Classical For Everyone

In two earlier episodes I have referred to Chamber Music as 'Music For Small Spaces'. But if you search more broadly for that term you will come up with very little. If you want music for small groups of instruments often performed in intimate spaces then, in English at least, you are going to be looking for 'chamber music'. And in this episode there will be chamber music from Maurice Ravel, Douglas Lilburn, Ludwig van Beethoven, Karol Szymanowski, Laurie Anderson, Johannes Brahms, Michael Norris and Antonin Dvorak. Plus I will be talking a little about chamber music festivals and playing ten minutes of a conversation I had with the violinist Justine Cormack about the At the World's Edge Festival she co-founded in Aotearoa New Zealand.
[Episode image: Courtesy of At The World's Edge Festival; Photographer: Nat Symonds.]

In the latest episode of the 'Classical For Everyone' podcast… Scottish caves and rescuing Bach, becalmed boats and banking intrigue, Shakespearean fairies and a garment sellers' orchestra, a prophet in the wilderness… and a stolen statue. And… if that wasn't enough…  eleven pieces of music from Felix Mendelssohn... perhaps the most gifted and quietly underrated composer of the nineteenth century.[Episode image: Portrait of Mendelssohn by Wilhelm Friedrich von Schadow, 1834.]

A good friend asked if I could do an episode of music for her very young daughter. So, welcome to a bit of a Classical For Everyone podcast experiment. On the plus side for the intended audience… There's not a lot of talking. And the show is well under an hour. This might be balanced by the host's attempt to channel the children's books of his (distant) youth. Like I said, it's an experiment. But the music is terrific… Some perhaps expected… some not so much… The beginning of Michael Haydn's Toy Symphony, Edvard Greig's 'In the Hall of The Mountain King', 'Aquarium' from Camille Saint-Saëns' Carnival Of The Animals, 'I'm The Birdcatcher' from Wolfgang Mozart's opera 'The Magic Flute'. Peter Tchaikovsky's 'Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy' from his ballet 'The Nutcracker'; the ending of Joaquin Rodrigo's 'Concert for Aranjuez', the beginning of Johann Sebastain Bach's 'Third Brandenburg Concerto', the Prelude to Georges Bizet's opera 'Carmen', Elena Kats-Chernin's 'The Dance Of The Paper Umbrellas' and the Overture to Giacchino Rossini's opera 'The Barber of Seville'. [Episode image: 'The Walk To Paradise Garden' by W. Eugene Smith, 1946.]

The name comes from the night of the week when for some of us, the frustrations of insomnia hit 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 month… Camille Saint-Saën's 3rd Symphony. Known as the Organ Symphony for reasons that will become pretty obvious. In this performance Daniel Barenboim conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the organist is Gaston Litaize.  [Episode Image: Portrait of Saint-Saëns by Benjamin Constant. Background: Illustration of St John's Hall, London; where the premiere took place. The Hall was demolished in 1905.]

Is Ludwig van Beethoven neglected? No, not at all. But with the well-deserved emphasis on his symphonies, a couple of piano concertos and a handful of piano sonatas and string quartets; there is another roughly eighty hours of music to explore. And in the same way that maybe Picasso, Rembrandt, Shakespeare and Dickens created very little that is not of extraordinary quality… there is a bunch of incredible music that is not going to be encountered by the casual listener and that is what I want to feature in this show. An overture, excerpts from a misnumbered piano concerto, a string quartet, a piano sonata and from the Triple Concerto. [Episode image: Johannes Gelert sculpture of Beethoven photographed in Lincoln Park outside Chicago mid-20th Century by Percy Sloan.]