First impressions
As the BBC announces its new Ten Pieces for children, ten top musicians reveal their childhood favourites
D o you remember the first piece of classical music that really inspired you as a child? Perhaps you were swept away by Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker, or maybe it was the colourful world of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf that captured your imagination. Then again, it could have been one of the many pieces written specifically for children and teenagers, even though, arguably, they appeal just as much to adults – Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, for instance, or Ravel’s Mother Goose. Was it a recording or a concert that you heard, or a piece that you learned to play yourself?
Whatever the circumstances, many of us remember that initial life-changing encounter with classical music. This autumn, the BBC launches the fourth season of its education scheme Ten Pieces, with a list of brilliant works to inspire schoolchildren aged from seven to 14. This year’s composers range from Brahms to Bacewicz, Vivaldi to Villa-lobos – and it’s a great place to begin (see p64). But how did the world’s best-loved musicians get started? We asked ten of them to cast their minds back to the piece that first got them hooked on classical music.
Amy Dickson Saxophonist
I remember a piece of piano music called Andalucía by the Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona. We had a cassette of it, although I don’t now remember who was playing. I knew where the piece was on the tape and as soon as it was over I knew how many seconds I had to press the rewind button before I needed to press the play button again. My poor parents! They’d be driving along in the car, and I’d be in the front seat so I could play DJ for this one piece of music. I’d just listen to it on repeat. When I was old enough to play it, I managed to find a score in a random public library on the other side of Sydney. My mum was a very nervous driver and she had never driven across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, because it has far too many lanes. In order to get this piece for me she had to drive not only over the bridge, but then a further two hours. It’s just one of those short, romping showpieces that’s very charming and lovely. I used to find it really exciting.
‘‘ Ernesto Lecuona’s Andalucía is one of those short, romping showpieces that’s very charming and lovely’’
Benjamin Appl Baritone
Weber’s Der Freischütz was the first opera I saw. I grew up with a lot of folk music and brass bands in Bavaria. Somehow, I connected it to this music which is very German – Der Freischütz is probably the most German opera. I saw it live at the small opera house in my hometown of Regensburg. My father and grandfather worked for the Count and his family, and when they didn’t use their box, employees were able to book it. So that’s where I sat, with my mother and grandfather. When I got home, I bought the recording and the score with my pocket money. I also wanted to become a conductor, so I ‘conducted’ this opera almost every afternoon after school. I knew all the cues, instrumentation and text. I imagined the stage in front of me, although actually there was really only the wall of the living room.
Marin Alsop Conductor
Brahms’s String Sextet in B flat was the piece of music that grabbed me emotionally for the first time, allowing me to understand that music can touch and move us. It brought the fire and passion to music for me. I was 13 years old at a summer chamber music camp, and I heard it being played on someone’s record player through a door. It was so compelling that I sat outside the room and tears started falling down my face. It was so shocking and surprising that music had such a capacity to move me. It’s so hard as an adolescent to understand all the emotions you have, and putting it into words is nearly impossible. But certain pieces of music are a refuge and a haven for all these emotions.
Evelyn Glennie Percussionist
I was first introduced to Kodály’s Háry János suite when I was given the xylophone part aged 12 in my youth orchestra. Our conductor made us look at the full score to understand how our parts fitted together. This piece helped cement my desire to be a solo percussionist, because I loved that the percussion writing was exposed and often highlighted. I loved the fact that Kodály used folk music as the basis of the piece. I was brought up with Scottish traditional music, so I was intrigued as to how he incorporated traditional music in an orchestral setting. The percussion parts are melodic, rhythmic, full of colour and exciting. I still see this piece as fresh and invigorating as ever. I can still feel my hands glide over the xylophone as I play the part in my mind – it has never left me.
Hilary Hahn Violinist
The earliest piece I really liked was Brahms’s Waltz No. 15. To this day, when I hear it, it’s just part of me. But the first piece I remember obsessing over, that I felt I had discovered on my own, was Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 played by Martha Argerich. For me as a violinist, the thing I missed was power in the instrument and the span of notes. I was never comfortable enough at the piano to achieve that as a student. The Tchaikovsky seems to say, ‘Wow, here I am’. I listened to the tape seven times straight in a row, and I listened to it the next day and the next. Something about that performance really
spoke to me about the drama of this music. Tchaikovsky had such a grand sense of scale, and he was a master of emotional directness. When you listen to his music, you’re immediately in it.
Eric Whitacre Composer and conductor
I was 18 years old and had been playing as a pop musician my entire life, and I joined a choir in college on a whim. I was sitting in a rehearsal and the choir started the Kyrie from Mozart’s Requiem. At the end of the 50-minute rehearsal, I felt transformed. It was the first time I had felt part of something larger than myself. On a technical level, it was about the complexity of the counterpoint in three dimensions around me. Mozart’s music feels sublimely inevitable, as if he’s improvising a perfectly constructed composition. And he just seemed to be a fountain of perfect melodies, one after another, that stick in your mind and melt your heart. Now, he’s still the classical composer I go to the most. He just makes me feel better.
Alexandra Dariescu Pianist
I used to sing in my church choir alongside my Gran, Grandpa and Mum, and that really got me into choral classical music. We have a lot of Romanian choral composers, such as Ciprian Porumbescu, Gavriil Musicescu and Nicolae Lungu, and it was just amazing to sing four-part harmony. Also, as a child I used to listen to musical stories on LPS – a bit like audiobooks – including Cinderella, which had a lot of Prokofiev’s ballet music in it. I used to love listening to it, either as I was drawing when I was very little or, later, doing my homework. I particularly remember how, whatever narration was being spoken on top of it or between it, the music always made sense. It was very descriptive, and I also remember the energy and the drama of it.
Tai Murray Violinist
When I was about five or six, my younger brother and I had a cassette tape of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, which we listened to so much that we wore it out. I haven’t seen the tape for about 30 years now, and while I believe it might well have been David Oistrakh playing I can’t be sure. In part it was the performance that excited me, but it was also the piece itself. In such a young person’s brain it must seem like just a succession of scales and arpeggios, but it is so elegantly and brilliantly put together that it astounded me even at that age. It kept me completely transfixed for its duration of 45 minutes or so. When, as a violinist myself, I was preparing to play the concerto myself for the first time on stage, I thought back to that tape.
Joshua Bell Violinist
When I was 16, I was already playing professionally, and around that time I saw the movie Amadeus. I immediately bought the soundtrack featuring the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and Neville Marriner. And it was Mozart’s Requiem that really got me. I just got addicted to it. I was into technology and I’d bought this new CD player that could wake me up to whatever music I wanted. I had it set every morning to wake me up to Mozart’s Requiem, which didn’t seem weird at the time! Its seven-bar introduction is the most beautiful thing in music I can think of. Those dissonances, the way that it moves and the inevitability of the rhythm. It somehow captures not just the tragedy of death, but the beauty of life and the longing and sadness – all the things that only music can describe.
Stephen Kovacevich Pianist
I was five years old when I first heard a recording of Mozart’s Symphony No. 40. I found the opening of the first movement overwhelming and deeply disturbing. It was the first experience of hearing music that I can remember. I remember thinking ‘there’s something about life that I don’t yet know about’ – something I could hear in this anxious, disturbed music. Of course, I wasn’t able to analyse what I was listening to. I just heard the urgency of the viola in that opening, despite not knowing what a viola even was at the time, and it got straight through to me. Even now, my reading of the piece hasn’t changed one iota. Mozart’s music is ambiguous within the most formal expression – it’s so simple, but can give you goosebumps.
Which piece of classical music inspired you as a child? Let us know at music@classical-music.com