Highlights and Favourites.. Music That Stayed With Me

The Music

The Words

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the ‘Classical For Everyone’ Podcast… five hundred years of incredible music. My name is Peter Cudlipp and… If you enjoy any music at all then I’m convinced you can enjoy classical music. All you need are ears. No expertise is necessary. If you’ve ever been curious about classical music… or explored it for a while once upon a time… or just quietly wondered what all the fuss was about… then this is the podcast is for you.

And because there’s a lot of music out there each episode has something of a theme. And for this one it is… Highlights and Favourites. In the interests of seeing if I can produce an episode without my AI pal Claude and I going down too many rabbit holes I thought I’d see what I could come up with if I looked back over past episodes and cherry-picked some favourite pieces. To be honest I was not that optimistic but I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. I hope you will be too. It has ended up being quite an eccentric and eclectic collection. But it’s all good.

In the next hour you will hear music from Aram Khachaturian, Osvaldo Golijov, Ludwig van  Beethoven, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Josef Haydn, Edward Elgar, Gillian Whitehead, Philip Glass and Benjamin Britten. And I’ll let you know which episodes I have taken the music from in case you want to go back and explore them.

Back in early July there was an episode featuring music written for Ballets. This was not an area I knew that much about and the piece that was for me the most fun to rediscover was from the Soviet-Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian’s 1954 ballet ‘Spartacus’… loosely based on events in the life of the gladiator and champion of the downtrodden of the same name. For his ballet Khachaturian gave Spartacus a wife whose name is Phrygia and at the end of the second act… after the slaves have escaped from captivity they dance together… to rather amazing music. Its full title is… 'The Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia’ by Aram Khachaturian. It is about 10 minutes long and Stanley Black conducts the London Symphony Orchestra.

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That was Stanley Black conducting the London Symphony Orchestra with 'The Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia’ from Aram Khachaturian’s 1954 ballet ‘Spartacus’.

About a month back I did an episode on classical music of South America and from that I am going to play you a song from Osvaldo Golijov and David Henry Hwang’s 2003 opera ‘Ainadamar’.  The plot of the opera, factually based though poetically realised, follows the recollections of the actress Margarita Xirgu, in the 1960s, of her friend the Andalusian poet Federico Garcia Lorca who was murdered by the Fascists during the Spanish Civil War in 1936.

In this 8 minute song from early in the opera Dawn Upshaw is singing the role of Margarita. The song is titled ‘Maraina, tus ojos’… ‘Mariana, Your Eyes’ and the character is singing of an early martyr to the progressive cause in 19^th century Spain, Mariana Pineda. Dawn Upshaw along with Jessica Rivera are singing with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the conductor is Robert Spano. Osvaldo Golijov’s ‘Ainadamar’.

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That was Dawn Upshaw singing the role of Margarita and Jessica Rivera singing Nuria in the aria ‘Mariana, your eyes’ from Osvaldo Golijov’s opera ‘Ainadamar’ . The orchestra was the Atlanta Symphony and the conductor was Robert Spano.

Four months back I did an episode I called Muses… featuring the stories of men and women who inspired composers to write particular pieces of music. One piece was for solo piano and was written by Ludwig van Betehoven for his muse ‘Josephine Brunsvik’. There is a lot of Beethoven’s music that writers suggest was inspired by Joesphine but there is only one that the evidence directly supports. It is from 1803 and is called the ‘Andante favori’. Meaning simply ‘a favoured andante’… andante just being an indication to play the piece at a walking pace. Here it is played by Sviatoslav Richter. It is about eight minutes long… Ludwig van Beethoven’s ‘Andante Favori’.  Written for Josephine Brusnvik.

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That was Ludwig van Beethoven’s ‘Andante Favori’ played by Sviatoslav Richter. I hope you are enjoying this slightly indulgent episode where I am playing you some favourites from the last few months… Music that has stayed with me.

A month ago I did a couple of episodes on the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.  Here is one of the choruses from his opera Eugene Onegin from 1879 based on the verse novel by Alexander Pushkin. Early in the opera some peasants sing a teasing folk song to celebrate the harvest. It is about a handsome stranger arriving in a village and a certain degree of competition amongst the local girls for his affections. It is about 5 minutes long. Here is the Staatskapelle Dresden conducted by James Levine.

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That was the Staatskapelle Dresden conducted by James Levine with the Peasant’s Chorus from the 1^st Act of Tchaikovsky’s opera ‘Eugene Onegin’.

From the episode, ‘The Violin’ I’m going to play you the slow section from a Josef Haydn’ String Quartet. Haydn wrote over sixty String Quartets between 1755 and 1803 so I’m going to give you the catalogue number for this one… it is  Opus 20, No. 5. At the time Haydn wrote this quartet he was in the process of making the quartet form about an equal conversation between four instruments. But the section I am going to play is actually in the earlier style where the first violin has the more dominant role. I read a nice description of it “floating over the theme, sometimes capturing it, then leaving it again”. Here is the Auryn Quartet (that’s AURYN) playing the Adagio, the 3^rd section of Joseph Haydn’s 5^th Opus 20 String Quartet. It is about six minutes long.

