This is the story of the past hundred years of British history
as you've never heard it before...
..told through our love of classical music.
It's been the soundtrack to a century of turbulent change,
from some of the biggest events in our history,
to our shared ambitions and private passions.
In the midst of all this, classical music has been there for us,
reflecting and shaping Britain,
bringing us comfort, solace and joy.
And I think, more than rock and pop, jazz or folk,
it is the drama, the emotion, the scale of classical music
that has truly brought us together at the key moments in our history.
In this episode, I'll be joined by the broadcaster
and classical music lover Joan Bakewell.
Tonight, the Sunday night programme on BBC One
celebrated the 50th birthday of Yehudi Menuhin.
Together, we'll explore how, in the post-war years,
a generation of charismatic, visionary stars
took classical music to places it had never been before -
on to our televisions, and into the movies.
And we'll discover why classical music in Britain
not only survived but thrived in the pop culture revolution.
That is the world of Debussy, and Ravel... Yeah. ..and David Bowie,
and all these different people coming together.
It was a time of irresistible talent,
unlikely collaborations and musical adventures.
This was Our Classical Century.
On the 2nd of June, 1953, 10 million people were gripped
by the spectacle and splendour of Elizabeth II's coronation.
The Arch-bishop lifts the crown of St Edward
and holds it for a moment above the Queen's head.
This was the first time the public had been able to experience
both the sight and the sound of this ancient British ceremonial ritual.
The BBC broadcast of this national event
was a breakthrough moment for TV.
But now that the nation was watching,
the question was - what came next?
In the wake of the success of the coronation,
the BBC decided it would stage an annual last night at the Proms,
and put it on television.
But, if it was going to guarantee it had a success on its hands,
they'd have to make sure it wasn't just a musical spectacle,
but a visual feast, too.
Television's star was rising,
and producers were aware that their audiences wanted more
than just televised radio.
Luckily, the arrival of the TV cameras at the Royal Albert Hall
coincided with the rise of Flash Harry...
..The Proms' charismatic new chief conductor.
# For he's a jolly good fellow
# And so say all of us... #
Malcolm Sargent was a charmer, and familiar voice from the radio.
Your generosity is almost equal to your good looks.
THEY CHEER
He instinctively knew what worked on the small screen.
A bit of showmanship, an injection of matinee idol glitz and glamour.
His formula - get the punters involved...
..and a dose of patriotic flag-waving.
# Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves!
# Britons never, never, never shall be slaves
# Rule, Britannia! Britannia... #
Malcolm Sargent transformed the last night
into the noisy TV extravaganza we know today.
Good afternoon. Welcome again to The Brain's Trust.
We're very happy to have with us Sir Malcolm Sargent.
Would the musicians please say whether the presence
of the audience helps them to give a better performance?
From my point of view,
the audience has an enormous effect on the orchestra.
The difference of going into a studio and whipping an orchestra up
to a sense of fervour and intensity for ordinary broadcast
is very different from when you go on when they're already there,
the place is packed with people,
the orchestra is already on its toes
and the conductor's work is made easier because of the audience.
JOAN: Sargent was now a household name,
ably supported for 20 years by his private secretary, Sylvia Darley.
What attitude did he take to The Proms?
Oh, I always think it was sort of a love affair
between the promenaders and himself.
God willing we all meet again, the end.
Three cheers for Sir Malcolm!
AUDIENCE: Hip-hip hooray!
They did adore him.
Oh, they did adore him, yes.
It was definitely a two-way thing between him and the promenaders.
They became great friends.
I'm well-established in the queue here.
I'm probably in about the tenth place.
Erm...may I ask you how long you've been here?
Erm...I got here at about ten to eight on Friday morning.
And what time did you get here?
I got here about one o'clock, quarter past.
Oh, you're lucky to be so far ahead in the queue, then. I am, very much.
Where do you come from? I come from Finchley.
In his day, they were under-25s.
I think there was a cultural feeling that music, classical music
was high-brow and that only the upper classes could appreciate it.
I'm afraid so, yes.
Well, how did he come to realise that that wasn't the case?
Cos he wasn't upper class himself.
No. Music is for everybody.
