Mozart from Memory BBC Proms


Mozart from Memory

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Aurora Orchestra is one of Britain's most innovative ensembles.

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They've embraced a risk-taking approach to classical performance

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and they've challenged what can be achieved on the concert stage.

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They're made of some of the finest of a new generation of players

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from Britain and all over the world,

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under the leadership of their founder and principle conductor,

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Nicholas Collon.

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And together, in this Prom, they're going to play

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Mozart's last symphony, his 41st in C Major, the Jupiter.

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It was written in 1788, and it's probable that Mozart himself

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never heard this piece performed before his death in 1791.

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We are the lucky ones who can.

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However...

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We've never heard it performed at the Proms the way

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that Aurora Orchestra are about to.

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That's because they're going to play the whole of this symphony, all four

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of its movements, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of notes,

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entirely from memory.

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The orchestra have performed pieces from memory at the Proms before.

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In 2014, it was Mozart's 40th Symphony,

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and last year it was Beethoven's Pastoral.

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There won't be a single scrap of written music or even a single

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music stand on this stage when Aurora Orchestra play this piece.

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That's not new for them as a whole,

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but for some of these players this will be a new experience.

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There's also something of a first for me too, because I'm going to be

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joining Nicholas Collon and Aurora Orchestra on stage.

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Now, don't panic, I'm not going to be playing,

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but I will be using the chance that the fact that these players

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have memorised all of this piece to get inside the world of

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the Jupiter Symphony with the Proms audience,

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to reveal something of the wonders of Mozart's musical universe.

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So, before we hear this performance,

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let's meet some of the Aurora players to find out

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just how they've prepared to play Mozart from memory.

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It's eight o'clock in the morning, and sure enough,

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the first thing that I thought of was...

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MOZART MUSIC PLAYS

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People look at me like I'm a lunatic because I'm just sitting there

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with my eyes closed trying to memorise some bowing.

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Being familiar with the melodies and the piece as a whole

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is a very different ballgame to actually learning it from memory.

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My strategy really is to tackle the easiest bits

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and the hardest bits first.

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You've got to try to feel it without learning it.

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It's not something you learn... One, two, three, blah, blah, blah,

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three bars to count - you've got to feel it, like a dance.

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I like to go for a run each day.

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You can use waypoints in your mind of where you are on the run

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for where you are in the piece.

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I remember, like, a sequence of numbers -

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three, five, three, six.

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That's literally how I remember it.

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Memorising music is a great activity with a small baby because

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they quite enjoy you looking silly and humming to them and counting.

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So I've kind of been learning it ten minutes here, ten minutes there,

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when the baby lets me.

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Where do we get this bit?

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I've never learnt a symphony from memory before,

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so there's a whole other type of pressure.

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When I'm walking to work I'll be listening to the Mozart,

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it's just taken over my life for the last week -

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every single spare minute I have, I'll just say,

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"OK, I'll have a listen."

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The trickiest part is going from one section to the next

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because you might get to the end of one section and go,

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"Ah, what comes next? What's the next bit?"

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I actually like to leave the bow

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completely out of the learning process until the first rehearsal.

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The notes themselves are relatively straightforward

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for a Mozart symphony, particularly the viola part.

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The idea really is to ingest it, inhabit it and then devote

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that attention to the imaginative demands of playing.

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Individually, the orchestra have had just a few weeks

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to learn nearly 1,000 bars of meticulously crafted Mozart.

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They come together for the first time just a few days before

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their Proms performance to see if all their hard work has paid off.

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I do think most of it's in my head already.

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There's just always that element of doubt.

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The symphony's really getting into everyone's heads,

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you don't quite know if you know it -

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sometimes you go on automatic and then you question yourself.

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It's very hard to stop thinking about it, I have to say.

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I've been quite stressed the last couple of days, I haven't had

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as much time as I'd have liked.

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I feel a bit behind where I'd like to be with it,

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but hopefully when we're all in the room together,

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it will feel immediately easier.

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When you commit a piece to memory like this,

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it's more liberated, more detailed,

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it's more carefree.

