Classical For Everyone

Music that takes its inspiration from humanity’s gaze out into the cosmos and from our attempts to reach beyond this fragile planet we call home. And to access some music that predated the quite modern science of ‘astronomy’ I’ve thrown in some works that may owe rather more to ‘astrology’ or perhaps even to the realm of ‘mythology’. As a result this is I think the most eclectic collection of music yet put out into the universe under the ‘Classical For Everyone’ banner. In the next hour and a quarter you are going to hear music by Gustav Holst, Jean-Phillipe Rameau, Henri Dutilleux, Joaquin Rodrigo, Terry Riley, Johann Sebastain Bach, Brett Dean and Benjamin Britten.

I am being a little deliberately opaque with the title of this episode. There is a certain logic to letting people know what they are going to get. But not today. Because I am hoping that for a good selection of listeners out there the date of 22nd December 1808 is pretty much meaningless. And that what follows will be a bit of a surprise. What happened? Well I guess a lot happened but for our purposes there was a concert. A thirty-eight year old composer, with the help of some aristocratic patrons had booked a big theatre to showcase some of the new music he had been working on. And he was the composer, a performer, the conductor and the promoter. Now the concert turned out to be somewhere between a disappointing night out and an unparalleled disaster… depending on which sources you follow. And you might be wondering why am I featuring an event which, in a city filled with glittering musical events at that time… even as the Napoleonic Wars raged on, was essentially a failure. Might be something to do with the music.

‘Unfairly neglected’ is a bit of a cliché and pretty subjective but I do think it could describe a mass of great music that a lot of us (us Anglos at least) are missing out on… music from South America. Before I put this episode together I only knew about half the pieces I am going to play. The rest are as new for me as I suspect they might be for you. Which is, I hope, more of a positive than a negative. I don’t think I can even get away with describing this episode as ‘scratching the surface’… not just because it seems to be ‘cliché day’ here at Mending Wall Studios… but because an hour and a bit is not a lot of time for the music of an entire continent. Still, it’s perhaps worth starting somewhere. Please enjoy music from… Astor Piazzola, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Osvaldo Golijov, Alberto Ginastera and Camargo Guarnieri.

The name comes from the night of the week when for some of us, the demon of insomnia hits the hardest… and because my preferred antidote is getting lost in some music. Of course this series is for everyone… but it is perhaps intended a little more for those of you whose sleep has been troubled. The idea of the special is to play just one piece, uninterrupted and in its entirety… with a few minutes of background explained at the end of the episode. This week… Anton Bruckner’s 7th Symphony. Performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and conducted by Georg Tintner.

I get it that for some people opera is just noise that they are not ever going to enjoy but if there are listeners out there with a bit of curiousity and an inquiring mind… and that is how I would describe anyone listening to this podcast… then I urge you to have a listen to this episode. Why? Well because if you enjoy any music with singing… then you can enjoy opera. And the selection I have made for this episode is based on one simple criteria… pure pleasure. I think you might enjoy ten pieces of opera… from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Georg Friedrich Handel, Gioachino Rossini, Giuseppi Verdi, Georges Bizet, Giacomo Puccini and John Adams.

The second of a two episode special. His music uniquely blended Western European compositional techniques with distinctly Russian melodic and harmonic elements, creating a style that was both internationally appealing and unmistakably Russian. Remarkably successful in his own lifetime and responsible for so much music that remains popular to this day he is still perhaps not quite given his due. In these two episodes Sleeping Beauties, Memories of Beloved Places, Teasing Peasants, Violins, Pianos and Cannons argue his case.

The first of a two episode special. His music uniquely blended Western European compositional techniques with distinctly Russian melodic and harmonic elements, creating a style that was both internationally appealing and unmistakably Russian. Remarkably successful in his own lifetime and responsible for so much music that remains popular to this day he is still perhaps not quite given his due. In these two episodes Sleeping Beauties, Memories of Beloved Places, Teasing Peasants, Violins, Pianos and Cannons argue his case.

Why New York? Well, mainly because I love the city… and I’m here. I’m recording this episode in a hotel room on West 56th Street in Manhattan around the corner from Carnegie Hall and up the road from The Museum of Modern Art… which is incidentally a very popular place to make TikTok videos. I think there might still be some paintings there… but it was hard to tell today. More importantly… the music in this episode is from Steve Reich, Charles Ives, Jessie Montgomery, Leonard Bernstein, Phillip Glass and George Gershwin.

I’m going to start with a question. If one thinks of musical instruments as tools… as things humans create to perform tasks… other than the violin, is there any other tool you can think of used in an area of incredibly complex human endeavour where the design and construction of it reached its zenith over three hundred years ago and has not been improved upon since? Whilst you ponder that, enjoy music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Josef Haydn, Ludwig Van Beethoven, Johann Sebastain Bach, Samuel Barber, Ross Edwards & Johann Joseph Vilsmayr in this episode of Classical For Everyone.

