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Cherubini survived years of political upheaval in France, which began with the 1789 storming of Bastille. Donald Macleod considers how he was able to manage and prosper.

An octogenarian when he died in 1842, Cherubini's long life places him alongside three giants of the age, Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven. When he was born in 1760, Mozart was four years old, and Haydn was in his thirties. Beethoven was born a decade after Cherubini. Standing among these luminaries, all of whom he admired, Cherubini was a composer, conductor, teacher, administrator, theorist and music publisher, who enjoyed a much higher standing in his own lifetime than his present day reputation might suggest. Beethoven and latterly Wagner are just two of a long list of notables who hugely admired his music. These days it's perhaps through his masses that many people come to his music, so it may be a surprise to discover that he followed the fashion of his day, and produced a considerable number of successful operas. This week Donald Macleod follows Cherubini's progress from his Florentine childhood to Paris, where he was to settle and see his theatrical ambitions realised, in addition to taking on the directorship of the Paris Conservatoire, a position that gave him considerable influence over successive generations.

It was Cherubini's sheer versatility in repeatedly having to trim his musical sails that enabled him to fit in with whichever regime was in power at the time, on occasion with breathtaking speed.

Les Abencérages
Overture
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Lawrence Foster, conductor

Overture to Anacréon
Academy of St Martin in the Fields
Charles Mackerras, director

Requiem no 1 in C minor (excerpt)
I. Introitus and Kyrie
II. Graduale
III. Sequentia
Le Concert Spirituel
Hervé Niquet, director

String Quartet no 2
I: Lent – Allegro
Melos Quartet
Wilhelm Melcher, violin
Gerhard Voss, violin
Herman Voss, viola
Peter Buck, cello

Requiem no 2 in D minor for male chorus & orchestra (excerpt)
Agnus Dei
Estonian National Male Choir
Estonian National Symphony Orchestra
Andres Mustonen, conductor

Producer: Johannah Smith