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Showing posts from April, 2005

What a Facade!

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And so, back to the joy of live music making. One thing that I have learnt over the years is that works written for chamber ensembles don't translate well to orchestral forces. (And equally I don't think that a symphony orchestra can play jazz, despite Gershwin , Shostakovich et al ). Small is beautiful, and the clarity and precision of single instrumental voices really let's you see straight through to the composer's original intentions. I was reminded of this while listening to an excellent performance of the orchestral suite from Copland's Appaachian Spring by Thierry Fisher and the Ulster Orchestra on Radio 3 on Friday night. But it was really brought home on Sunday by an outstanding performance of Walton's Facade using poems by Edith Sitwell (seen below) based on a performance conducted by Walton himself (with Constant Lambert as narrator and a stage curtain by John Piper ) in the Aeolian Hall in London in 1942. The Invitation Concerts run by Norwich

How photo archive was salvaged from a trash can

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My two posts, Downfall and the mystery of Karajan's personal photographer and The mystery of the Siegfried Lauterwasser Collection solved via the internet on the fascinating, and chilling, Siegfried Lauterwasser archive of photos has generated a lot of interest, not the least from a very supportive post on The Periscope which is the companion blog to the Euro-correspondent.com journalist network. The whole Lauterwasser story hinges on the archive held at George Eastman House which is part of Ryerson University in Toronto. Although the archivist there, Jo Struble, has been helpful there have been problems with broken links on their web pages, and latterly performance problems on their server which mean some of the images are slow in loading. Andy Eskind is the original researcher whose remarkable internet detective work while working at George Eastman House proved conclusively that the remarkable, and powerful, archive of Nazi photos was indeed the work of Siegrfried Lauterwa

Winds of change

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In a week when the giant A380 European Airbus makes its maiden flight George Monbiot writing in the Guardian gives some chilling (or should that be global warming?) statistics on the impact of air transport on the environment. His column was triggered by the debate on the building of the Whinash Windfarm on the eastern boundary of the English Lake District National Park . (Hopefully a balanced set of links here for the planning appeal site, the 'no' lobby , and the 'yes' lobby represented by the developers ). In his article Monbiot says ..."The Whinash project (or any equivalent large windfarm) by replacing energy generation from power stations burning fossil fuel, will reduce carbon dioxide emission by 178,00 tonnes a year. This is impressive, until you discover that a single jumbo jet, flying from London to Miami and back every day, releases the climate-change equivalent of 520,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. One annual daily connection between Britain a

Coincidence or what?

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One of those blog monitoring services called Waypath monitors references to George Bush. Yesterday they picked up and published the following story from my Size Does Matter post....... when:19 hours, 56 minutes ago this blog: On An Overgrown Path On An Overgrown Path : Size does matter no doubt by the recent revelations of George Bush's iPod listening habits . (Why does music no longer...Here in the UK we are in the middle of an election campaign. It is marked by an incumbent party ( Labour ) with absolutely no credibility due to their toadying to the Bush administration, being opposed by two other parties ( Conservative and Liberal Democrat ) with even less credibility. http://theovergrownpath.blogspot.com/2005/04/size-does-matter.html Later my blog visitor log reported the following access... VISITOR ANALYSIS Referring Link No referring link Host Name wallwhale-pub.fda.gov IP Address 150.148.0.27 Country United States Region Maryland City Gaithersburg ISP Parklawn Computer C

A musician with teeth:

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It is great to see a Master of the Queen's Music with teeth. I have already posted about Sir Peter Maxwell Davies' highly commendable views on the negative impacts of 'TV culture' in my post More MaxOpus (See also the post about his excellent website MaxOpus ) . Sir Peter expanded his views on the state of 'serious music' in the Royal Philharmonic Society's Annual Lecture given in the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London on Sunday night. Sir Peter Maxwell Davies who is advocating a commitment to new music His theme was that to generate a thriving classical music culture three ingredients are needed; education, resources and new music. And his subtext was that all three ingredients are being neglected in 21st century Britain. This is really powerful, and essential, stuff. I get the clear feeling that in Sir Peter we seeing the emergence of more than a great composer. What we are seeing is the emergence of that rare, and so valuable, phenomena - a true renaissa

