S2.E81 The genius of youth with Mendelssohn's Octet and Shostakovich 1st Symphony; and then from the ridiculous to the sublime with Lehrer and Sibelius 1st Symphony

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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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All the way back in episode 5 of series 1, some four years ago already, I introduced my thoughts on discovering the genius of Felix Mendelssohn, whose music I had, quite honestly, ignorantly and misguidedly dismissed, as nice enough, but not much more. As a result of being exposed for so long to a handful of his big hits alone. In that episode, which is still available with all the rest, we listened to the first moment of his octet, a piece composed when he was just sixteen years old, and a work so extraordinarily mature that it has caused some to observe that it never got as good as that again. Well that, of course, is pure bunkum as I hope I have demonstrated since. But I want to revisit the octet to start us off today. What were you doing at sixteen? he asked rhetorically. I suppose Shakespeare may have been the top of his English class of that age, but not even the likes of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, or Schubert were composing anything approaching its complexity at sixteen. The charming jollity of the scherzo is one thing, but the intermingling between the instruments, which is what successful chamber music is all about, reflects the genius of a young man who already had his art form in the palm of his hands. The scherzo is followed by a flourishing and youthfully confident presto to conclude the full movement work. Janin Jansen and Alexander Sitkovetsk are on the violins, Timothy Ridout on viola, and Chian Soltani on cello. They are joined by Quature Eben. This is a live performance of the Katagan Hall and no ordinary combination. Mendelson's music, a star line up of players, and all of them playing on Stradivari instruments. He'd intended to conduct it privately, as a celebration of his graduation from the Petrograd Conservatory, but it got its premier to enormous acclaim a year later, in 1926. As a young star in the making, Shostakovich could enjoy manifold benefits from the state, especially widespread publicity and accessibility to his music. But such benefits came with rigorous expectations about what was and was not expected. Sentimentality, for example, was a big no-no. You simply weren't allowed to plunder the depth of your soul or innermost feelings and pour it out into music in the same way Chaikovsky had. No. The music was not about you, young man, but only about furthering the cause of the Soviet Union. This didn't stop Shostakovich from treading a fine line occasionally between fun and outright mockery, and sometimes a not very thinly disguised protest. But ultimately he knew what side to butter his bread. He had to conform, but the brutality of the Soviet regime would never escape his commentary altogether. This doesn't mean that the music of Svostokovich lacked harmony, far from it. But already by the age of nineteen, he was showing a remarkable maturity of composition, and many of the hallmarks which would come to characterize his music. I doubt there's a single composer of the twentieth century who embraced such a wide style of music in his work, and it can sometimes be hard to identify a piece as being by Shostakovich for that very reason. Here is the second movement of that first symphony. It's a scherzo of five minutes of mystery, intensity, playfulness, and wit. It's played by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Maris Jansen. The periodic table, sung to the tune of Sullivan's I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General, is a tongue-twisting feat of memory. One of the tests, I think, of a skilled lyricist is to leave the listener unable to instantly predict the word which will rhyme with what came before. And this is precisely what Lera achieves. You wouldn't think that poisoning pigeons in the park would be a suitable subject for such treatment. But what a brilliant couple of minutes it is. Lera is not, of course, suggesting that such an activity is a good idea, and that's abundantly obvious in the humorous setting he gives to such a grim pastime. But like many of his songs, it's an absurdly witty metaphor for some of the very silly things we human beings seem capable of getting up to from time to time. Many of his songs have these dark underlying messages, but are dressed up in such a way as to make them acceptable to the ear. Both of these are taken from a live performance in Copenhagen in 1967. And to Lera I simply say, Jenny Fleck, Jenny Fleck, Jenny Fleck. If you know, you know.

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Here's a song I always get requests for, but I can't understand for the life of me why. It's simply the names of the chemical elements set to a Gilbert and Sullivan tune. I think the only reason I do it is to see if I still can. We'll try. A new one was discovered since the song was written. It's called Laurentium. So those of you who are taking notes can write it down in your programs. There's homeum and helium and hafnium and herbium and phosphorus and francium, fluorine, and terbium, and manganese and ruccanly relevant and nithium and discosum and scandium and sodium and cesium and leprosyodium and platinum plutonium, palladium, promethium, potassium, polonium, tatalum magnesium, titanium, tellurium, and cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium. Gold in Californium and Fermium Berkelium and also metalhilium iceanium nobelium and archived tiny hemorrhaging nicken and rhodium and chlorine colour couple convertants and sodium. These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard. And there may be many others, but they haven't been discovered. Now I'd like to sing a song about spring and about one of the many delightful pastimes which we enjoy in the United States. Life is skittles and life is beers. I think the loveliest time of the year is the spring. I do, don't you? Of course you do. But there's one thing that makes spring complete for me. And makes every Sunday a treat for me. All the world seems in tune on a spring afternoon when we're poisoning pigeons in the park. Every Sunday you'll see my sweetheart and me as we poison the pigeons in the park. When they see us coming, the birdies all try and hide, but they still go for peanuts. When coated with a scion heart, the sun's shining bright. Everything seems alright when we're poisoning pigeons in the park. We've gained notoriety and caused much anxiety in the Audubon society with our games. They call it impiety and lack of propriety, and quite a variety of unpleasant names, but it's not against any religion. To want to dispose of a pigeons. So one day you're free. Why don't you come with me? And we'll poison the pigeons in the box. And maybe we'll do in a squirrel or two. While we're poisoning pigeons in the box, we'll murder them all amid laughter and merriment, except for the few we take home to experiment. My pulse will be quickening with each drop of stricken. We feed to a pigeon. It just takes a smidgen to poison a pigeon in the park.

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We're going to conclude today with the magnificent finale of a Finnish symphony. Sibelis's first, composed right at the end of the 19th century. A little historical context is a help here, I think. So please just stay with me for a moment and you'll see why it matters. For nearly 700 years, Finland was part of Sweden until that country ceded it to become part of the Russian Empire after suffering a heavy defeat in the Finnish War at the beginning of the 19th century. By the end of the century, a strong sense of Finnish nationalism was taking hold. A resurgence of interest in its own history and language, and this was being aired through literature, art and music. And when you listen to this last movement, a fantasy like a fantasy sort of unrestrained imagination is intensely powerful. And I think all the struggles and frustrations are there with the large power.

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Nick will be back again soon. Please rate and comment on any of the previous episodes, and if you like what you hear, take a moment to press the follow button, as it helps to spread the word.