The perfect Christmas gift for anyone asking: ‘How do I get into classical music?’

Perfect Pitch Tim Bouverie Short Books £9.99 ★★★★★

As a lockdown pastime, Tim Bouverie (right) began emailing his friends brief, chatty essays on pieces of classical music that he had grown to love since childhood. These have now become the basis of a charming and useful book that will appeal to anyone with open ears, a feeling for a good tune and the nagging sense that – wonderful as they are – Abba or Jay-Z may not be the be-all and end-all.

Although he’s a distinguished Oxfordeducated historian of the Second World War, Bouverie is no pontificating, patronising professor. He writes about music with the fresh, unpretentious verve of a pure amateur whose only concern is to communicate his personal enthusiasms – so there’s no danger that you’ll be put off by technical jargon or arcane references.

Bouverie has selected 100 works, all composed between 1650 and 1950 and the great majority familiar to regular listeners of Classic FM. Bouverie offers a nice balance between well-sourced information and opinion, along with a recommended recording. His taste is decidedly trad, weighted towards the romantic and melodic, but it stretches to a few oddities and rarities – I confess I’ve never heard of Louise Farrenc’s Piano Quintet. She turns out to be a French piano prodigy, like Schumann’s wife Clara, who became a prolific composer of chamber and symphonic music in the 1830s and 1840s. After reading Bouverie’s intriguing account, I feel moved to hunt out her legacy.

Another of his slightly left-field choices is the film score written by the émigré from the Nazis, Erich Korngold, for the swashbuckling Errol Flynn caper The Adventures Of Robin Hood – music so dramatic and characterful that the composer described it as an ‘opera without singing’.

Alongside ‘entry-level’ favourites such as Bach’s merry fourth Brandenburg Concerto, Tchaikovsky’s sumptuous ballet The Sleeping Beauty and Lehar’s scintillating operetta The Merry Widow, the author includes more challenging masterpieces such as Beethoven’s introspective A-minor string quartet, Wagner’s mighty Ring Cycle and Mahler’s epic 9th Symphony.

Bouverie is often sharply insightful and vividly imaginative in the way he describes specific passages. For example, the triumphantly swaggering opening to Vivaldi’s Gloria reminds him of ‘one of Venice’s great festivals: a feast of barges and gondolas floating down the Grand Canal’. And I particularly liked his idea that the finale to Bruckner’s 8th Symphony is ‘a cathedral of sound, with all the trumpets and drums such as might attend the Day of Judgement, it offers its shattered listeners, at long last, a vision of hope; a chance of salvation’. Listen to this sublimely emotional music and you’ll understand exactly what he means.

I only wish that Bouverie had felt impelled to include more examples of the 20th Century repertory: yes, Stravinsky’s The Firebird and Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony feature, among a few others, but there’s so much hugely and immediately enjoyable music by Debussy, Ravel, Bartók and Britten that it seems almost perverse to exclude it when six works by Mozart and three Mahler symphonies have survived the final cut.

So I can’t resist adding to his list Debussy’s evocative Nocturnes, Ravel’s sun-drenched ballet Daphnis Et Chloé, Bartók’s electrifying Concerto For Orchestra and Britten’s impassioned War Requiem. And surely there’s something by a living composer that Bouverie likes? Perhaps he might try John Adams’s wacky and exuberant orchestral showpiece, Short Ride In A Fast Machine?

But that brings me to an important point. There’s no ‘should’ when it comes to liking music of any sort, and a lot of damage can be done by teachers and fanatics (not to mention downright snobs) who insist that anything labelled ‘classical’ has some sublime status that puts it on an altar beyond a matter of taste. Yes, of course a Haydn string quartet or Brahms symphony is indisputably more complex and ingenious in form and structure than an Ed Sheeran song, but that doesn’t mean you are under any obligation to like it.

The problem perhaps comes down to a matter of time. A Sheeran song makes its impact on first hearing and may not reveal anything more on repetition. A Haydn string quartet won’t give you everything it’s got to give on that first hearing. It follows different rules, it comes from a different place, it contains depths and subtleties – and that’s where someone like Bouverie can be so helpful in opening the door and pointing you in the right direction with a few gentle hints and amusing anecdotes.

But there’s no reason to feel guilty if you find that Haydn string quartets don’t float your boat – music is written to be enjoyed, not analysed.

Several broadly similar guides to Bouverie’s may be found in your bookshop, but this one can be warmly recommended for its friendly tone, factual accuracy and elegant prose that doesn’t blather or gush. Evie Dunne’s gentle illustrations offer additional decorative delight.

Here is the perfect Christmas gift for anyone asking the question: ‘How do I get into classical music?’