S2.E73. Easter Offerings, with some light relief. Beethoven Rage over a lost Penny, Haydn Symphony 60, Handel Worthy is the Lamb, Mahler Symphony 2.

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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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If I were to ask you to come up with a couple of words to characterize the music of Beethoven, it's unlikely, I think, that you'd come up with wit or humor. Joy, certainly. Comedy? No. And yet, that's really the only way to describe this Ronde for piano. Even if the comedy may not have been intentional. Only because it's hard to imagine Beethoven having a deliberate laugh at his music in the same way Haydn would. Published after his death, a friend nicknamed the piece Rage Over a Lost Penny. I have a feeling that if either Beethoven or his friend were alive today, they might be tempted to bring that up to date and rename it with something a little more topical. In our house, the lost item is invariably a car case. And I suspect that we're in good company. This music paints absolutely perfectly a picture of total frustration for all concerned. Even with occasional moments when everyone stops to think rationally and calmly to suggest where they might have last been left before resuming a frenzied search. Beethoven's temperament is all over this, but the end result is pure humour. Beethoven's rage over the lost penny, or as I now think of it, rage over the lost carkies, is played here by Wilhelm Kemp. Beethoven and Humer may not have been badfellows, but Haydn and Humer most certainly were. In the past, we've listened to the Surprise Symphony, the jerk quartet, and the slow movement of his symphony number 93. Here's another one which you might be less familiar with. The sixtieth symphony was highly unusual for having six movements. And it acquired the nickname Il Distrato, named after the French player Ludistra. Le District is an absent-minded character who even has the title in his handkerchief to remember his own wedding day. And I'm talking about the day itself, not the anniversary. So you can imagine how this gave all sorts of opportunities for hiding the food around. But the best prank came in the final post this year. His first audience did, of course, love it. Here it is, played by Ilgiardino Armonico, conducted by Giovanni Antonini. And as I said before, subscribing to that faith is not a prerequisite for enjoying the music deliberately created for either the church or from the Bible. Despite two-thirds of it focusing on the death of Jesus Christ and Paul's teaching about the resurrection. There's a fairly simple reason for this. And as we listen to the Semantic Passion before, it's time now to regress the man. Worthy is the Lamb that was lain and has redeemed us to God is the final of the fifty-three sections of the piece. And it culminates in surely the most magnificent Amen ever set to music. Colin Davis, the eleventh anniversary of whose death fell only a few days ago, was one of our foremost choral conductors. Here he is conducting the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. And I think you'll see why it really couldn't come anywhere else. Back in episode 40 of this series, where we listened to the Santa Matthew Passion, I tagged in the closing couple of minutes of Marlowe's second symphony. The so-called Resurrection. At the moment it is actually over half an hour long, and that's by some way the longest in the symphony. But it's conveniently divided into two parts. Because trust me, you absolutely will experiment something is to just allow the music to be an affirmation of some kind. An affirmation of anything which makes you feel good about our troubled world. You may not end this anything but something, but by the end of it, I guarantee you will feel some sense of elation. Meaning wildly rushing out.

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