And that's what he wanted to sort of put over.
They were filled from the gods,
to those, whatever you call them, in the lower region.
CROWD CHEERS
He said he wanted the public to trust him
that any music he conducted, he believed in.
CROWD SINGS
As the audience...
..begins to leave, you think...
..of the wonderful feast of music it has provided,
and of the thousands upon thousands of people
who have been enriched by its offerings.
Televising the last night was a huge success.
Today, it's a permanent fixture in our cultural calendar,
and the biggest celebration of its kind in the world.
Goodnight, everybody, from Royal Albert Hall.
But while classical music had found a new home on the small screen...
..orchestral music was about to be taken to new heights
by the huge power and big bucks...
..of the movies.
Classical music had long been a feature of films,
but David Lean's Brief Encounter in 1945
was the first motion picture where the soundtrack
became a psychological player...
..Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto expressing
the suppressed emotions that the characters on screen couldn't.
Lean understood the subliminal power of film music,
and soon moved away from using existing scores,
to getting specially commissioned soundtracks.
He started to work with classically trained composers
to deliver the complex musical elements
his cinematic vision demanded.
In 1958, a Brit won an Oscar
for creating one of the most evocative and influential
movie scores of all-time.
Lean's Bridge On The River Kwai
tells the story of prisoners of war in a Japanese camp,
building a bridge for the Burma railway.
If you work hard...
..you will be treated well.
A cinematic tour-de-force, Lean's direction immersed audiences
in the sweat and suffering of forced labour.
Stand fast in the ranks!
And the music, by the British composer Malcolm Arnold,
intensified the experience.
Arnold was unashamedly eclectic.
A gifted musician who could turn his hand to almost anything.
And he brought a precision,
an instinct for mapping emotional terrain to his movie music.
This feeling of a kind of plodding music, it's very Malcolm Arnold.
He's clever with this sort of thing.
He's been given two jobs to do with this.
One is to make it clear to us how much pain Jack Hawkins is in.
But he's also got to stop every now and then,
because there's moments where Hawkins rests,
there's little bits of dialogue.
And I really like the fact that he fills in the space, as he does here,
he fills in the space with interesting orchestral ideas.
There's lots of texture going on in there.
MUSIC CONTINUES
And you can hear the trumpets
are kind of slightly overlaying each other.
Then you can also hear the woodwind coming in,
there's vibraphone coming in - lots of filled-in orchestral sound.
It feels like a very inconsequential moment, in a way, for a movie.
It's a few blokes walking up a hill. Exactly.
But the music gives it a totally different dimension.
It does, because it shows his mind is flying all over the place.
He's in pain. It also gives us this sense of a kind of courage
that's pushing him on, which is of course what the whole film is about.
But the music is telling you that as well. It is.
In just the same way as the music gives us the shark in Jaws,
in a way the real one can't,
Jack Hawkins cannot act well enough to make us feel the pain
that Malcolm Arnold makes us feel in the music.
And what he uses to really bring that out
is those two clashing trumpets.
MIMICS TRUMPETS
He puts them together, and that's very Malcolm Arnold.
And he builds that and builds it and builds it.
That... I don't know any other composer
who basically distresses the orchestra
in order to make a distressing moment like that work.
But he's a master orchestrator.
RECORDING OF ARNOLD: The Bridge Over The River Kwai,
I scored all the military band stuff
and all the orchestral stuff myself.
I've never had an orchestrator or amanuensis.
And I did that in ten days.
What was it about him as a musician
that made him right for doing that sort of work?
Two things, really. One is he has this amazing facility
for very short, clever, original, hook-y musical ideas.
So he'll come up with a tune, bang, and it's in.
The other is that he is actually quite a damaged person.
There's no two ways about it. He had alcoholism problems,
he had mental problems throughout most of his life.
So he has a real dark side.
And that dark side can't help but come through.
So he writes the soundtrack in '57.
What's happening just in a wider sense
in terms of movie music at that moment?
Well, mid '50s is when you start to get this big explosion
in people buying new LPs
and record players, and even sheet music,
of the films that they go and see.
So they are actually able to take home for the first time
a chunk of a movie they've liked.
