Classical For Everyone

Classical Music for New Years Eve seems to be dominated by nineteenth century Viennese waltzes and eighteenth century music for fireworks. All nice stuff but I wasn't after something for New Years Eve. I wanted music for New Years Day. And that led to thoughts about renewals, beginnings, clean slates, optimism and second chances. And mysteriously that line of thought led to the idea of dawn and sunrise. So in the next hour and a bit there will be music about that very pretty time of the day... from Maurice Ravel, Joseph Haydn, Ottorino Respighi, Benjamin Britten, Edvard Grieg, Carl Nielsen, Peter Sculthorpe, Augusta Read Thomas and Ludwig van Beethoven. Happy New Year!

Sorcerers, Toys, Wolves, Volcanoes and Fossils. Music for young people… but why them… and why now? In some parts of the world people are having a bit of a holiday as this episode goes out… and you may have your children… or nephews, nieces or grandchildren lying around your home or stuck with you in your car. This is music for them. It can be enjoyed by anyone… but this is a collection of music that can be great early experiences of classical music for young people. Music from Michael Haydn, Paul Dukas, Camille Saint-Saëns, Gareth Farr, Sergei Prokofiev, Benjamin Britten and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

In this episode there will be an amount of Christmas music from the western tradition… which I think you might have to expect from a podcast with the word 'classical' in the title but this is not really a celebration of mangers, shepherds, wise men or difficult to explain conceptions… though I have to confess, some shepherds snuck their way in.  A certain amount of the music is just there for the sheer joy of it. Music that has a festive feel and in some instances has a certain holiday exuberance. Works by Corelli, Bach, Mendelssohn, Saint-Saëns, Liszt, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, Schoenberg, Mozart, Lilburn and Kats-Chernin.

Music from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Maurice Ravel, Morten Lauridsen, Ralph Vaughan-Williams, Philip Glass and Benjamin Britten… chosen pretty deliberately for its calming qualities. I'm guessing that quite a few of you are balancing the joys and challenges of the holiday season. So if you just want to put your feet up… or you've come to the end of a day with too much red and green in your world and are unwinding… or perhaps heading toward sleep, then I hope you'll enjoy this episode  called 'Lullabies and Reveries'. And I'm perhaps using the word 'lullaby' in a broad sense… who says toddlers are the only ones who deserve evocative music to carry them to a dreamy state.

The title of this episode is perhaps a little misleading and it certainly contains a contradiction… namely, if I have a recording, and I can play it to you, then really, is 'forgotten' the right adjective? But it is, I hope you'll agree, a little catchier than… 'music from Antonio Vivaldi that might get a bit more prominence if his set of solo violin concertos called 'The Four Seasons' wasn't so extremely popular'. And as we go along, I'll tell you a little about the remarkable journey of Vivaldi's original handwritten scores and how surprising it is we have any of this music at all.