CACOPHONY: GREAT CLASSICAL MUSIC

Brilliant and meaningful, North by Southwest may have been the initial name for Billy Strayhorn's Suite for The Duo, a brilliant, late work for horn and piano: it's a title that suggests confusion and conflicting ideas about the dying composers direction of travel. It's a great piece: virtuosic but raw and written with a total understanding of both horn and piano and what they can do.

It's a longer episode than normal because (amazingly) I was able to speak with Willie Ruff, the horn player for whom it was written. Willie, now in his nineties, joined me from his home in Alabama and he talked about his life and career, the Mitchell-Ruff duo, Strayhorn and how Suite for The Duo came to life.

Listening time 37 mins (podcast 25', music 12')

The Suite for The Duo can be found here on Apple Music, Youtube and Spotify.

Other music clips in the episode: Take the A-Train [Strayhorn], All the things you are [Jerome Kern], Serenade for tenor, horn and strings [Benjamin Britten]

Willieruff.com has further info on Willie as well as links to buy this and other recordings on cd and his biography A Call to Assembly.

Another episode of Cacophony will feature more from Willie in due course!

Are you a horn player or fab pianist? You can buy the sheet music for the Suite too. Get this in your repertoire! (Be sure to buy parts 1-4, the other edition is incomplete.)

What do you think? Let me know with an easy voicemail or comment at Cacophonyonline.com, Facebook or Twitter.

If you'd like to support Cacophony there are easy, great, ways:

- share this episode with someone you know

- share the 100 second trailer

- buy us a cuppa at ko-fi.com

- subscribe/ review and keep listening!

Thanks for listening!

Photo credit: Vincent Oneppo (pic from WillieRuff.com)

Heat, danger, emptiness and space. Plenty of all of this in Peter Sculthorpe's excellent Kakadu - inspired by northern Australia but featuring universal themes of humanity, life, death, and timelessness. 

Listening time c22 minutes (podcast 6', music 16')

Music here: on Youtube, on Spotify or Apple Music played by the Queensland Orchestra, conducted by Michael Christie with William Barton on didgeridoo. 

You can buy this recording as a download here (though you have to buy a whole album, but this recording is the one that I think does best justice to the piece and gives the didgeridoo proper prominence).

What do you think? Let me know with an easy voicemail or comment at Cacophonyonline.com, Facebook or Twitter.

If you'd like to support Cacophony there are easy, great, ways:

- share this episode

- share the 100 second trailer

- buy us a cuppa at ko-fi.com

- subscribe/ review and keep listening!

Thanks for listening!

It's not about that sort of passion, but this symphony La Passione is intense, dark, thrilling, and one of Haydn's best!

Listening time c30 minutes (podcast 5.5', music 23')

Music here: on Youtube, live in concert with video, on Spotify or Apple Music (Apple Music is a link to the first track only, sorry) played by Il Giardino Armonico, conductor, Giovanni Antonini.

You can buy this recording as a download here. 

What do you think? Let me know with an easy voicemail or comment at Cacophonyonline.com, Facebook or Twitter.

If you'd like to support Cacophony there are easy, great, ways:

- share this episode

- share the 100 second trailer

- buy us a cuppa at ko-fi.com

- subscribe/ review and keep listening!

Thanks for listening!

One of my favourite joyful but heavyweight quick fixes, Robert Schumann's original Symphony no.4 is an intense and inventive stream of consciousness full of light and life. It's a thrill. Shame Schumann didn't see it that way...

Listening time c35 minutes (podcast 10', music 25')

Music here: on Youtube, Spotify or Apple Music (Apple Music is a link to the first track only, sorry) played by the brilliant Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique (from London!) conductor, John Eliot Gardiner.

The later version of the symphony is out there too (earlier in the same youtube clip).

You can buy this recording as a download for less than £9 here. Be careful to get the right version!

What do you think? Let me know with an easy voicemail or comment at Cacophonyonline.com, Facebook or Twitter.

If you'd like to support Cacophony there are easy, great, ways:

- share this episode

- share the 100 second trailer

- buy us a cuppa at ko-fi.com

- subscribe/ review and keep listening!

Thanks for listening!

Another forgotten gem from a late 18th century woman composer, Marie Emmanuelle Bayon Louis's overture to d'Épine is boisterous and brilliant.

You can listen to the piece here played by the excellent and stylish Academy of Ancient Music.

Listening time 11 minutes (podcast 5', music 6')

What do you think? Let me know with an easy voicemail or comment at Cacophonyonline.com, Facebook or Twitter.

If female French composers are your thing check out others on Cacophony, Lili Boulanger (featuring an interview with champion of female composers, Diana Ambache) or Louise Farrenc.

The picture isn't a Mayflower...but does look a bit like one...

If you'd like to support Cacophony there are easy, great, ways:

- share this episode

- share the 100 second trailer

- buy us a cuppa at ko-fi.com

- subscribe/ review and keep listening!

Thanks for listening!