Brilliant Norwich Festival

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Norwich skyline A fun game is fantasy music festivals. The rules are simple, plan your own festival with your dream performers. Mine would be something like this.... Open it with the Hilliard Ensemble and saxophonist Jan Garbarek (see improvisation ) in a great English cathedral, followed by late night Bach for solo violin in a classic 15th century merchant church in the heart of a medieval city. Jacques Loussier trio Them more Bach with classic jazz pianist Jaques Loussier in the same church. Bliss would be to follow it with the Tallis Scholars singing Tallis and (oh joy) Sheppard back in the cathedral. Keep the 20th century in view with Steven Osborne playing the complete Tippett Piano Sonatas. Add Andrew Manze and Richard Egarr making music in an intimate medieval music room, and also Carole Cesare playing Scarlatti and (more joy) Soler on the harpsichord. Sprinkle some 'envelope stretching' in the form of a multi-media tribute to Hildegard of Bingen including a light s

Size does matter

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Here in the UK we are in the middle of an election campaign. It is marked by an incumbent party ( Labour ) with absolutely no credibility due to their toadying to the Bush administration, being opposed by two other parties ( Conservative and Liberal Democrat ) with even less credibility. The press is taking all sorts of angles to try to make a lacklustre campaign interesting. The Guardian arts section on Friday ran a four page spread detailing the CD collections of twelve prominent politicians ( see this link for the full text ), inspired no doubt by the recent revelations of George Bush's iPod listening habits . (Why does music no longer have credibility unless it is in the iPod format ?). Among the politicians in the Guardian feature was Tessa Jowell who is the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport in the present Labour government. This means she is in charge of funding and policy for the arts and music among other things. The article says "thankfully, she confes

The mystery of the Siegfried Lauterwasser Collection solved via the internet

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In my post Downfall and the mystery of Karajan's personal photographer I wrote about the mysterious Siegfried Lauterwasser archive of photographs of Nazi Germany, and told how Ryerson University in Canada had not responded to queries about the identity of the photographer. All photographs on this post are from the remarkable Siegfried Lauterwasser Collection I have have now had a most helpful communication from a lady in Fairhaven, Massachusetts which does confirm that the photographer of these chilling photos was actually Siegfried Lauterwasser , who was later personal photographer to Herbert von Karajan. Here is the message which really illustrates the power of blogging, and the interconnectedness of the World Wide Web. "I must confess to having visited “The Overgrown Path” link via the BBC People's War website —finding that we have some shared musical interests as well. I took advantage of my presence here in the States to call the Eastman House photo archivist, Jose

More MaxOpus

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In my MaxOpus post I wrote about the innovative web site , complete with music downloads, created by our Master of the Queen's Music and maverick musician Sir Peter Maxwell Davies . (See also my review of his Sacred Music on CD ). Peter Maxwell Davies lives on a croft on the island of Sanday in the Orkneys , and owns a television only in deference to his partner. In an interview in Saturday's Guardian Sir Peter gives some interesting, and eminently sensible, views on the current artstic climate ( open this link for the full text ). The future of 'serious' music he says is...... "A question about the survival of civilised values, which can only be done by a commitment to music, theatre and so forth. I will talk about the effect of television being by and large very negative. These things exhibit a lack of concentration in terms of timespan. Most people don't ever think about music that doesn't have a lyric, and many of them don't know it can last long

Downfall - and the mystery of Karajan's personal photographer

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Bruno Ganz in the cinema as Hitler. Following on from The Chorus we went to see Downfall last week. Director Oliver Hirschbieger has made a stunning film, but the accolades must go to Bruno Ganz's extraordinarily powerful performance as Hitler. In my book his performance is up there alongside Dirk Bogarde's Aschenbach in Visconti's Death in Venice for immersing himself so totally, and so convincingly, in the role. Yes, I understand the reservations about the film 'humanising' the Nazi leaders, and the 'white-washing' of the role of Hitler's secretary Traudl Junge , on whose memoir the film is partly based. But just as Shakespeare's plays provide a valid 'drama-documentary' view of English history, so equally Downfall gives us a dramatised (and arguably sanitised) view of the last days of Hitler. The film lasts for more than two and a half hours (and thankfully uses music very sparingly, there is no Wagner of Bruckner at all, despite

Music and Alzheimer's

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I have previously mentioned the violinist (and former leader of the Medici Quartet ) Paul Robertson's work with music and Alzheimer's Disease . It was a pleasure to hear him on BBC Radio 3's In Tune programme last night talking about his latest project, Swansongs . This is a 'performance' in words and music of the process, pathology, struggles, and compensations of Alzheimer's (which is one of the prime causes of dementia). The project is a joint one between Paul Robertson and John Zeisel who is an international expert on the non-pharmacological treatment of people with Alzheimer's (which is thought to be related to 'protein tangles' in crystal structures in the brain ). Swansongs mixes music and storytelling to give insights into Alzheimer's . Among the musical examples used are Bach's Allemande from the Partita in D minor, the Cavatina from Beethoven's Opus 130 Quartet, Faure's String Quartet (which was apparantely compo