So film music becomes part of the national culture.
And then Malcolm Arnold scores a film score
unlike any that had been done for a British war film before.
And I just think, in soundtrack terms, it marks a cusp between...
..what had been assumed to be popular, whistle-able film music before that,
to something much deeper and much more psychological.
And both the film and the soundtrack
point the way to where movie soundtracks are going to go
in the '60s and '70s.
Arnold was a towering figure in British music.
A composer with a foot in both the classical and film worlds,
he was able to capture something deeper, truer
than the traditional hero's story.
His score helped to expose the fundamental darkness
at the heart of our Second World War experience.
Something that Arnold, who had lost his brother in the war,
knew only too well.
EXPLOSIONS
More than 500 people were killed.
2,000 buildings were totally destroyed.
As we entered the '60s,
Britain was ready to look back at the war
and take stock of the sacrifices and suffering.
BELL TOLLS
Cities like Coventry had been hammered by German air raids.
Much of it centre had been destroyed,
and its imposing medieval cathedral practically obliterated.
In the post-war years, the city looked to rebuild
not only with bricks and mortar, but with the healing power of music.
The composer Benjamin Britten, who had emerged after the war
as the new young face of British classical music,
was chosen to create a new piece for the reopening of Coventry Cathedral.
But he was a controversial choice.
A conscientious objector,
he was to many the very opposite of a war hero.
In an era of protests against the Cold War nuclear arms race,
Britten composed music that resounded with pacifist sentiment.
He wanted his new piece for Coventry
to acknowledge the heavy price of conflict and war.
This is where Britten wrote the War Requiem,
at his home, the Red House,
in the little town of Aldeburgh on the Suffolk coast.
I've been coming to Aldeburgh annually for at least 15 years,
so of course every inch of the place is imbued for me
with Benjamin Britten's music.
Oh, and the memory of some pretty wonderful parties
here at the Red House.
MUSIC: War Requiem by Benjamin Britten
This is the score of the War Requiem,
in Britten's hand, of course.
And it not only gave him the chance to respond to the invitation
for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral,
it gave him the private opportunity
to express his own feelings about war.
MUSIC CONTINUES
The invitation to compose something for the opening of a cathedral
in memory of war must have been an absolute gift for him.
The real purpose of this
was to warn people of the inhumanity of war
and its terrible consequences.
Britten brought together the still fresh memories of World War II,
the deeper wounds of World War I,
and the vivid nightmare of the early 1960s -
fear of an apocalyptic, nuclear World War III.
He was the one who concocted the idea
of putting a pacifist stance on the piece itself.
This was the height of the Cold War.
Cuba crisis was looming, terrible tensions between America and Russia.
A really dangerous time. Exactly.
Even inherent in the title,
the notion of war was something that was in the public imagination.
We had the nuclear impact, the nuclear threat,
which was really quite terrifying.
In May 1962, Britten presented his Requiem to the people of Coventry.
What was the atmosphere like that night?
Oh, incredibly expectant. I mean, everyone was terribly excited.
And, well, it was late, so I think that increased the tension,
and everything else - we didn't know quite to expect.
MUSIC: War Requiem by Benjamin Britten
What was your emotional response to hearing this music
for the first time, in this place?
Oh, immense. I think anybody could not fail to be moved.
And so the performance came to its close... Yes.
...and what happened after those final notes died away?
Total silence.
I think everybody was...gobsmacked, really.
There's not much anybody could say, so just total silence.
SILENCE
The most striking aspect of the Requiem was that Britten
had stitched the searing anti-war poetry of Wilfred Owen
into a score based on a traditional Latin Mass.
MAN SINGING:
In the performances that I have taken part in,
often choirs find that opening interval of the tritone
really quite awkward to get a grip on.
Give us a tritone, then. Tell us how it sounds.
HE SINGS TRITONE
Straight off the bells, which are quite difficult to pitch off.
So the bells give us the note and then the chorus have to grab that.
BELLS TOLL
CHOIR SINGS
And when the orchestra comes in
with this kind of lopsided quintuplet figure...