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We know that the music's inside us, and we can just let it out.

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It's a better performance than we would do with the music.

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The act of the music being on the page is something

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we're so obsessed about in the way that we interpret a Mozart symphony.

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And for him it existed mostly in the space in his head,

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and it's quite nice to feel that you're bypassing the page,

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having learnt it, and trying to occupy that space somewhere else.

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What's amazing about this,

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and this is an incredibly early stage of rehearsal, I mean,

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there's no sort of falling apart, "What are we doing?"

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They're absolutely there already -

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it's kind of amazing actually.

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It's quite nice, you may agree or disagree, to just get rid of

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music stands to the side, put your music on the floor.

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There is something different,

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when you have the players in front of you, without the music,

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it dissipates any hierarchy that sits within the orchestra.

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To play from memory, the trust in your colleagues is amazing.

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It's like a rugby team before going out for a massive match

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in the Six Nations, all working together for rhythm,

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for accuracy, for obviously memory,

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but that's something we completely forget by the time we walk on stage.

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The joy of being in an orchestra is everyone else,

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and when I play music, especially these pieces of Mozart,

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it's being aware of the conversation - I think is the main thing

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sort of going on in my head.

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Eyes-up is the thing, concentrate.

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Who's next? Who am I with? Who am I answering?

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And actually getting rid of the music just heightens all of that.

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Second violins and the violas, bar nine...

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The first violins carry most of the melody in this symphony, but other

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sections of the orchestra have an equally important role to play.

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(The people who have the hardest job here are

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(the second violins and the violas, the people inside the orchestra.)

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Look at stuff like this, these arpeggios - imagine memorising this.

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These things have to be so precise,

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changes that are happening that aren't the tune -

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it's actually much harder to get that in your head or in your fingers

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than the tunes on top.

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Shall we just stand up, ladies and gents, and we'll play standing?

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It's hard to minuet while sitting.

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The inner parts are not really designed to be heard,

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they're padding, and they're the nuts and bolts

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of the music on the whole.

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Mozart's just so clever and inventive with the way

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he writes for the middle part.

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He doesn't just give you the obvious thing,

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just subtle variety all the time.

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I have the utmost respect for people playing the inner parts,

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the viola players, the second violins,

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because a lot of their writing is very exciting

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and without them, the piece doesn't live.

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With rehearsals complete,

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the orchestra are ready to put their memorising skills to the test.

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Just a day before their Proms performance, there's enough time

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for a run-through in front of an unsuspecting East End audience.

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I actually need this exercise.

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I take it as an exercise for myself and my memory, so if I can do that

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I guess tomorrow will be fine, with all the distractions we've got here.

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I think this might be even more boomy than the Royal Albert Hall.

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It's good that it's coming the day before the concert.

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I think it's like the ultimate test.

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HE HUMS MOZART

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HE HUMS MOZART

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HE HUMS MOZART

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I'm there, like, 95, 96%.

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A nice early night tonight

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and saving all that kind of brainpower for, like, tomorrow.

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On a scale of one to ten...

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Eight.

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But by tomorrow, it's going to be nine and a half.

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We've seen how much work goes in to preparing a performance like this,

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with the whole orchestra playing from memory.

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But now we've got the chance to explore Mozart's 41st Symphony

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from the inside out.

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So together with Nicolas Collon and Aurora Orchestra,

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we're going to show just how Mozart makes the musical cosmos

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of the Jupiter Symphony.

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In this exploration of the Jupiter Symphony,

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we're going to focus on the finale, the molto allegro.

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And what's wrong with the three previous movements?

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Nothing, I promise.

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This whole piece is full of the most daring acts

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of orchestral imagination.

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But this finale is truly something else.

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So welcome onstage, here at the Royal Albert Hall, please,

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Nicolas Collon and first the violins and violas of Aurora Orchestra.

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Now, this finale is the single most ambitious piece

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of orchestral music that Mozart ever wrote,

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and it's also one of the most thrilling experiences

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that we can all have as listeners,

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and we're going to find out how Mozart does it.