Evening of enlightened contemporary music

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Saturday evening brought the first performance of Douglas Weiland's Second Piano trio played by the Altenberg Trio from Vienna in a Norfolk & Norwich Chamber Music concert at the John Innes Centre, Norwich. It was an evening of enlightenment - from Norwich & Norfolk Chamber Music (check their web site for details of two exciting concerts with Tamas Vasary in September) who appointed Weiland composer in residence in 2002, and who have commissioned him to compose a piece of chamber music in each of the season's betwen 2004/5 and 2006/7. The first of these is the Piano Trio especially coposed for the Altenberg Trio of Vienna, to be followed by a Cello Suite, a Clarinet Quintet (with Andrew Marriner as soloist), and a String Quartet. Weiland's Piano Quartet, which was also written for the Norfolk & Norwich Music Club was premiered in Norwich in May 2000, and has since been played in Vienna and Australia. Douglas Weiland is an enlightened musician. He was born i

More on musician run record labels......

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I have written several posts about the trend (stampede?) to musician run record labels such as MaxOpus and SDG (and of course the San Francisco Symphony with their Mahler project ), and also see Dog eats dog for an interesting take on the trend. (Incidentally there is nothing new in the classical music world. I've just been re-reading Peter Ostwald's flawed 'psycho-biography of Glen Gould. It tells of how towards the end of his career Gould considered setting up his own record label, largely because Columbia were becoming increasingly frustrated with his eccentric behaviour). There is an interesting insight in today's Guardian ( follow this link for the full article ) into the business model for musician run labels such as LSO Live . In an article about the departure of the LSO 's Managing Director Clive Gillinson the Guardian's Arts correspondent Charlotte Higgins - " Currently LSO players make £400 (720 US dollars) per year from the profit share f

Lux Aeterna (and not Ligeti)

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The Honddu Valley in Wales The Requiem Mass for Pope John Paul II from Westminster Cathedral was on BBC Radio 3 as we drove from Abbey Dore into Wales to Llanthony Priory . This extraordinary Augustinian Priory was founded in 1118 in the beautiful and remote valley of Honddu in the Black Mountains to celebrate poverty and isolation. This really was life on the edge of civilisation, and finally hardship and Welsh raids caused the Priory to be abandoned for the more hospitable Llanthony Secunda in Gloucester. Today the ruins of Llanthony Prima remain as an extraordinary tribute to the power of the monastic movement. The Mass for the pivotal 20th century Pope disappeared into static as FM reception disappeared at Llanthony, so for the return journey we turned to Morten Lauridsen's Lux Aeterna (also the title of a superb Brilliant Classic's box set of Flemish polyphonists ) which fortuitously was in the car's CD changer. I had got to know this work through the RCM recordi

Kafka on the Shore

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Someone once told me books were like doors; you opened them and entered and all the old rules disappeared. In books anything could happen. And that just about sums up Haruki Murakami's (see my post on Norwegian Wood ) latest novel. Kafka on the Shore is an improbable, multi-layered piece of writing that veers from reality to fantasy and back. On paper it shouldn't work, but off the page it does - in bucket loads. It follows the separate, but converging, journies of a fifteen year old Japanese high school student who runs away from home, and an ageing, illiterate man, Nakata, whose main talent is to be able to talk to cats. Don't be put off if it sounds line Alice in Wonderland ; this novel will shake your brain up, and it won't quite settle down in the same form as it was before you read it. The details of the plot are completely believable. Almost as throwaway sub-plots Murakami introduces Schubert's Piano Sonatas , Beethoven's Archduke Trio, Truffaut's

My first classical record

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What was the first classical record you bought? Mine was an LP of Karajan conducting Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony, the 'Pathetique', with the Berlin Philharmonic on Deutsche Grammophon 13892SLPM. I bought it in 1969 from a music shop in Reading where I was at University. The shop had listening booths with acoustic tiles, and it sold sheet music, musical instruments, and classical records. The LP is playing as I write. I have just serviced my Thorens TD125 turntable with SME arm (a capacitor in the motor control circuit blew after 30 years) seen below. The LP sound through my Arcam Alpha 10 amplifier and B & W Nautilus 803 speakers is magnificent, when the planets are aligned beneficially vinyl can still deliver a musicality that surpasses CD. (Thankfully I have kept my LP collection, and the surfaces are immaculate apart from the inevitable pressing blemishes). What overgrown path led me to buy that LP of the 'Pathetique'? Well, I can answer that questi