Classical For Everyone

In much of the English-speaking world, along with France and Belgium, the 11th of November… the day World War One hostilities ceased in 1918… has become a day to remember the fallen, honour those who served and returned, and reflect on the human cost of all wars… called variously Armistice Day or Veterans Day or Remembrance Day. It is worth noting that many nations set aside a different day... In South Korea it is 6th June, In Russia there are two dates 9th May and 22nd June, In Japan it is the 15th of August. In Germany, 15th November.  So, whilst the timing of this episode says something about my background, as does the music I am going to play, please don't interpret this as elevating any particular nation or conflict. I suspect you may have already worked out that there is going to be some intense music in this show and whilst I am genuinely a very big fan of the joy and delight so much music can give... this is music written for a different purpose. I hope you find the gravity and emotion in it as affecting and powerful as I do. War is a subject that has figured in the work of many, many composers but I only have music for you from five. Frederick Kelly, Dmitri Shostakovich, Josef Haydn, Richard Struass and Benjamin Britten.
[Episode Image: 'Sacrifice' by George Rayner Hoff, Hall of Silence Anzac Memorial, Sydney]

A podcast about classical music is maybe not really a place for politics but I'm recording this episode a day after the midterm elections in the US. And I think that a lot of people all over the globe are pleased and perhaps relieved that the complicated machinery of democracy in 2026 was robust enough to survive various attempts to compromise or subvert it… and regardless of one's affiliations I think that is well worth celebrating. With some help from Aaron Copland, Jennifer Higdon, Leonard Bernstein, Joan Tower, George Gershwin, Phillip Glass and John Adams.
[Episode Image: Scaffolding Liberty]

The pianist Sviatoslav Richter's life can somewhat conveniently be broken up into two parts… before he was allowed to tour outside the Soviet bloc in 1960 when he was in his mid 40s… and after. This episode is mostly about that second part; and touches on Richter's expanded interest in Chamber Music, some famous recordings, his influence on piano repertoire and his later career. Plus there will be sensational music from Schumann, Schubert, Liszt, Mozart, Beethoven and Prokofiev.
[Episode Image: Richter c.1960s – photographer: Arje Plas]

We bring meanings to music that the composers often didn't intend. And this episode is going to be an example of that. There is something in some music that for me triggers a sort of longing. The writer and composer Jan Swafford describes some of Mozart's music as having a 'deep yearning' and I think that is in the same general area.  And you can't be too prescriptive about this. It is a bit different if there are lyrics but music on its own is generally suggestive rather than specific. And when I describe the music I'm going to play as inspiring feelings of 'longing'… that in itself is a broad and perhaps vague concept… the music might bring up feelings of someone you have lost… or of a place you can't return to… maybe a golden time you can't recapture… or an ache for someone you can't be with.
And of course it may do none of those things for you but for the next hour and a bit there will be music with maybe a hint of melancholy or wistfulness or searching or longing… from Frederic Chopin, Maurice Ravel, Gabriel Fauré, Edward Elgar, Anton Arensky, Jean Sibelius, Arvo Pärt, Johann Sebastain Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Aram Khachaturian and Ludwig van Beethoven. 
[Episode image: 'A distant star' Chania, Crete.]

The Soviet pianist Sviatoslav Richter, as I hope this and the following episode will illustrate, is one of the greatest musicians of the recording era… unsurpassed technical expertise matched with a profound depth of musicality. But those clichés (whilst true) could be applied to a not insignificant number of other players. So why Richter? More than most musicians he was touched by history.  Born in 1915 and dying in 1997, he outlived the Soviet Union but his life was utterly entangled with that state and the impact its leaders had on the people under their iron fists, Richter included. There is I think something in Richter's absolute immersion in his music that was a result of these extraordinary times and his strategies to protect himself from them. And along with the first part of his story there will be music from Mussorgsky, Prokofiev, Beethoven, Schubert and Rachmaninoff.
[Episode Image: Richter c.1960 Time Life - Walter Sanders]