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The Ultimate Classic FM Hall of Fame
By Darren Henley, Sam Jackson, Tim Lihoreau, Lynn Hatzius Elliot and Thompson Limited
Copyright © 2011 Darren Henley, Sam Jackson and Tim Lihoreau
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78396-270-9
CHAPTER 1
A
RICHARD ADDINSELL
(1904–1977)
Dangerous Moonlight
Anyone who has enjoyed a lazy Sunday afternoon weepie may well be unwittingly familiar with Richard Addinsell. In particular, the 1939 classic Robert Donat classic, Goodbye Mr. Chips, which features a halcyon Addinsell score. Although it was his first major success, he was already thirty-five years of age and the veteran of numerous stage plays: Adam's Opera and a brace of Lewis Carroll adaptations to name just three.
With hindsight, the romantic story of the 1941 film Dangerous Moonlight was always going to prove his overriding hit, though, with its star character, the Warsaw Concerto. Set in the midst of the conflict and arriving in wartime, this dashing tale of love and derring-do set hearts aflutter, and Addinsell's score was the perfect match. Originally, the object of the producer's attention was Rachmaninov. A score using a brand new Rachmaninov concerto would do perfectly, thank you very much. But when the famous Russian composer passed on the project, Addinsell was given the job, with a strong nudge in the 'Sergei' direction. With vital and musically crucial assistance from Roy Douglas, a man who worked as musical right-hand man to such figures as Vaughan Williams and Walton, the score to the story of the concert pianist at war became an international best seller, spawning a succession of British sound-alikes.
RECOMMENDED RECORDING
Cristina Ortiz (piano); Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; Vladimir Ashkenazy (conductor). Decca 414 3482
CHART POSITION 154
TOMASO ALBINONI
(1671–1751)
Adagio in G minor
Albinoni was a Baroque composer who had a financially rather well-cushioned life, thanks to the shares he inherited in his father's stationery firm, which manufactured playing cards, among other things. In 1945, the Italian academic Remo Giazotto published a book on Albinoni entitled The Violin Music of the Venetian Dilettante. Albinoni was just one area of expertise for Giazotto. Others included the composers Vivaldi and Busoni, as well as the music of the Baroque and Classical periods in general in Giazotto's native Genoa.
The academic's expertise on the life and music of the stationer's son led him to complete an Albinoni fragment, which he said he had discovered in the Saxon State Library in Dresden, while he was trying to salvage manuscripts after it was bombed in the Second World War. This produced what is known as the 'Albinoni Adagio', but should surely, at the very least, be called the 'Albinoni–Giazotto Adagio'. Late on in life, Giazotto changed his story, denying that the piece was based on a fragment of Albinoni's original composition at all. Instead, he wanted the world to know that he, Giazotto, had written the whole thing himself and Albinoni hadn't played any part in it. Nevertheless – and whatever the truth – the name 'Albinoni's Adagio' sticks.
RECOMMENDED RECORDING
I Solisti Veneti; Claudio Scimone (conductor).
Erato: 2292-45557-2.
CHART POSITION 42
Oboe Concerto in D minor
Unlike the famous Adagio, there is no question mark hanging over the authorship of one of Albinoni's best-known works for oboe. During his lifetime, the self-styled Venetian dilettante became famous across Europe, chiefly for his operas. He was determined not to let the inheritance of his father's paper and stationery company get in the way of composing and he soon divested himself of any day-to-day operational duties. This left him free to spend much of the 1720s (when he would have been in his fifties) touring the most fashionable international opera houses, overseeing his works. It meant that he found himself in the front line when it came to experiencing the latest advances in the music of the period. He was one of the first in Italy to write for the oboe – an emerging new instrument. This concerto is a near-perfect example of the species.
RECOMMENDED RECORDING
Pierre Pierlot (oboe); I Solisti Veneti; Claudio Scimone (conductor).
Erato: ERA 450 992 1302.
CHART POSITION 231
GREGORIO ALLEGRI
(1582–1652)
Miserere
This piece is the stuff of legends. Well, one particular legend, to be precise. Mozart, when he was a teenager, so the story goes, once heard Allegri's Miserere being performed in the Sistine Chapel. The precocious young composer apparently scurried home and wrote down the entire work from memory. Wonderful as the story sounds, it's almost certainly apocryphal: it would have been highly likely that Mozart would have come across the Miserere before, given its already significant popularity in musical circles.
The work itself is a sublime nine-voice setting of Psalm 51: Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam ('Have mercy upon me, O God, after Thy great goodness'). As you listen to the heavenly sound of each interweaving voice, it's fascinating to think that Allegri composed the piece for two separate choirs: one of four voices, and the other of five.