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That was the Auryn Quartet playing the Adagio, the 3^rd section of Joseph Haydn’s 5^th Opus 20 String Quartet from 1774. Alright, now I have some music that could not have been better named for the ‘Secrets and Codes’ episode from back in July… Edward Elgar’s ‘Enigma Variations’. Completed in 1899 the work is an orchestral set of a theme and fourteen variations. Elgar gave each of the sections a coded name referring to friends and colleagues. Eventually the wider public was able to discover the particular identities but it was for some years an interesting guessing game. This is the section called Nimrod and here is Leonard Bernstein conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra. It’s about six minutes long… a famously slow version of the work… which I find draws even more emotion from the music. I hope you enjoy it.

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That was Leonard Bernstein conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra with Nimrod from Edward Elgar’s ‘Enigma Variations’. Ok, if you want to discover some truly amazing music which there is, I think, a good chance you have not heard before, can I direct you to the ‘Aotearoa / New Zealand’ episode of this podcast from back in June? From that show here is a hauntingly beautiful choral work from 2004 by the composer Gillian Whitehead with words by the poet Aroha Yates-Smith. The title is ‘Taiohi taiao’ which very roughly translates as ‘the young natural world’. The performers are the Tower Voices of New Zealand, the soloists Andrea Cochrane and Albert Mataafa, and the traditional Māori instrumentalist Richard Nunns. And they are all conducted by Karen Grylls. It is about 11 minutes long and it is just beautiful.

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That was ‘Taiohi taioa’ by Gillian Whitehead with words by Aroha Yates-Smith.

It was performed by the Tower Voices of New Zealand, the soloists Andrea Cochrane and Albert Mataafa, and the traditional Māori instrumentalist Richard Nunns. And they were all conducted by Karen Grylls.

Ok. From the strangely titled but I hope musically satisfying episode from July called ‘Music For Airports’ I am going to play you the slow section of the 1^st violin concerto by the contemporary American composer Philip Glass. In Wikipedia there is a quote I really like from him…

"I wrote the piece in 1987 thinking, let me write a piece that my father would have liked [...] A very smart nice man who had no education in music whatsoever, but the kind of person who fills up concert halls. [...] It's popular, it's supposed to be — it's for my Dad."

And it has proved popular. There are quite a few recordings available and I am sure it is still performed with some frequency close to 40 years after it was written. Here is Gidon Kremer playing the violin, and Christoph Von Dohnányi conducts the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. The 9 minute slow section of the 1^st Violin Concerto by Phillip Glass.

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That was Gidon Kremer playing the violin, and Christoph Von Dohnányi conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra with the slow section of the 1^st Violin Concerto by Phillip Glass.

My name is Peter Cudlipp and you have been listening to the ‘Classical for Everyone’ Podcast. I have another piece coming up but before I get to it I want to give you a little information that I hope you find useful… If you would like to listen to past episodes, of which there are now more than forty, or get details of the music I’ve played please head to the website classicalforeveryone.net. That address again is classicalforeveryone.net. And on the individual episode pages of the website there are links to Spotify playlists with the full versions of most of the music played in each of the episodes. If you want to make sure you don’t miss the shows as they are released then please Subscribe or Follow wherever you get your podcasts. That would also mean the search algorithms will smile more benignly on the show and it might reach a few more people. For that I would be very grateful. And if you want to get in touch then you can email… info@classicalforeveryone.net.

Alright, to finish this episode I have something I haven’t played you before… it is actually a piece by the composer I am going to feature in the next episode of Classical For Everyone… Benjamin Britten. In 1963, he and his partner the singer Peter Pears wrote an opera based on William Shakespeare’s play ‘A  Midsummer Night’s Dream’. At the end of the opera the fantastical characters of Puck, Titania, Oberon and their attendant Fairies enter the palace of King Theseus and bless the six sleeping lovers… starting with the lines ‘Now the hungry lion roars’. The soloists are Alfred Deller, Elizabeth Harwood and Stephen Terry, the choir is from the Downside and Emmanuel schools and Benjamin Britten conducts the London Symphony Orchestra with the conclusion to his and Peter Pears opera from Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’.

Thanks for listening.

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That was the soloists Alfred Deller, Elizabeth Harwood and Stephen Terry, the choir from the Downside and Emmanuel schools and Benjamin Britten conducted the London Symphony Orchestra with the conclusion to his and Peter Pears opera from Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’.

Thanks for your time and I look forward to playing you some more incredible music on the next ‘Classical For Everyone’.

This podcast is made with Audacity Software for editing, Wikipedia for Research, Claude for Artificial Intelligence and Apple, Sennheiser, Sony, Rode and Logitech for hardware… The music played is licensed through AMCOS / APRA. Classical For Everyone is a production of Mending Wall Studios and began life on Radio 2BBB in Bellingen NSW, Australia thanks to the late, great Mr Jeffrey Sanders. The producers do not receive any gifts or support of any kind from any organisation or individual mentioned in the show. But, never say never.

Thanks again for listening.