Before Dawn

Music for the hour before dawn. Which is in no way intended to be too prescriptive… the episode can be listened to any time… but I hope it is music that has a calmness and perhaps a contemplative tone that suits the hour when there is a glow in the sky, things are at their most quiet… and you have the world to yourself. The music is by Felix Mendelssohn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Luys Milan, Josef Haydn, Georg Friedrich Handel, Rachel Portman, Nicholas Gombert, Ludwig van Beethoven and Johann Sebastian Bach. Regular listeners to the podcast might recognise a couple of pieces from earlier episodes. Forgive me for playing favourites. Now, for this show I am going to be pretty sparing in talk; but I’ll add a few paragraphs on each piece to the episode’s page at classicalforeveryone.net.

And here is a link to a playlist on Spotify with the music from this episode:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/30KgnkQU6JQdTfIMdzBnuw?si=bbfcd412179b486e

And here are a couple of paragraphs from my AI pal Claude on each of the pieces in this episode:

1. Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 5 in D major, Op. 107 'Reformation' – 3. Andante

The 'Reformation' Symphony has an unusual history for a work by a composer who was generally sure-footed and prolific. Mendelssohn wrote it in 1830 to commemorate the three-hundredth anniversary of the Augsburg Confession, the foundational document of Lutheran Protestantism — yet the premiere was cancelled, and Mendelssohn himself grew so dissatisfied with it that he refused to allow it to be published in his lifetime. It only appeared in print after his death, numbered as his Fifth Symphony despite being one of his earliest in the form. There is something quietly poignant about that: a work written for a grand public occasion that ended up hiding in a drawer.

The symphony's outer movements lean heavily on Lutheran symbolism — the famous 'Dresden Amen' appears in the first movement, and the finale is built on Luther's great hymn 'Ein feste Burg.' But the third movement Andante, which opens the 'Before Dawn' playlist, lives in a different world entirely. It is gentle, intimate, and somewhat hovering — more like a song without words than a symphonic argument. Mendelssohn was the great master of that quality of suspended, moonlit stillness, and this movement has it in abundance without calling attention to itself.

2. Mozart: Piano Sonata No. 4 in E flat, K 282 – 1. Adagio

Mozart's Piano Sonata K 282 is unusual among his keyboard works in beginning with a slow movement rather than ending with one. Most Classical-era sonatas save their Adagios for the middle, sandwiched between a brisk opening and a dancing finale. Here Mozart inverts the expectation: the Adagio comes first, and it sets a tone of quiet gravity that the subsequent movements — a pair of minuets and a lively finale — gently dispel. The effect is a little like a dream that persists into waking. The sonata was written in Munich in early 1775, when Mozart was nineteen, and it already shows his uncanny ability to hold sorrow and elegance in the same breath.

The key of E flat major carries particular associations in Mozart's sound world — it tends toward a certain warmth and depth rather than brightness. The Adagio moves with great care, its melody unfolding in long phrases that feel unhurried without ever dragging. Mitsuko Uchida, whose complete Mozart sonata cycle for Philips remains the benchmark recording for many listeners, plays this movement with extraordinary sensitivity. She understands that Mozart's slow movements require the performer to resist the temptation to interpret — to let the music arrive, rather than push it.

3. Luys Milán: Seis Pavanas

Luys Milán was a Spanish composer and poet active in the early sixteenth century, attached to the court of Valencia, and he holds a remarkable distinction: his collection El Maestro, published in 1536, is the earliest printed source of music specifically intended for the vihuela — a six-course instrument visually similar to a guitar but strung and tuned differently, and the prestige instrument of Renaissance Spain. The pavana was a slow, stately court dance of Italian origin, and Milán's six pavanas are among the most beguilingly beautiful pieces in the entire early music repertoire. That Narciso Yepes, one of the twentieth century's supreme guitarists, chose to record them speaks to their enduring resonance.

One of the things that makes Milán's pavanas so striking to modern ears is their harmonic adventurousness. For music written nearly five centuries ago, there are moments that feel surprisingly free — unexpected shifts of colour, phrases that seem to reach beyond the conventions of the period. Milán was not just a craftsman following rules but a genuine musical personality, and the pavanas have an improvisatory quality that suggests he understood the vihuela's capacity for intimate, searching expression.

4. Haydn: String Quartet Op. 20 No. 5 in F minor – III. Adagio

Haydn's six string quartets of Opus 20, composed in 1772, represent one of the great leaps forward in the history of chamber music. Before them, the string quartet was still finding its identity as a form. After them, it was established as one of the supreme vehicles for musical thought. The set is sometimes called the 'Sun' Quartets, though the name has more to do with the publisher's title page than anything in the music itself. What is beyond dispute is that they show Haydn thinking more deeply and ambitiously than before — more willing to sit with discomfort, more interested in what darkness and complexity can express.

The F minor quartet is the most emotionally intense of the set, and its slow movement — marked Adagio, in A flat major — is one of Haydn's most achingly beautiful creations. F minor was associated in the eighteenth century with a particular quality of pathos and interiority, and while the Adagio moves briefly into the relative major, it never quite shakes the feeling of something unresolved, something withheld. The Auryn Quartet, a German ensemble of great refinement, brings just the right combination of warmth and restraint to this music.

