10 One of the Earliest Pioneers in Authentic Performance Practice, in Handel, Haydn and Mozart Orchestral and Operatic Works
MUSIC 10: FIREWORKS
Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks – but played in 1959 as it had almost certainly never been heard since its two premiere performances in 1749!
INTERVIEW 1-10: CHARLES MACKERRAS
MUSIC 11: FIREWORKS
La Réjouissance – from Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks, played by a specially assembled mass of woodwind, brass and percussion players for Sir Charles Mackerras’ pioneering recording made between about midnight and 3 in the morning on April the 14th 1959! And it wasn’t just in the colossal size of the orchestra that Sir Charles was aiming to recreate the kinds of sounds that Handel had originally envisaged. By now he had embarked on another of the many diverse preoccupations of his life – researching the styles and characteristics of playing and also singing that were in practice in historical periods of the past. He was one of the first musicians to do this.
INTERVIEW 1-11: CHARLES MACKERRAS
MUSIC 12: FIGARO
It was 1965 in this opera of Mozart – The Marriage of Figaro – that Sir Charles Mackerras caused a stir when he conducted it at Sadlers Wells Theatre using his own new edition of the score based on his historical research.
INTERVIEW 1-12: CHARLES MACKERRAS
MUSIC 13: FIGARO
This is the aria that the Countess sings in Act 3 of The Marriage of Figaro, as she remembers how once, in the past, her marriage was blissfully happy. “Where are the lovely moments of sweetness and goodness? Where have the promises gone that came from those lying lips?”
MUSIC 13: CONTINUED
