context, you might reasonably think that Beethoven may have felt he had a lot to live up to. But as we now know, he was very much his own man too. So while he makes more than a lot of these two great names, Beethoven has to make his own statement as well. People often talk about him as throwing away the rule book. I'm not sure it's quite as simple as that. I think it's more a case of him saying this is me. I'm not throwing away the rule book. I'm just breaking a few and throwing in some of my own for good measures. And what nobody can doubt now is that symphonic writing was never quite the same afterwards. The big departures were come in the third and the fifth symphony. But there are in the opening parts of it first as well. A typical opening might start with a chord to grab the attention of the audience before a more peaceful development leads to the work's principal theme. I'm not going to get into technical here, but beta in the first symphony is a life-affirming key of a theme major. And yet, instead of starting with that, he begins with a different key altogether. And it's a chord which demands an immediate resolution. It can't stand on its own. You'll notice that there's a lot of shopping around before the home key is established. So the audience would have been aware almost on the off that they were in for something different. Here is that first movement. Played by the Deutscher Kammer Philharmonie Bremen, conducted by Pavel Yevi. You'd definitely be turning to your neighbour after the first moment with a smile or at least one raised eyebrow. From late classical to high romantic, and a leap of exactly 100 years to a piece by Rachmaninoff, which turned out to be a one-off. After the despair which engulfed him after the failure of his first symphony, Rachmaninoff struggled to compose anything at all. The huge success of his second piano concerto came to his rescue, with the result that his sonata for cello and piano may not have got the full recognition it deserved at the time. I would love to play you all of it, but it's about 35 minutes in length over four separate movements. So we will listen to the third and final movement. Just as Beethoven has given both instruments equal attention in the same discipline, Rachmaninoff gives cello and piano here a similar status. So much so that it's more often referred to, quite rightly, by the full title of sonata for cello and piano. Here is the Andante, followed by the Allegro motto, which is a rather unhelpful marking, meaning moderately quickly, so it's down to the participants. In this case, two of our very finest, Stephen Islas on the cello and Stephen Hart on the piano. I didn't want to say so before playing the piece because I didn't want to influence your hearing of it. But I wonder if listeners of a certain age detected, like I always do, the theme music of the 1981 James Bond film For Your Eyes Only in the beginning of that and Dante. Back in September, we listened to the final movement of France Burwald Sympathy, the so-called Alfred Sang. And the architect is a bit of a tablet possibly that rehearsed by the green icon of the colour. Anyway, I'll come back to the locker mic. The Wells basic as its own identity as is demonstrated by the spiral liquid. Just one last thing. I had an unimportant birthday recently. I only checked in on my Facebook account a couple of times a week, but on my birthday I had a completely delightful message from a lady in Australia, which read, Happy birthday. You don't know me, but I feel as if I know you, because I listen to a podcast near early hours of the morning here in Australia. That was the IT on the cake for me. The whole point of this admission is that I reach you in far from places. It's most unlikely that I will meet 99.9% of you. But the internet makes the world a smaller place, and just occasionally, however briefly, a better one. Thank you for listening wherever you are. And now over to Berfeld and the final movement of his first symphony, played by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Herbert Blomsted.