Two Strings to a Bow
The penultimate programme in which Gordon Stewart explores two composers from different centuries. Mozart and Chopin. These two composers were both connoisseurs of fine singing, and their piano music is often vocally inspired. Artists from the BBC archive include Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten in Mozart songs, Elizabeth Harwood in a concert aria with orchestra and piano solo, and pianists Andras Schiff and Maurice Cole in some otherworldly music from the last months of Mozart's life.
Chopin is represented by pianist Vlado Perlemuter , who plays the Preludes in a concert from 1960, the 150th anniversary of the composer's birth; and Nocturnes, Etudes and a Mazurka in studio recordings of later years.