Night… Classical music after the sun has set.

The Music

The Words

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the ‘Classical For Everyone’ Podcast… five hundred years of incredible music. My name is Peter Cudlipp and I’ve loved classical music for as long as I can remember and that enthusiasm led to a radio show called, not surprisingly, ‘Classical For Everyone’ and now… I’m after a bit of a bigger audience.

If you enjoy any music at all then I’m convinced you can enjoy classical music. You don’t have to… and you don’t need to… but there really is some amazing music just waiting for you to discover or to rediscover! All you need are ears. No expertise is necessary. If you’ve ever been even slightly curious about classical music then this is the podcast for you.

Before I get to the music I want to say a very sincere thank you to all the listeners to the Podcast out there. In the three weeks since the podcast went live I’ve been genuinely touched by your many enthusiastic responses.  So. Thank you. It really means a lot.

Ok. Today’s episode is all about night.. Music that evokes the night… that captures the different moods of nighttime and music written to be performed at night... like the piece by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart that has been playing in the background. In the next hour as well as more Mozart I’m going to play you works by Manuel De Falla, Frederic Chopin, Benjamin Britten, Marc-Antione Charpentier, Maurice Ravel and Arnold Schoenberg.

To start here is the first part of Manuel De Falla’s sensational ‘Nights In the Gardens of Spain’ for piano and orchestra. This is one of those instances where the title really does capture what the composer is doing. I’m going to play you the first section called ‘In the Generalife’ after the small formal garden and palace near the Alhambra complex in Granada. It was completed in 1915 and is about ten minutes long. Here is pianist Alicia De Larrocha, conductor Rafael Frühbeck De Burgos and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

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That was the pianist Alicia De Larrocha, conductor Rafael Frühbeck De Burgos and the London Philharmonic Orchestra with the first part of Manuel De Falla’s Nights In the Garden of Spain… called ‘In the Generalife’.

Wikipedia says that a ‘nocturne’ is a musical composition that is inspired by, or evocative of, the night. And since the 1700’s composers have applied the term pretty liberally. But the group of 21 compositions that Frederic Chopin called Nocturnes are maybe in a class of their own. Here is pianist Maria Joao Pires with Chopin’s Nocturne No. 9 from 1837. It is about 5 minutes long.

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That was the pianist Maria Joao Pires with Frederic Chopin’s Nocturne No. 9. I hope you are enjoying this Classical for Everyone episode with music related to the idea of night. In its various forms.

Now for some Benjamin Britten. His 1945 opera ‘Peter Grimes’ is interrupted by six orchestral interludes… actually in effect short pieces for the orchestra to play while the set is being changed which incidentally wildly undersells these great short compositions… I played one in ‘The Sea’ episode a few weeks back and here is another. They’re hard to resist. This one is called ‘Moonlight’ and portrays the swell of the sea off the coast of Suffolk on a moonlit night. Here is Colin Davis conducting the Royal Opera House Orchestra of Covent Garden.

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That was the interlude ‘Moonlight’ from Benjamin Britten’s opera ‘Peter Grimes’. Colin Davis conducted the Royal Opera House Orchestra of Covent Garden.

Back in 2008 the Catalan musician Jordi Savall, probably best known as a master of that cousin of the cello, the viola da gamba, released a CD set called ‘invocation of the Night’, a wonderfully eclectic collection of different pieces of music connected to what conveniently happens to also be the theme of this episode of ‘Classical for Everyone’… the night. In the collection is a five minute piece called ‘Night’ from the French composer Marc-Antione Charpentier’s set of songs and instrumental pieces from 1690 called ‘Song of the Birth of Our Lord’ written to celebrate Christmas. Here it is performed by Jordi Savall and his group Hesperion XXI.

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That was Marc-Antione Charpentier’s ‘Night’ performed by Jordi Savall and Hesperion XXI. In the Classical For Everyone episode on Maurice Ravel from a few weeks back I didn’t play any of his solo piano music and promised that I would. In a happy coincidence with this episode’s theme of ‘Night’… one  of Ravel’s most dazzling pieces for solo piano is titled ‘Gaspard de la Nuit’… ‘Gaspard of the Night’ from 1908.

