Mendelssohn's Octet
Soul Music
BBC
4.7 • 831 Ratings
🗓️ 16 August 2011
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
An exploration of the impact that Mendelssohn's Octet has had on different people's lives, demonstrating the healing power of music in a variety of situations around the world.
Felix Mendelssohn wrote his Octet for double string quartet in 1825 aged just 16. Despite his youth, this is a mature and brilliant piece of music described by our interviewees as "carnivalesque", "a romp", "a party".
Choreographer Bill T Jones describes the way in which the Octet showed his company how to keep living during the onslaught of AIDS in the 1980's.
Cellist Raphael and violinist Elizabeth Wallfisch talk about falling in love whilst learning this music in the 1970's.
South Korean Lisa Kim tells a story about going on tour with the New York Philharmonic to North Korea and her intense fear and mistrust being replaced by wonder when they played the Octet with a North Korean Quartet.
And Matthew Trusler describes the importance of playing this work after the death of his son.
The featured recording of the Mendelssohn Octet by the Emerson String Quartet on Deutsche Gramophon.
Series exploring famous pieces of music and their emotional appeal.
Producer: Rosie Boulton
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in August 2011.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Before you listen to this BBC podcast, I'd like to quickly tell you about some others. |
| 0:05.1 | My name's Andy Martin and I'm the editor of a team of podcast producers at the BBC in Northern Ireland. |
| 0:11.3 | It's a job I really love because we get to tell the stories that really matter to people here, |
| 0:16.2 | but which also resonate and apply to listeners around the world. |
| 0:19.6 | And because the team is such a diverse range of skills and strengths, |
| 0:23.0 | we have trained journalists, people who love digging through archives, |
| 0:26.6 | we've got drama and even comedy experts. |
| 0:28.9 | We really can do those stories justice. |
| 0:31.5 | So if you like this podcast, head to BBC Sounds |
| 0:34.2 | where you'll find plenty more fascinating stories from all around the UK. |
| 0:39.3 | You're listening to a download of soul music from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:45.0 | It's a special occasion playing the mother's knocktacks. |
| 0:52.7 | It always seems appropriate that this will be treated as a great festival, a great event, |
| 0:59.5 | with many glasses of wine and probably a good meal at the end of it to celebrate. |
| 1:10.0 | This audacious romp is so clear and so in love with what it's doing. |
| 1:19.6 | You can hear the glee in this young man who wrote it. |
| 1:25.6 | It's a party, the Mendleton octet. |
| 1:28.5 | It's almost carnivalesque, I suppose, that feeling. |
| 1:34.4 | My name is Jessica Dutchen. |
| 1:36.7 | I'm a music journalist and novelist and biographer. |
| 1:54.2 | Music The Mendelsohnopter was in fact one of the first pieces of music I got to know because my parents and my brother were great musicophiles and had a great many recordings. And one of them was an |
| 2:03.3 | LP of this piece that I fell in love with at first hearing when I was probably six or seven years old. |
... |
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