Allegri was a devout Catholic, having been trained as a priest, and he worked with the Vatican's Papal Choir right up until his death. Karl Proske, former Canon of Ratisbon Cathedral, described the composer as a man whose music was imbued with his religious faith and personal sense of justice, saying Allegri was 'a model of priestly peace and humility, a father to the poor, the consoler of captives and the forsaken, a selfsacrificing help and rescuer of suffering humanity'.
RECOMMENDED RECORDING
Choir of New College, Oxford; Edward Higginbottom (conductor).
Erato: 3984 295882.
CHART POSITION 16
CRAIG ARMSTRONG
(B. 1959)
William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet
Back in the 1590s, William Shakespeare could never have foreseen that his play, as wonderful as it was, would, some seven centuries on, still be spawning so many differing offspring. Not just the endless versions, the endless translations, but also the adaptations and inspirations: Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story; Duke Ellington's Such Sweet Thunder; not to mention Dire Straits' hit song.
Musically speaking, Romeo and Juliet has proven amazingly fertile soil for a vineyard of scores, each capturing the essence in their own way: Delius and his 'village' Romeo and Juliet; Tchaikovsky and his fantasy overture; and many folks' very own 'our tune', Nino Rota's Love Theme.
In 1996, the Bard's story worked its magic yet again, this time with the soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (and, yes, that has to be a plus sign, not an ampersand). In the middle of a characteristically eclectic soundtrack, which included the help of Massive Attack pals Nelle Hooper and Marius de Vries, Craig Armstrong's music to the 'Balcony Scene' seems to be a moment of pure Shakespearian romantic suspension. Even removed from its film context, the 'frozen in time' moment of pure heartfelt romance is still there and is surely one of the reasons this music has endured.
RECOMMENDED RECORDING
Various; Craig Armstrong (conductor). Capitol Records: 7243 8 59871 2 0
CHART POSITION 245
CHAPTER 2
B
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
(1685–1750)
Concerto in D minor for Two Violins
Double Concerto
Today, around half a million people live in Leipzig, a city that boasts one of the oldest and most respected orchestras in the world, the Gewandhaus, as well as two opera houses, a couple of music festivals and much more besides. However, when Bach arrived in Leipzig in 1723, he inherited a professional music staff of four town pipers, three violinists and one apprentice. At the age of forty-eight, he had taken what seemed to him to be a backward move in his career, becoming Kantor of St Thomas's. He built up his force of musicians by recruiting from his school and the nearby university. Composed in 1717, the 'Bach Double', as it is often called, came with him from his previous job in Cöthen, but seven years after he had arrived in Leipzig, he made a transcription for two harpsichords. Many of Bach's orchestrations were for purely pragmatic reasons, so we might presume that none of the three fiddlers were up to playing it in its original form. However, when the Cöthen version of the work was lost, Bach specialists were able to reconstruct it from the harpsichord version. The slow movement is surely one of Bach's most sublime creations.
RECOMMENDED RECORDING
Daniel Hope (violin); Marieke Blankestijn (violin); Chamber Orchestra of Europe. Warner Classics: 2564625452.
CHART POSITION 37
Toccata and Fugue in D minor
This work might as well be called 'The Organ'. For many, the instrument Stravinsky called 'the monster that never breathes' seems to come alive in this piece, which might have been written to make the listener believe that the organ talks, proving Stravinsky wrong. This is perhaps all the more striking when one realises that, since the 1980s at least, there has been a growing body of opinion that the work is not even by J. S. Bach. As with a lot of Bach's music, there is no surviving manuscript by the man himself – something that is not enough in itself to cast a stain on the work's credentials. It is more the complete originality, the one-off nature and the very un-Bach-like characteristics that lead some musicologists to doubt its provenance. If Bach did write it, say the believers, it was probably when he was very young – possibly between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two. The finest performances, such as the one recommended below, prove that, no matter who actually wrote it, it's a masterpiece of epic proportions.
RECOMMENDED RECORDING
Daniel Chorzempa (organ). Pentatone: PTC5186127.
CHART POSITION 43
The Brandenburg Concertos
There is no doubt that J. S. Bach did write the Brandenburg Concertos. However, he would not have recognised them by that name. When he penned the six concertos, almost certainly during his time at Cöthen (presumably for various members of the Cöthen Court Orchestra) the composer gave them the title 'Concertos for Several Instruments'. It was only his decision to package them up as a present for Christian Ludwig, the Margrave of Brandenburg (a margrave is roughly on a par with a marquis) that gave them their title.
Sadly for Bach, there appears to be no record of him ever having received a reply from the Margrave – and certainly not the one he desired: 'Thank you, Herr Bach, here's a large bundle of money and a job.' Indeed, there is no evidence the Margrave himself even heard them played.
Each of the six concertos appeals most to different listeners, from the galumphing First, the more 'stately-home' styling of the Second, the homely Third, the lofty Fourth and the galloping Fifth right through to the joyous Sixth.