HE MIMICS ORCHESTRA
ORCHESTRA PLAYS SAME PART
I can feel around me often in performances
the entire sort of orchestral string section
nervously following the leader and the conductor
to try and negotiate their way around these quintuplets.
It's just that everybody is kind of on edge.
But that's right.
I'm sure that's what he was after.
MUSIC CONTINUES
That final poem, Strange Meeting, is one that I've found...
Most times I've sung it I've found it overwhelming.
So I've had to draw myself small cartoons in my copy
in order to take myself out of the moment.
If I let myself stay in the moment too much
then I won't be able to sing.
My throat closes and I can't sing it.
# I am the enemy you killed, my friend
# I knew you in this dark... #
It seems to me a really rebellious streak in him,
that said, "This is not going to be an easy ride for anyone."
But I think the endgame is worth everyone's effort.
How powerful, then, as a piece of music,
is it in terms of its activism?
I often feel at the end of this piece,
having participated in it, it would be hard to pick up another weapon.
And yet at any given time, there is a conflict
while this piece is being performed.
But I feel this is a beautifully personal testament
on Britten's part.
WAVES LAP, SEABIRDS CALL
Britten received a letter from Harold Owen, Wilfred's brother,
and he gave Britten two gifts.
One of which was a photograph of Wilfred when he was a boy,
and the other one was this rather extraordinary document.
This is a draft of the Anthem For Doomed Youth.
And of course here, in its genesis,
you can actually see the working
and the reworking that he went through.
"For you who die in herds"? Yes.
Instead of "you who die as cattle". Exactly, yeah.
How extraordinary.
Owen had made a huge impact on Britten's life, and for someone
whose ideals were so driven by pacifism, by the notion of peace,
I can't really think of a more important gift
and a greater treasure.
No, it's immeasurable, isn't it?
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
The War Requiem was both a warning
and an act of rehabilitation and reconciliation
for post-war Britain.
While we were still coming to terms with the fallout of war,
we were also eager to look forward.
# I don't know what it is that makes me love you so... #
We wanted some glamour back in our lives.
# Cos you've started something... #
By the 1960s, Britain was a nation greedily embracing consumerism.
# It happens to be true... #
Across the country, homes shook to the sound of television,
radio, and record players.
And alongside the crooners and rock'n'rollers,
there was a brilliant new classical star.
SHE LAUGHS
Jacqueline du Pre.
Offstage, she was lively, attractive, outgoing.
Onstage, she was all of those things,
but she was also focused, intense, romantic.
And the public took her to their hearts.
Her relationship to the instrument, I mean,
she almost wrestles with the cello, doesn't she? Yes.
I mean, her elbows are high,
and her head movements, I mean, it's athletic. Mmm.
She was big,
and her whole relationship with the instrument was incredibly physical.
It was like she was riding a horse or something, you know.
Cellist Moray Welsh was a close friend of Jackie's.
The combination of her personality
and her total physical connection with the instrument,
as well as her amazing musicality, that was a huge new thing, really.
Because all the cellists who had been around before her
tended to be much older men.
# Ba ba-ba-ba ba-ba-ba-ba-ba... #
When she came along, everybody sat up.
And she was just a slip of a girl.
I know. Establishing her style.
But as a cellist yourself, what was it you found so remarkable?
I think it was just this total way
in which she could find what she wanted to say about the music.
It was like there were no inhibitions,
but the music was absolutely paramount to her.
And it was just spellbinding.
Jacqueline was a teenager when she performed the piece
that would forever define her, Elgar's Cello Concerto.
When her interpretation was released, it sold millions.
Her startling virtuosity
meant she appealed to lovers of classical music,
but her vibrant personality drew a wider audience.
And this is the recording that made Jacqueline du Pre globally famous.
It also revived interest in a piece of music
with which she would be always associated - a 50-year-old work
by an Edwardian composer
written in the saddest days of his life.
The concerto is a long way from Elgar's more rousing works.
It's tinged with a deep sadness,
written after the First World War,
while mourning the loss of friends in that conflict.
MUSIC: Cello Concerto by Elgar
The cello cuts a lonely figure through the score.
And often the problem with cello concertos
is that the orchestra is too loud.