He takes his inspiration from a set of poems by Aloysius Bertrand apparently connected to a mysterious old man marauding around a local square at night, Gaspard de la Nuit, who turns out to be the Devil. It has three sections and I’m going to play you the final one… called ‘Scarbo’ based on a poem about a small goblin or fiend, is considered one of the most difficult pieces for the piano ever written. The poem describes… the night-time mischief of Scarbo… flitting in and out of the darkness, disappearing and suddenly reappearing. His uneven flight, hitting and scratching against the walls and bed curtains, casting a growing shadow in the moonlight creates a nightmarish scene for the poet lying in his bed.

It makes for some incredible music. So here is ‘Scarbo’ from Maurice Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit… Gaspard of the night… played by Martha Argerich. It is about 9 minutes long.

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That was Maurice Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit… Gaspard of the night… played by Martha Argerich. I hope you are enjoying this episode of the ‘Classical For Everyone’ podcast featuring music inspired by the night.

In 1902  the young Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg premiered his first and what would be his only string sextet… which is a work for two violins, two violas and two cellos. He called it ‘Verklarte Nacht’ or ‘Transfigured Night’. The title is from a poem by Richard Dehmel which depicts a man and a woman at an emotional crossroads walking through a forest at night and Schoenberg follows the action of the poem quite specifically. This was an early success for a composer who would take music down some surprising pathways in years to come… but here, even though he is using some dark and dissonant touches, there is still a Romantic quality of the music he uses to capture the strange and almost forlorn quality of the opening lines of the poem…

Two people are walking through a bare, cold wood;
the Moon keeps pace with them and draws their gaze.
The Moon moves along above tall oak trees,
there is no wisp of cloud to obscure the radiance
to which the black, jagged tips reach up.

Here is the Lasalle Quartet plus Donald McInnes and Jonathan Pegis with the first section of Arnold Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night. It is about six minutes long.

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That was the Lasalle Quartet plus Donald McInnes and Jonathan Pegis with the first section of Arnold Schoenberg’s ‘Transfigured Night’.

Ok. So the last few pieces have been preoccupied with the gloomier connotations of night… devils and dark and lonely forests. Here is a bit of a change… It is a work which its composer described a little bit of music for the evening… almost a throwaway title… in German… Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. The composer was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and here is the opening section played  by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.

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That was the opening of Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik… a little night music from 1787 and it was performed by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.    

My name is Peter Cudlipp and you have been listening to The ‘Classical for Everyone’ Podcast. If you would like to listen to past episodes or get details of the music I’ve played please head to the website classicalforeveryone.net. There you will also find some mini-episodes that address some of what I want to call the vexing questions for a listener new to Classical Music like… ‘Are conductors actually important?’; ‘Why does the word ‘sonata’ keep turning up?’ and ‘Why is almost everything in Italian?’. That web address again is classicalforeveryone.net. I hope you have enjoyed this episode of ‘Classical For Everyone’. If you want to make sure you don’t miss the shows as they are released then please Subscribe or Follow wherever you get your podcasts. That would also mean the search algorithms will smile more benignly on the show and it might reach a few more people. For that I would be very grateful. And if you want to get in touch then you can email… info@classicalforeveryone.net. Thanks for your time and I look forward to playing you some more incredible music on the next ‘Classical For Everyone’.                 

This podcast is made with Audacity Software for editing, Wikipedia for Research, Claude for Artificial Intelligence and Apple, Sennheiser, Sony, Rode and Logitech for hardware… The music played is licensed through AMCOS / APRA. Classical For Everyone is a production of Mending Wall Studios and began life on Radio 2BBB in Bellingen NSW, Australia thanks to the late, great Mr Jeffrey Sanders. The producers do not receive any gifts or support of any kind from any organisation or individual mentioned in the show. But, never say never. And finally the music playing under these credits is The Chairman Dances by John Adams and Edo de Waart conducted the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.

And if you have listened to the credits… here is a little bonus for you… a bit more Benjamin Britten. The 2^ndact of his 1963 opera ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ begins with an orchestral piece describing night in the wood outside Athens. Here is the composer conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. Thanks again for listening.