The name comes from the night of the week when for some of us, the demon of insomnia hits the hardest… and because my preferred antidote is getting lost in some music. Of course this series is for everyone… but it is perhaps intended a little more for those of you whom distractions and apprehensions… racing imaginations and freewheeling thoughts hold suspended at the edge of sleep. The idea of the special is to play just one piece, uninterrupted and in its entirety… with a few minutes of background explained at the end of the episode. This week… Gustav Mahler’s 1st Symphony.

Brian Eno’s 1979 LP ‘Music For Airports’ launched the genre of ‘Ambient Music’… an alternative to the dreadful ‘muzak’ inflicted on humans in most public spaces… music that reduced stress rather than added to it… music for contemplation that rewarded attention but did not require it. This episode takes that idea and rummages around classical music to see if there are works that might do the same… with thanks to Gavin Bryars, Erik Satie, Tomás Luis de Victoria, Phillip Glass, Richard Wagner, John Adams, Arvo Pärt and Gabriel Fauré.

Instances where composers have hidden something in their works… sometimes for the sheer ingeniousness of being able to do it… sometimes to send a secret message to someone… sometime to create a puzzle for generations to come… sometimes to create a tortured ambiguity of meaning. The music is from a pretty eclectic mix… Johann Sebastain Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Alban Berg, Dmitri Shostakovich and Edward Elgar. Lots of Secrets.

Can something of a survey of the music of Italy… including music of the city states, republics and kingdoms that became the nation of Italy in the late nineteenth century… be done in a little over an hour? Absolutely not. But what I have chosen does perhaps suggest a few themes that can be found in the music made on the Italian Peninsula over the last several centuries. Please enjoy… Giuseppe Verdi, Archangelo Corelli, Claudio Monteverdi, Ottorino Respighi, Carlo Gesualdo, Tomaso Albinoni, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Gioachino Rossini,  Pietro Mascagni and Alessandro Scarlatti.

From fairy tale romances to dark psychological dramas, discover how ballet music evolved while maintaining its essential power to match the poetry of human movement with unforgettable musical expression… what I’m calling grasping towards beauty. This episode explores three centuries of ballet music, from the elegant entertainments of Gluck through the Romantic masterpieces of Adam, Delibes, and Tchaikovsky, to the revolutionary modernism of Stravinsky and Prokofiev, and finally the diverse voices of Copland and Khachaturian.

You could take almost any year of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s life, probably from the age of fifteen onwards and be staggered by both the scale of his output… AND the quality… but his final year… 1791.. was a truly astonishing achievement… including his 27th piano concerto, his 6th string quintet, his clarinet concerto, two complete operas in wildly contrasting genres… ‘La Clemenza di Tito’ and ‘The Magic Flute’, and an unfinished Requiem Mass.

There are composers who revel in depictions of the unseen… manifestations of the darker aspects of our imaginations… creatures from realms that four centuries of science just can’t seem to eradicate from our vulnerable psyches. Then there are the composers who just can’t help but enjoy mucking about with an old fairytale or making fun of our collective gullibility. And some do all at the same time. This week it is spooky music from Grieg, Mussorgsky, Schubert, Saint-Saens, Liszt, Shostakovich, Mozart & Chopin.

Even if you have listened to a fair bit of classical music I’m quietly confident you will not have heard a note of any of what I am going to play you in this episode… unless you happen to hail from or reside in that jewel of a nation… New Zealand / Aotearoa. Trust me, if you can overcome a nervousness about the unfamiliar… you are going to hear some remarkably good music… by composers Anthony Richie, Gillian Whitehead, Martin Lodge, Tabea Squire, John Psathas, Douglas Lilburn and Claire Cowan.

Ludwig van Beethoven arrived in Vienna in late 1792 as a 22-year-old from the town of Bonn to study with Josef Haydn who was at the time undeniably Europe's most celebrated living composer. Beethoven also quickly established himself in Viennese aristocratic circles, securing patronage from nobles who recognized his extraordinary talent both as a virtuoso pianist and as a composer of startling originality. This episode is a collection of music from Beethoven’s first decade in Vienna.

This episode starts in Paris in 1909 and ends up in Buenos Aires in 1994… and the music includes a healthy dose of the influence of jazz. If you have a small voice inside saying this is going to be a little more ‘modern’ and a little less ‘enjoyable’, I hope you’ll trust me to prove that voice wrong… or more particularly that you’ll trust Clause Debussy, Malcolm Arnold, Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky and Osvaldo Golijov.

There’s no way around the fact that this entire corner of classical music is generally known by the term ‘chamber music’ but please don’t let that stop you from experiencing some incredible music… even if you find the term, as I do, just plain odd. This is music originally intended for smaller performance spaces… sometimes even just a dining room… and by virtue of that the connection between players and audience is more ‘intimate’. The music in the episode is by Phillip Glass, Ludwig van Beethoven, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johannes Brahms and Paul Stanhope.