Before you listen to this BBC podcast, I'd like to quickly tell you about some others.

My name's Andy Martin and I'm the editor of a team of podcast producers at the BBC in Northern Ireland.

It's a job I really love because we get to tell the stories that really matter to people here,

but which also resonate and apply to listeners around the world.

And because the team is such a diverse range of skills and strengths,

we have trained journalists, people who love digging through archives,

we've got drama and even comedy experts.

We really can do those stories justice.

So if you like this podcast, head to BBC Sounds

where you'll find plenty more fascinating stories from all around the UK.

You're listening to a download of soul music from BBC Radio 4.

It could be that it does have one of the most striking openings of any classical work.

The piano concerto begins with bells, these extraordinary chords. They, like in his famous C-sharp minor prelude, which was what had made him already famous around the world.

This work starts with the same feeling of the swing of the bell.

The piano crescendoes from a very quiet chord, and that crescendo is one of the most difficult things to pull off about the piece, actually.

These bells have to appear as if from the distance.

The very first chord you play must be well enunciated,

but must be very, very distant in sound.

And each chord thereafter, there, something like eight chords, I think.

Each chord must build in intensity.

Like you were being drawn into this scene towards a church, perhaps,

with, you know, in modern terms, the camera panning in slowly

...