Classical For Everyone

Much of the 20th century orchestral music that today dominates concert halls and recording studios started as music for ballets. And the best of it started with the Ballets Russes company; which was largely the creation of one man… the Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev. It is hard to think of another instance where one man, who was not a composer, has had such an outsize influence on what has come down to us as great and lasting music. And I'm going to play you a selection of that music… from Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Igor Stravinsky, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Erik Satie, Manuel de Falla and Sergei Prokofiev… as well as giving you a little of the Diaghilev and Ballets Russes story.

It's Classical For Everyone's 1st Birthday, so here's a personal favourite. This was the first time a choir and soloists had been added to a 'symphony'. Choral and orchestral music had been combined before but at the time there were quite rigid expectations of what a 'symphony' should be. That said there was a fascination amongst some parts of the Viennese audience with the way Ludwig van Beethoven seemed to be frequently tearing down traditions and replacing them with what somehow very often seemed to have been an innovation that was music's next natural step. And with the final movement of this symphony, Beethoven took that step. Suddenly there was singing.

If from time to time you happen to listen to a podcast with the subtitle 'Five Hundred Years Of incredible Music' then it would be a reasonable expectation to hear some five hundred year old music. I've played a few pieces from the 1500s and 1600s but as you might expect the focus of the show has been sort of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and Antonio Vivaldi onwards… call it from the early 1700s until today. That means I've left out a good 175 years of music. This episode is going to be a step toward redressing that neglect.

On the day this episode is released, the American composer Philip Glass celebrates his 89th birthday. In a career now lasting well over five decades he has somehow achieved two extraordinarily rare things for a contemporary composer of classical music... a prolific amount of creative output and a degree of broad popularity. For the next hour and a quarter please enjoy a quick survey of five decades of great music… films, operas, concertos, quartets… and an unfairly small section of solo piano music. Happy Birthday!

Only be taken in the very personal sense of… recent discoveries by me. Not that I actually discovered anything. In my ongoing mission to keep the production of CDs alive, I came across music I didn't know and thought that you, my fine listeners, might enjoy. Incidentally, I was chatting with my friend Claude about the episode and his comment was that my title sounded much more dignified than "Music from Last Month's Credit Card Statement." And I urge you not to be discouraged by the idea of unfamiliar music. I promise there is some very lovely listening in the next 75 minutes from… Karl Goldmark, Joaquin Rodrigo, Frederick Delius, Ferdinand Hérold, Carl Nielsen, Andreas Hammerschmidt and Anne Cawrse.