So much more than just a famous TV theme tune, Prokofiev's music for Romeo and Juliet is full of intensity, drama, passion, wit and the occasional brilliantly pure dance number. Simultaneously draining and energising it's a fabulous demonstration of the sheer power of music. I love it.

Listening time 41 minutes (podcast 11', music 30')

There's a mistake: Tybalt is Juliet's cousin, not her brother. Oops! There goes my GCSE English grade!

Here are complete performances of Prokofiev's 2nd suite from Romeo and Juliet on Youtube and Spotify and (maybe only a link to the first track?) on Apple Music, played by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra conducted by Paavo Järvi. You can buy the recordings as a download here.

What do you think? Let me know with an easy voicemail or comment at Cacophonyonline.com, Facebook or Twitter.

If you'd like to support Cacophony there are easy, great, ways:

- share this episode

- share the 100 second trailer

- buy us a cuppa at ko-fi.com

- subscribe/ review and keep listening!

Thanks for listening!

Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from West Side Story (Cacophony ep.117) features the driving funky rhythms at the expense of the wit, poetry and driving funky rhythms of the song numbers... so this episode features four of my favourites.

Listening time 22 minutes (podcast 7', music 15')

Here are complete performances of my choices on Youtube and Spotify from the soundtrack album of Steven Spielberg's 2021 movie.

What do you think? Let me know with an easy voicemail or comment at Cacophonyonline.com, Facebook or Twitter.

If you'd like to support Cacophony there are easy, great, ways:

- share this episode

- share the 100 second trailer

- buy us a cuppa at ko-fi.com

- subscribe/ review and keep listening!

Thanks to NY resident, Emma Cotter for the photo - actually taken from Queensboro bridge, so it's an East Side Manhattan photo, but in the right uptown/ downtown area!

Thanks for listening!

I played this over a week ago and still the tunes dance around inside my head - it's the jazz- and latin-fuelled brilliance of the Symphonic Dances from Leonard Bernstein's smash hit musical, West Side Story - perhaps the greatest musical there is? Let me know!

Listening time 34 minutes (podcast 10', music 24')

Complete performances of the music on Youtube (filmed concert performance with The Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France, conducted by Mikko Franck), Spotify and Apple Music (Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Christian Lindberg, conductor). The Apple link only plays the first track - you'll have to work out the rest, sorry.

What do you think? Let me know with an easy voicemail or comment at Cacophonyonline.com, Facebook or Twitter.

If you'd like to support Cacophony there are easy, great, ways:

- share this episode

- share the 100 second trailer

- buy us a cuppa at ko-fi.com

- subscribe/ review and keep listening!

Thanks to NY resident, Emma Cotter for the photo - actually taken from Queensboro bridge, so it's an East Side Manhattan photo, but in the right uptown/ downtown area!

Thanks for listening!

I'm no fan of horror films - too scary for me - but, in any case, nothing really scares us more than the thoughts in our heads! I do love scary music though and Béla Bartók wrote the best. Music for strings, percussion and celesta is unusual, gripping, terrifying and thrilling. It's also brilliant at clearing my mind of any 'unneccessary' thinking.

Listening time 40 mins (podcast 11', music 29').

Listen to the complete music, played by the awesome Budapest Festival Orchestra, conducted by Iván Fischer on Spotify or Youtube, or Susanna Mälkki conducting the Helsinki Philharmonic on Apple Music (where you have to find the tracks after track 1, sorry)

Sometimes, especially with unfamiliar, complex, music I find it's good to have something to watch - it can help guide our ears a bit, and make concentration easier. There's are two exellent filmed performances on youtube: this one shot during the pandemic with no audience, with the Oslo Philharmonic and conductor Vasily Petrenko, and

this one from The Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France conducted by Alan Gilbert. It's got a noisy audience, but the France Musique cameracrews are allowed to move around the stage, which makes for much more interesting video than you often get with orchestras on tv. Which means they catch things like this fantastic smile of musical- and colleague- enjoyment from the harpist too: Watch these few seconds anyway!

You can buy the recordings as downloads, here (Fischer) (& here (Mälkki))

What do you think? Let me know with an easy voicemail or comment at Cacophonyonline.com, Facebook or Twitter.

If you'd like to support Cacophony there are easy, great, ways:

- share this episode

- share the 100 second trailer

- buy us a cuppa at ko-fi.com

- subscribe/ review and keep listening!

Thanks for listening!

When Haydn came to London he was treated like a superstar: wined and dined by the great and good, and his concerts were the hottest ticket in town. The 'Miracle' Symphony, no.96, was Haydn's first written for Londoners and is designed to win us over with its charms. Music to put a smile on our faces and a spring in our step! Listening time c32 mins (podcast 10', music 22')

Click here for complete performances of the Symphony on Youtube, Spotify or here.

What do you think? Let me know with an easy voicemail or comment at Cacophonyonline.com, Facebook or Twitter.

If you'd like to support Cacophony there are easy, great, ways:

- share this episode

- share the 100 second trailer

- buy us a cuppa at ko-fi.com

- subscribe/ review and keep listening!

Thanks for listening!