In Elgar's case, he's very cunningly
made things below and above the cello,
so the cello has this line going through the whole thing
and is very easily heard. It's brilliantly scored.
MUSIC CONTINUES
Jacqueline du Pre's recording came,
which I suppose took it to another level in terms of popularity.
Tell me about her performance.
I mean, hers is a very personal interpretation.
And she was the one to do that, and it came from within herself.
You can't copy that.
That recording was a very hard act to follow.
Whoever records it is always compared against that.
Sheku Kanneh-Mason is one of
Britain's most exciting young talents.
Winner of the BBC's Young Musician competition, his energetic,
passionate performances have been compared to Jacqueline du Pre.
Sheku, where, in your 19 years,
did you first hear the Elgar Cello Concerto?
There were three pieces of music we used to listen to a lot in the car.
There was Elgar's Cello Concerto, Beethoven Violin Concerto
and Rachmaninoff second piano concerto.
And that was your parents' choice? Yes.
They were pieces that they just knew very well and loved to listen to.
And so, they'd get played round and round again? Yes, all the time.
So I grew up with these pieces of music all the time.
So, which recording did you first hear?
The first recording of this piece was Jacqueline du Pre's recording.
And it still is a recording that I listen to all the time.
Jacqueline du Pre's recording made her a star.
After its release, she met and fell in love with Daniel Barenboim,
a young Argentinian conductor and musical prodigy.
Their shining talent and whirlwind romance attracted a celebrity
until then unknown in the classical world.
I met them at the time. They were indeed a golden couple.
Although illness would tragically cut short Jacqueline's life,
during this period, they were classical music's future.
Attracting legions of new fans to the music.
But it wasn't just youngsters seducing people
with their brilliant performances.
More established figures were about to break out of the old-school
white tie and tails and whisk the classical world into the future.
Leading the way, one of the biggest classical stars of the century.
Yehudi Menuhin, the great violinist.
When Albert Einstein saw his debut, he said,
"The day of miracles is not over.
"Our dear old Jehovah is still on the job."
By the 1960s, he was inviting a whole new
generation of fans into the world of classical music.
And he was about to take them on a journey into uncharted territory.
Yehudi Menuhin's insatiable curiosity drew him to the East.
And in 1966, he took part in an extraordinary session with
a star from India called Ravi Shankar.
Together, they created a ground-breaking synthesis
of Eastern and Western music.
# Ba-ba-ba, ba-ba-ba, ba-ba-ba-ba-ba.
# Ba-ba-ba-ba, ba-ba, ba-ba-ba-ba.
VIOLIN MIMICS VOCAL
# Ba-ba-ba-ba...
# Baa-baa.
# Baa-baa. #
When did Ravi Shankar start kind of emerging on the scene,
and what was special and different about what he was doing?
Um...Pandit Ravi Shankar was working in,
I think even as early as the '20s, in Paris.
And he also was working, you know, around the Hot Club of France,
which came out with amazing luminaries like Stephane Grappelli
and Django Reinhardt. Django Reinhardt. Amazing.
While in Paris, Shankar also heard Western classical music for the first time.
And on his return to India, he took up the sitar,
the bedrock of Indian classical music.
He spent seven years in total devotion to a sitar master,
and he went through this whole period of practising
up to 16 hours a day, where you would do very little else.
You'd maybe do some yoga and you would just play your instrument.
So it's a total devotional time.
Now, I'm aware that I'm talking about an incredibly rich
and ancient tradition. Mm.
Give me my potted history of the building blocks
of what you need to understand if you're going to start investigating
Indian classical music. Right. Well, there are... Ha! That's...
Yeah, you're right. There's a lot to get into.
Well, I mean, one thing is, um...you can look at certain time cycles.
So, um...you know, if I choose one which is a 10-beat cycle,
you would clap it like this.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
And the different, um...beats that I'm clapping
actually are demonstrating, I suppose, how the cycle works.
And you also have to be able to calculate
from any point in the given time cycle where you are in the cycle.
So the complexity of doing that spontaneously in your mind
as you're playing and sticking to all the rules
that are associated with that are incredible.