RECOMMENDED RECORDING
English Baroque Soloists; John Eliot Gardiner (conductor). SDG: SDG707.
CHART POSITION 48
St Matthew Passion
Good Friday 1727 in Leipzig was a particularly good Friday. When Bach had first arrived, four years earlier, he had no doubt wowed his employers – not to mention the congregation – with that year's Easter offering, the St John Passion. Bach was ushered to Leipzig on the promise of a very large salary indeed, so the splendour of the work was probably timely. Given that he was responsible for providing weekly music at not one, but two, churches, for teaching singing to the schoolchildren, for training the choir, for teaching Latin (although, in the end, he farmed this part out to a deputy), he could surely be forgiven for thinking he was doing enough. Indeed, one of the reasons for Bach's constant use of existing chorale tunes as the basis for his extended cantatas was not justfamiliarity to his audience, but also sheer necessity. Four years into the job, though, he decided to compose another major choral piece. The St Matthew Passion is a monster of a work for two orchestras with extra words by Bach's favourite poet, Picander.
RECOMMENDED RECORDING
Anthony Rolfe Johnson (tenor, Evangelist); Barbara Bonney (soprano); Ann Monoylos (soprano); Anne Sofie von Otter (alto); Michael Chance (alto); Howard Crook (tenor); Olaf Bär (baritone); Cornelius Hauptmann (bass); English Baroque Soloists; Monteverdi Choir; John Eliot Gardiner (conductor). Deutsche Grammophon Archiv: 4297732.
CHART POSITION 78
Mass in B minor
There are several reasons why many Bach-lovers regard the B minor Mass as the pinnacle of his work. Size, for one, singles it out, even when compared to his previous titans, the St John Passion and the St Matthew Passion. It also contains some of the most engaging passages of music that he ever wrote, such as the opening five-part Kyrie eleison. Composed around 1748–49, it came at the end of Bach's life, when he had only one year left to live.
When the work is heard in its entirety, the listener comes away with the impression that this is a piece of music the composer had been building up to writing for the whole of his life. It therefore seems ironic that much of this best-loved work was 'bottom-drawer' music – music that Bach had either put by earlier or recycled. Indeed, he didn't even give the work a name. So this bundled collection of itinerant manuscripts simply bears the names of its individual sections, save for the Missa, which he transplanted wholesale from some fifteen years earlier. Despite being a motley disarray of homeless Mass sections on paper, it sounds completely wonderful.
RECOMMENDED RECORDING
Barbara Schlick (soprano); Catherine Patriasz (soprano); Charles Brett (alto); Howard Crook (tenor); Peter Kooy (bass); Chorus and Orchestra of Collegium Vocale, Ghent; Philippe Herreweghe (conductor). Virgin Veritas: 6931972.
CHART POSITION 89
Cantata No. 147
If we translate the title of the most popular section of Bach's cantata a little more accurately than the now ubiquitous English version we know, it comes out something like 'Jesus remains my joy, my heart's comfort and essence', rather than 'Jesu, joy of man's desiring'. Indeed, the rest of the translation bears precious little relation to the actual German text, written by the lawyer and poet Salomo Franck. Accuracy of words aside, this exquisite movement – choral interludes between that divine, undulating melody – might be best seen as a mere key to unlocking the rest of the cantata, entitled Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben (which translates as 'Heart and Mouth and Deed and Life'). Bach, in his quest to supply music for umpteen venues throughout his life, recycled the cantata – adding the now favourite section only the second time around. Originally destined for the last Sunday of Advent, the reworked version became a setting for May's Feast of the Visitation. Thank goodness, in some respects, for the composer's pretty oppressive work schedule. And a great example of recycling making sense.
RECOMMENDED RECORDING
Susan Gritton (soprano); Lisa Milne (soprano); Michael Chance (counter-tenor); Ian Bostridge (tenor); Michael George (bass); Choir of King's College, Cambridge; Academy of Ancient Music; Stephen Cleobury (conductor). Warner Classics: 5569942.
CHART POSITION 119
Cello Suites
Rarely has a composer managed to pare his music down to its absolute essence as Bach did in his Cello Suites. Perhaps there are three reasons for this: one, we're dealing with a genius composer; two, their solo nature – forcing Bach to astound his listener with clever and sometimes fiendishly difficult ways of maximising the instrument; and three, the fact that the cello is often considered the nearest instrument to the human voice. It somehow captures the feeling of exposed honesty, of complete naturalness, as the greatest voices do.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Ultimate Classic FM Hall of Fame by Darren Henley, Sam Jackson, Tim Lihoreau, Lynn Hatzius. Copyright © 2011 Darren Henley, Sam Jackson and Tim Lihoreau. Excerpted by permission of Elliot and Thompson Limited.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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