S2.E50.Thoughts on D Day with Britten, Coates, Mendelssohn, Elgar.

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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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Last week, the UK and many other countries all over the world have been commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944. The tales we've heard continued to move us, and many who have little or no association with the event itself may nevertheless have their own personal tangential experiences or anecdotes. Twenty years ago, my son at school took a group of them to France for a few weeks, and we visited one weekend. I was still only just walking there. But I remember vividly one extraordinary spectacle. I sat on a balustrade overlooking the huge beach at Almond, nicknamed Gold. It was a glorious, cloudless day, and strangely the beach was almost completely deserted, save for my son Harry and half a dozen of his friends playing cricket right in the middle of it. I found it totally captivating, mesomeric, and couldn't understand why. And then, in an instant, I was struck by this deeply moving contradiction of innocent, unaware youth laughing, frolicking, joking, and enjoying themselves on the very same stage where so much slaughter and sacrifice had taken place 60 years previously, precisely to allow them to do exactly what they were doing. If the iPhone had been around then, I would of course have taken a picture. But I wonder if the reason that the image is as vivid today as it was then is because I've not had to allow that device to preserve it. My own experience is that I don't often look back on pictures that I've taken for my own gratification. It's no way to show the occasion to somebody else. I'm not talking about special family occasions, of course, but it seems to enforce the idea that often the best way to benefit from a live event, be it a concert, a procession or whatever, is to look at it with your own eyes and not through a lens. We British are famous the world over for prattling on about the weather. But you'd be hard-pressed to find a conversation on the subject more important than the one group Captain James Stagg, a meteorologist attached to the RF in 1944, held any meeting with the Supreme Ally Commander, General Dwight Eisenhower, on the evening of June 4th. The weather was the prime consideration when it came to timing, and ideal conditions meant a full moon to assist overhead aircraft, as well as landing at the right time at the tide. High tide would have made disembarking very difficult, and low tide would have exposed too much for too long. Eisenhower's intention had been to start on Monday, June 5th, but major storms were going to prevent this. In that now historic conversation, Stagg persuaded Eisenhower that a brief window was there to be taken on Tuesday, June 6th. Unsurprisingly, the tea has been inspiration for many a composer over the years. But Benjamin Brittany's forty interludes from his opera Peter Grimes, composed in 1945, make up an uncanny metaphor for D-Day. Dawn opens the work and is almost haunting, mysterious, tense, and unsettling, certainly, setting the tone for most of the rest of the piece. Sunday morning follows with a slightly more restless activity, then moonlight, followed by the tumult in storm, bringing the piece to its dramatic and tragic conclusion. Edward Gardner conducts the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. We lived between 1886 and 1957. That was exactly the sort of fair needed in Britain during the Second World War. That could be heard in fact everywhere to encourage improved activity. In practice, to be able to fix it. Yes. It's work, it's art. But it's also well crafted. It's really good. It's got a lot of laughter course. Because the Radio 4 program, the artist, have been having the popular gun every day for over 80 years. It's played here by the City of Birming Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Regnard Kilby. And although it was not written until 1950, I can't resist following that immediately with the March to its art to provide for the film The Dambusters, played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Adrian Bolt. The lucky thing for you about this penultimate piece today is that I don't have to talk too much because I just can't add anything to enhance your enjoyment of it. You'll see what I mean after listening to Wonder Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words Opus 30 number one, played by Daniel Barrenboy. It's utterly lovely. It's as simple as that. Depending on what measure you choose, anything between the direct and seventy percent of the world population does not share that freedom. The right to come and go to the right to know something indeed.

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