So, if I wanted to have a go, have a go at playing something... Right.
Let's try clapping it together first. Yeah. After four.
One, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four, five, six,
seven, eight, nine, ten.
What did you have for breakfast this morning? Nothing.
HE LAUGHS Don't ask me stuff! That's mean!
I can't talk and do it! So then, if I'm playing this...
So I've hit my one there. See if you can play that. No way!
So let's try this one first.
One, two, three, four.
Argh! I got lost! That's all right. I screwed up, as well, actually.
So you can try both together, if you want. Give it a shot.
It's really difficult.
Ha-ha-ha! I cheated! Yeah...
I couldn't get it! It's so difficult!
You're listening to the two rhythms against each other.
That's exactly what would've happened with Yehudi Menuhin
meeting Pandit Ravi Shankar.
Ravi Shankar found in Yehudi Menuhin the perfect partner.
He said he was not only a genius,
but a man with an unique respect for other art forms and cultures.
I think it was about the fact that these two great artists
were able to respect and explore each other's forms.
And the harmony and precision of Western classical music
probably appealed very much to Pandit Ravi Shankar,
just as the freedom and improvisational abilities
of Indian classical music
probably appealed very much to Yehudi Menuhin.
Together, they released the legendary album, West Meets East.
A huge success, it hit number one in the classical music charts,
won a Grammy, the first for a piece of Asian music,
and introduced Western audiences to Indian sounds.
Why did it feel that the '60s was a moment where
Westerners were ready for Indian classical music?
I think there was a real interest in Eastern spirituality.
I think people were searching for answers.
And there was a real sense of liberation across the West
that became quite fascinated with Eastern philosophy,
but also, I think there was a desire to explore new ideas.
And I think that was something very much that came out of the '60s.
But there was one point where there was a real gap
in understanding between the Western audience and Ravi Shankar,
in that he very famously once was tuning his sitar
and the entire audience started to applaud.
And he said, "No, I'm just tuning the instrument. I haven't started playing yet."
Working alongside Ravi Shankar, Yehudi Menuhin was the first Western
musician to take the rich heritage of Asian music into the mainstream.
Just as Britain was becoming a multicultural society
and home to many people from the Indian subcontinent,
these two musical geniuses
were creating their own multicultural landmark.
And that openness to freedom and experimentation
was part of a growing desire among British musicians.
A generation of ferociously-talented young musicians
who in a previous era, might have gone to a conservatoire,
were now succumbing to the tempting trinity
of sex, drugs and rock and roll.
But they weren't altogether finished with the grandeur
and the drama that classical music offered.
It happened in London. It happened in the Royal Albert Hall.
The world premier of a new musical event.
On 24th September, 1969,
the worlds of heavy metal and classical music met head-on.
It was the brainchild of Jon Lord,
the classically-trained keyboardist of the band Deep Purple.
He wanted to bring classical excellence
into an embrace with hard rock.
And for the thousands of people who packed the Royal Albert Hall,
it was an unique occasion.
At the helm of the Royal Philharmonic
was the open-minded musician
who'd already brought classical music to the movies, Malcolm Arnold.
It was the management that said, er...
"We're doing a concert at the Royal Albert Hall
"and it's going to be Jon's Concerto for Group and Orchestra."
And we were all a bit miffed about it.
Ironically, our reaction was exactly the same
as the Royal Philharmonic's reaction.
So we were not impressed with each other.
There was a mutual disaffection, I think.
The orchestra didn't speak to us at all.
I think they collectively held their noses
as we walked into the rehearsal room.
After the dress rehearsal, Malcolm Arnold shouted at the orchestra.
He said, "These young men are making fools of you.
"You're playing like a load of..." bad words.
And showing evident distaste for being in the same universe as us,
let alone the same rehearsal room.
What's it feel like, playing with us squares?
Squares? Wrong word, wrong word.
MALCOLM CHUCKLES
It's been very exciting. It has for me.
Malcolm was a modern...a modern guy. He was all for it.
He was encouraging Jon all the way.
Put them over there. MALCOLM CHUCKLES
You've been involved with Deep Purple, haven't you? Yes.
We did a concert only a few weeks ago.