5. Handel: Serse, HWV 40 – 'Ombra Mai Fu'

'Ombra Mai Fu' is probably the most famous thing Handel ever wrote, which is remarkable given that it is an aria sung by a Persian king to a plane tree. The opera Serse opens with the king Xerxes contemplating the shade cast by a beloved tree in his garden, and singing to it in tones of such tender, unhurried beauty that the aria has become one of the touchstones of the Western vocal repertoire. Handel sets the text — which is essentially a celebration of shade, shelter, and the peace that a great tree provides — with extraordinary simplicity. There are no fireworks, no vocal gymnastics. Just a long, slowly unfolding melody of perfect poise.

The aria is often known as 'Handel's Largo,' though this is slightly misleading — the marking is actually Larghetto, which is a little less slow. But the spirit is right: this is music of supreme unhurriedness, music that seems to exist outside ordinary time. Anne Sofie von Otter, one of the great mezzo-sopranos of the late twentieth century, recorded it with William Christie and Les Arts Florissants in a performance of great nobility and warmth. Christie's period-instrument ensemble brings a lightness and transparency to the accompaniment that allows the vocal line to float freely.

"Ombra mai fu / di vegetabile, / cara ed amabile, / soave più"

Which translates to something like:

"Never was the shade / of any growing thing / so dear and lovely, / so gentle"

6. Rachel Portman: 'Leaves and Trees'

Rachel Portman is one of the most distinguished film composers working today, and in 1996 became the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Original Score, for her music to Emma. Her work is characterised by a warmth, clarity, and melodic generosity that can make it sound deceptively simple — deceptively, because the craft involved in creating music that feels that natural and unforced is considerable. 'Leaves and Trees' comes from a newer recording that pairs her work with a Kerschek arrangement of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, a context that places her squarely in a tradition of writing about the natural world with lyrical directness.

The title itself — 'Leaves and Trees' — has a lovely plainness to it, the kind of simplicity that in the right hands becomes quietly profound rather than merely obvious. Portman has always been drawn to music that illuminates mood and atmosphere without overwhelming it, and this piece, played here by Niklas Liepe with the WDR Funkhausorchester, appears to work in that spirit. The combination of solo violin with orchestra suggests something intimate within something larger — a single voice heard against a broader landscape.

7. Gombert: 'Quam Pulchra Es'

Nicolas Gombert was one of the most important composers of the generation between Josquin des Prez and Palestrina — which is to say, one of the central figures of Renaissance polyphony — yet he remains far less known to general audiences than his reputation among specialists would suggest. He worked for much of his career in the service of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, and his music is characterised by a density and continuity of texture that sets it apart from Josquin's more transparent, articulated style. In Gombert, the voices weave together almost without breathing space, creating a rich, continuous sound world that can feel overwhelming and enveloping at once.

'Quam Pulchra Es' — 'How Beautiful You Are' — sets a text from the Song of Songs, chapter 7, in which the lover catalogues the beauty of the beloved in a series of vivid, sensory images: the curve of the thighs, the navel like a rounded bowl, the neck like an ivory tower. It is lush, bodily, and entirely without embarrassment. Gombert's setting matches the text's richness with music of great warmth and textural fullness. Stile Antico, the British vocal ensemble, bring their characteristic blend of purity and expressiveness to the piece — voices that seem almost sourceless, as though the music is simply present in the air.

8. Beethoven: Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 36 – II. Larghetto

The Second Symphony tends to be overshadowed by its neighbours — the heroic First before it and the titanic Third ('Eroica') immediately after — yet it contains some of Beethoven's most purely beautiful music. It was composed in 1801-02, during a period of acute personal crisis: Beethoven was coming to terms with his progressive deafness, and in the autumn of 1802 he wrote the devastating Heiligenstadt Testament, a letter to his brothers that reads like a farewell to life. That this period produced a symphony of such warmth, grace, and at times outright playfulness is one of the more astonishing facts in musical biography.

The Larghetto — the slow movement — is one of the longest single movements Beethoven had written to that point, and one of the most expansive in feeling. It unfolds with extraordinary generosity, the main theme appearing in different instrumental colours as though being held up to different lights. Michael Tilson Thomas, with the San Francisco Symphony, understood this music with deep affection — his recordings of the Beethoven symphonies have a humanity and a sense of living phrasing that makes them consistently rewarding. To include this performance in the episode is a quiet act of tribute to a conductor who gave so much to orchestral life over so many decades.

9. Bach: Orgelbüchlein, BWV 599/644 – 'O Mensch, bewein' dein' Sünde gross' (arr. for string quartet, Flinders Quartet)

The Orgelbüchlein — the 'Little Organ Book' — is one of Bach's most concentrated and purposeful collections. He intended it to contain 164 chorale preludes covering the entire Lutheran church year, though he completed only 45 of them. Each prelude takes a well-known Lutheran hymn tune and presents it in a short, highly organised setting, typically with the chorale melody in the soprano voice above a richly worked accompaniment. Bach described the collection as serving both devotional and pedagogical purposes — music for worship and music for teaching — but in practice the preludes transcend both functions and exist as some of the most quietly profound music ever written.

'O Mensch, bewein' dein' Sünde gross' — 'O Man, Bewail Thy Grievous Sin' — is one of the most remarkable of the set. The chorale melody is given to the top voice but ornamented with extraordinary elaboration, each note of the original hymn expanded into a long, flowering phrase that seems almost to overflow with feeling. Below it, the other voices move with characteristic Bachian purposefulness. The effect is of something familiar — a known tune, a shared devotional object — being transfigured by the intensity of attention brought to it. The Flinders Quartet's string arrangement preserves that quality entirely, the cello carrying the bass line while the violins weave above.