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And we're going to start by all of us here

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in the Royal Albert Hall this afternoon

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composing the most important four notes of this finale together.

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I promise it's not as difficult as it sounds.

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We just need a little help from Nicolas Collon and his musicians.

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So, Nick, over to you.

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Thank you, Tom, very much. Good afternoon, everyone.

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Now, here behind me I have the first violin section

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handily arranged, as you can see, like a human xylophone.

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Now, it turns out if I hit them very softly with the end of my baton...

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-LAUGHTER

-..they sound like this.

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These are the notes of a C major scale.

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Now this is where we get a little bit of...

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-APPLAUSE

-Oh, thank you.

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If you think that deserves a round of applause...

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LAUGHTER

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This is where we get a little bit of mild audience participation,

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nothing too terrifying, I promise.

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Can we sing lustily to "La"?

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Nice and big sound.

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# La... #

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It's easy, isn't it? Try this.

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# La... #

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If you hadn't realised, you've just very beautifully sung

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Somewhere Over The Rainbow.

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Deserves a round of applause.

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And I have a new-found respect for Peter Snow on

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Election Night Special, cos that's hard work, I can tell you,

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that's a lot of exercise.

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But Mozart didn't have as much fun as that,

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he only used the first four notes of our scale -

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the C, the D, the E and the F,

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and he swaps round the order of the last two.

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I'm sure we can do this straight off, here we go.

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Got your singing voices?

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# La... #

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That's the four-note theme,

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and he transposes it to the top of the octave as well,

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so you also get these four.

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This is a little bit harder, this is grade six, here we go.

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# La... #

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And he uses both halves of the octave in the last movement

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simultaneously and at the same time and after each other.

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It's an amazing jigsaw puzzle that he puts together.

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So you've got your four-note theme.

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Bravo, everyone.

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Give yourself a round of applause,

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you've just written Mozart, for crying out loud.

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Thank you, Nick, thank you, all of you.

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But not only is that tune as much yours as it is Mozart's,

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it had also been hanging around in musical history for centuries

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before Mozart wrote this symphony in 1788.

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And there is something prayer-like, isn't there, about the way

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those four notes move, especially when it's sung so beautifully

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as it is by all of you in the Royal Albert Hall.

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Now, the first time we hear this musical prayer is right at

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the start of the finale, when it's played by the first violins.

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The question is though, what Mozart does with it.

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Well, first off, he adds harmony,

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giving this little musical prayer body, context, meaning.

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Beautiful, isn't it?

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But it's static - Mozart adds motion.

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Look at the second violins up there, just in front of Henry Wood's bust.

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And that's not all, because as an answer to the four-note prayer,

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Mozart composes a tune which is straight out of comic opera.

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That is, however, only the start of this ten-minute finale,

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so Mozart needs to extend our four-note prayer

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into different musical dimensions,

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and he does that at first by writing a tune for the second violins

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that sounds as natural, as joyous as if he'd come up with it

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whistling in his bath.

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Now, the second violins don't have that to themselves -

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Mozart gives it to every other part of the string section who come in,

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one by one, each with their own version of this melody.

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And this is where it starts to get clever -

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the first to join the second violins

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are the first violins.

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And now, the violas.

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The cellos.

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And last, and most, the double basses.

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Now, here's the thing...

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What the strings of Aurora Orchestra have just built up there

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is a little labyrinth of tunes, each chasing each other,

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hanging onto the tail of the one that comes before it.

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It's a kind of composition that's called fugue,

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from the Latin, "to flee," and it's an absolutely essential

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compositional technique that Mozart is going to use

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throughout this movement,

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an absolutely crucial part of his cosmic compositional arsenal.

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It's time now to introduce you to the three other main thematic ideas

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that Mozart's going to be playing with throughout this finale.

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The first of these is what I call the climbing theme. Why?

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Well, it's pretty obvious.

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You see, it goes up, with a joyously explosive energy.

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And it's not just the upper strings that Mozart gives this tune to,

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the lower strings get it as well.