A new piece by the organist, Jon Lord.
And what strikes me
is the tremendous musical integrity of these people.
They won't do anything that they don't honestly believe in.
Jon Lord's 75-minute fusion of blistering, bluesy hard rock
and soaring symphony orchestra
rather stunned both musicians and the audience.
It was not understood by any of us at the time.
Only Jon understood it, and Malcolm Arnold, I think.
Jon had placed the protagonists, a young, brash rock group...
..against the classical monster, the Royal Philharmonic.
You know, chest to chest.
It wasn't the start of a long-lasting happy relationship...
# What shall I do...? #
..but for that brief moment, the onstage chemistry of band
and orchestra shone through.
# Look at the floor and be oh, so cool... #
Everyone in our world was saying, "What the hell are you doing that for?"
And everyone in their world was saying, "What the hell are you doing that for?"
With nobody seeing exactly the genius of what Jon had written.
There were great melodies and there was always texture
and dynamics in the music,
which I think set it apart from the average thrash rock band.
It was...it was subtle.
And it had nuances that, um...
It had humour, it had soul and jazz, big band swing, blues,
orchestral composition and all those elements in it
that gave it the identity of what it was.
RAPTUROUS APPLAUSE
I was so enthusiastic when they asked me to conduct it.
They're thorough musicians, all of them.
I love working with them.
Neither pure rock nor strictly classical,
the culture clash Jon Lord had created
was a sign of things to come.
Welcome to the world of capes, keyboards and classical music.
You've come here sans-cape today,
but the theatricality element of it, I imagine that that,
working with an orchestra, that sense of drama,
the kind of operatic scale of it, must appeal. It does.
I have to say, it does. I like big. I've always liked big.
This is where rock meets classical grandeur and operatic staging.
My best memory, really, of cape and orchestra...
SHE LAUGHS
That would be a great title for an album,
Cape and Orchestra. I like that.
Rick Wakeman was a Royal College of Music dropout,
but he didn't want to leave the power of classical music behind completely.
Instead, he used it to construct the epic soundscapes
of progressive rock.
There's something phenomenal about being onstage...
..with an orchestra behind you.
It's a feeling that I still love to this day.
I do quite a few orchestral concerts every year
and there's very little to beat it.
In 1971, another musician was in the studio
in search of his own epic sound.
David Bowie was a fan of composers like Stravinsky and Holst,
and he wanted the scope and the harmonies
of modern classicism in his latest song.
He knew exactly who to call.
With Bowie, Life On Mars is very classical. Yeah.
RICK PLAYS LIFE ON MARS
Etc. It's, um... And David, that's...
Don't et cetera me! Sorry. It's such a...
I mean, it's such a massive moment in music to me
because that is the world of Debussy and Ravel and David Bowie
and all these different people coming together.
I mean, that's an amazing moment.
David was very, very kind.
He gave me complete carte blanche to play what I liked.
He just said, "You play it as if it was a piano solo,
"how you would like to play it".
He was very generous like that.
# Take a look at the lawman
# Beating up the wrong guy
# Oh, man, wonder if he'll ever know
# He's in the best selling show. #
Bowie's stricken operatic vocals,
combined with lush strings, winds, drums, guitars
and Rick Wakeman's piano, melding the worlds of classical and rock.
Life On Mars was a revolutionary song.
The sound of classical music
colliding with modern pop brilliance.
CHANTING: What do we want?!
I want to speak to you simply and plainly
about the grave emergency now facing our country.
David Bowie's music, infused with alienation and despair,
seemed to sound out the sour reality of British life in the early '70s.
The country had plunged into political crisis,
amid angry industrial disputes
between the government and the miners' union.
All the noise and fury left a lot of people
yearning for the imagined serenity of the past.
A TV ad first shown in 1973 conjured this bygone era.
Bringing together, ironically,
the emotive sound of British mining villages
with a powerfully-evocative classical composition.
Last stop on t'round would be Old Ma Peggoty's place.
'Twas like taking bread to the top of the world.
..And you'll be going up that hill as fast as you come down.
Hovis still has many times more wheat germ than ordinary bread.
Sir Frank Lowe was the man responsible.
