Beethoven and Mozart and- – –

“Do you even understand this fancy music you listen to asked my father once,” I smiled and told him “there is nothing to understand it just courses like intoxicated blood through the brain.”

I have the BBC to thank for this interest. In the sixties and the seventies I had a transistor radio which caught the BBC in a very scratchy and wavering clarity on short wave. “This is the BBC”, is one of the phrases which used to stir my soul with the prospect of honest news and good music at various times of the day and night. I heard Madame Butterfly for the first time on these wavering waves of radio. To be honest at first I could not appreciate the high pitched singing but over the years the melodies and the tunes behind the Italian words engraved themselves onto my soul.–https://youtu.be/tmfw17L_Deo?si=RszsMYqwf7e5nKha 

Then a friend gave me a Long Playing (LP) of Beethoven’s piano concerto Emperor. For years I breathed it into my asthmatic lungs. It is played on the piano by Claudio Arrau.–https://youtu.be/FKhRyGeyMYg?si=prdFMiXzs5eW3RPE 

Then over the years I have stumbled upon Dvorak especially the New World Symphony conducted by Nejc Bečan with the Gimnazija Kranj Symphony Orchestra – https://youtu.be/O_tPb4JFgmw?si=9Tn3eAwuh3vwH7hP 

I blasted Handel’s Messiah onto my kind neighbours at odd hours of the day.

I stumbled upon the Triple Concerto by Beethoven with Yo Yo Ma on the Cello, Itzak Perlman on the violin and Barenboim conducting and playing on the piano. I thought I had reached the final epitome of the classical music genre with this–https://youtu.be/HgCtmtyKjwg?si=cOvtWN2XIg1V6uow 

Then it hit me like a brick dropped from the seventh floor this opening of Mozart’s piano concerto conducted and played by Mitsuko Uchido–https://youtu.be/yM8CFR01KwQ?si=lBkITLrHHZfz63vY 

https://images.app.goo.gl/pYWdu3Fqn4Pt4wNC9

There is no end to it but it is beautiful music as one stumbles upon these recordings on the internet.