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And when you put them together as Mozart does, as you'll hear,

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they don't come in at the same time,

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they're dissonating with each other, rhythmically speaking.

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Basically, they come in at different times.

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Well, so far we've only heard the strings.

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There are, of course, other instruments

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and here they come onstage now.

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There are a single flute, two oboes,

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two bassoons, there are a pair of horns, a pair of trumpets

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and a set of timpani.

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The next of our essential musical ideas in this finale is a fanfare.

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So let's hear what it sounds like when all of these musicians

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play the fanfare together.

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Now, the horns can't actually play anything quite that fast,

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here's their contribution....

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LAUGHTER ..to that musical texture.

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I mean, it's not that they can't necessarily, perhaps they choose not to...

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Mozart, we know, had a famously difficult relationship with horn players.

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At any rate, here's what they're doing in that texture.

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CHEERING

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Well, you wait...

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The trumpets have something even more miraculous.

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Let's hear what the trumpets managed to do in this texture.

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SINGLE NOTE PLAYS

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LAUGHTER

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Now, just as he's done with the climbing theme,

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Mozart uses the fanfare theme across the whole orchestra and, again,

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it's coming in at different times all the time,

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if you see what I mean.

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What that means is, that for us listening to it,

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the effect can be quite chaotic because we don't know

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where the first beat of the bar comes.

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Whilst it may sound chaotic and busy on the surface,

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it's made with all of the care of a Swiss clockmaker.

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So we've had the prayer,

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we've had the climbing theme and we've had the fanfare.

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The last part of our symphonic jigsaw puzzle

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is completely different in character,

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it's something gentle and lyrical and flowing -

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a song.

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And...in a moment of inspiration,

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Mozart finishes that song off with an idea that we've heard before.

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The fanfare, beautifully played by the solo flute there.

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That's not all though, because the bassoons are also involved here -

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they're playing the climbing theme underneath all of that.

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So let's put all of that together.

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So now we've heard all of our themes, but what that

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last little passage of music tells us is what you can do if you make

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a musical texture, not just of one idea,

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but from lots of them all working together.

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And this is the key and miraculous revelation of this whole finale,

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indeed this whole symphony, which is that all four of our themes

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your themes, are actually made for each other,

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they're all part of a grand musical design that Mozart reveals

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only at the very end of the symphony, with all the timing of a conjurer.

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So let's hear all of our themes whirling in cosmic harmony.

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And that's not even the very end of the symphony, we're going to

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save that for the performance that we're just about to hear.

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But, ladies and gentlemen, a round of applause for Aurora Orchestra

0:22:230:22:26

and Nicholas Collon for allowing us inside...

0:22:260:22:29

There is, of course, much more than we've had time to go into

0:22:330:22:37

in the Jupiter Symphony.

0:22:370:22:38

Hang on to any of your themes - the prayer, the climbing theme,

0:22:380:22:41

the fanfare or the song,

0:22:410:22:42

and you'll get through this miraculous musical labyrinth.

0:22:420:22:46

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome onstage

0:22:460:22:48

here at the Royal Albert Hall, to conduct this performance

0:22:480:22:51

with Aurora Orchestra, with heart and by heart

0:22:510:22:53

of Mozart's Jupiter Symphony, Nicholas Collon.

0:22:530:22:56

CHEERING

0:56:230:56:25

CHEERING

0:56:420:56:44

There's a kind of electricity still coursing around here

0:57:110:57:14

at the Royal Albert Hall after that performance,

0:57:140:57:16

a performance for me of huge intensity, courage and commitment.

0:57:160:57:20

We've seen the journey that all of these players have been on,

0:57:200:57:23

individually and collectively, to make that happen,

0:57:230:57:26

to perform Mozart's Jupiter Symphony from memory.

0:57:260:57:28

Is it worth it to memorise a piece of orchestral music?

0:57:280:57:32

The answer, surely, after that performance is a resounding...

0:57:320:57:35

yes.

0:57:350:57:37

From all of us here backstage at the Royal Albert Hall, goodnight.

0:57:370:57:40

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