What had happened was that, er...
..the '60s changed completely in music, of course,
and, er...advertising changed completely...
So, no more jingles? No more jingles
and no more happy housewife talking to their next-door neighbour
about how wonderful the washing powder was.
We couldn't do any of that. So, you had to think of a new way...
We had to think of a new way of doing it.
'Twas a grand ride back, though.
I knew t'baker'd have t'kettle on and doorsteps of hot Hovis ready.
It was the first real example of nostalgia
in British advertising, looking back.
There is always a feeling of nostalgia in Britain.
We always believe it was better yesterday than it was today.
And there was an extraordinary feeling in that post-war period
which I think was a very evocative,
emotional time for all the people of this country.
But it's also the New World Symphony. It is.
With...brass band... Brass band, yep.
The brass band, I felt, was very important
because they use a cornet rather than a trumpet.
It makes a more soulful, mournful sound.
So we got hold of the Black Dyke Mills and went up to record them.
They were still there, and we recorded it,
and that's how it became the Hovis music.
And, of course, it did become the Hovis music.
The Hovis tune may have felt quintessentially British,
but its origins lie far from an Arcadian ideal of village life.
The New World Symphony was actually written by
a middle-European as he travelled through the heartland of America
at the end of the 19th century.
Czech composer Antonin Dvorak was inspired by the natural
grandeur of the American landscape.
But he was also deeply affected by the music of the people
he met on his journeys,
especially the Christian spirituals of the African-American communities.
Songs born in the hardship of slavery.
He was moved to write a piece that is brim-full of longing
for better times and for distant homelands.
His famous tune was clearly influenced by the sound
of traditional spirituals.
So much so that one of his students created lyrics for it
and a new spiritual was born.
Well, that is fantastically moving, there's no doubt about it.
How much, then, do you think he captures the flavour
and the atmosphere of American music of spirituals?
When he was introduced to, um...black folk music,
Dvorak decided to incorporate it in his New World Symphony.
And he does a tremendous job of achieving that.
But also, those chords, I mean, when you're playing them,
are incredibly spaced out.
That's one of those real characteristics of American music,
whether it's Aaron Copland, or indeed, this,
borrowing the spirituals, that you get...
SHE PLAYS PIANO ..or you get this...
SHE PLAYS PIANO
Now, that's a very simple...
But when you space it out like that,
loads of room in between those notes,
that feels, to me, very American.
Those kind of wide-open plains. That's the sound of American music.
All his music, he had a vested interest.
He went to the places, he lived there, he lived, he breathed.
He spoke to the African-Americans.
So when he was using the music,
he was using it from a point of being informed.
And it really touched he'd him, it was heartfelt.
And this music is so nostalgic.
It's packed full of an overpowering homesickness.
So, he was homesick for Europe...? Exactly.
And he used that to express this wonderful music. Yeah.
It's ironic that a piece written as a paean to the new world of America
came to symbolise a wistful longing for old-world Britain.
So, you don't think of yourself as messing around with
the New World Symphony, you think of yourself as re-orchestrating it?
It's really playing a tribute to a fantastic piece of music,
and it certainly got it out to a bigger audience
than would have heard the New World Symphony.
And it sold a lot of flour.
The Hovis ad would become one of the nation's favourite,
and showed vividly that classical music in Britain
had found a new power.
LAUGHTER
When harnessed to the imagery of advertising, film and television,
classical music could become a shorthand for how we saw Britain.
Even if we occasionally sent ourselves up.
LAUGHTER
Me grandad always used to say
it were a bloody long way to go for a loaf of bread.
APPLAUSE
BRASS BAND RECITAL
Classical music had seen us through post-war blues
and into the heady optimism of the '60s.
Along the way, it spawned international celebrities
and incredible musical collaborations.
And when times became more uncertain,
it served up a comfortable dish of nostalgia.
Classical music was everywhere.
Its stars had broken out of the confines of the concert hall
to become international celebrities.
It was on TV and film, it featured in adverts
and was riding high in the charts.
And I think more than anywhere else in Europe, or indeed America,
it was here in Britain that we had truly taken
classical music to our hearts.