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Showing posts from September, 2005

Soli Deo Gloria justly rewarded

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Congratulations to Sir John Eliot Gardiner, and his Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists, who have scooped the Record of the Year Award at last night's 2005 Gramophone Awards with their recording of Bach's Cantatas for the Feast of St. John the Baptist and Cantatas for the 1st Sunday after Trinity (SDG 101). Gardiner's Bach Pilgrimage on his own Soli Deo Gloria label has been championed by On An Overgrown Path since we heard the first bars of the first recording - see my post of March this year for the full story of this fantastic project. It has to be said that the Bach Cantatas are the only 'stand out' in what is otherwise a predictable list of winners that made sure the big advertisers in the Gramophone all went home happy from the awards bash. But let's not spoil a good party. Let's hear it for Sir John Eliot Gardiner, his fantastic musicians, and a beautiful, beautiful recording that once again shows that the small independent labels are wher

Stopped Diapason

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From today's Guardian .... Concerts banned after elderly fans turn rowdy Rowdy behaviour by elderly theatre organ fans has led to a ban on lunchtime concerts in Penistone, South Yorkshire, where the Paramount cinema's 68-year old pipe organ is the last of its type in Britain. Claims of abuse, harassment and furious rows between an elderly fan and a councillor led to the move. The Paramount's manager, Rob Young, said: "We put on live bands, stage shows, and films and have lots of teenagers in, without a snippet of trouble." The concerts' regular organist, Kevin Grunhill, has issued a writ claiming loss of earnings from Penistone town council. Photo credit St Mary's Cathedral, Kingston If you enjoyed this post take an overgrown path to Classic misunderstandings - Hildegard

Serendipity, synchronicity, and Bernstein

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The overgrown path works! In a comment on my post about Bernstein's Mass a while back Kathy Demaree wrote movingly about her choir singing Simple Song from the Mass at a memorial service for the composer. Kathy then went on to write a wonderful piece on her blog titled Serendipity, Synchronicity, and Bernstein . Read the whole post , but I will quote from it here.... I just couldn't believe that a series of random events had sent me back down a such a familiar road. I had not been listening to as much Bernstein of late, because I had OD'd at times in the past, but I so very rarely get tired of anything of his. In addition, I've found a CD I want to buy, a new Blog to read, and I've made a new virtual acquaintance. I guess it is true that if you stay true to the things that you love good things will happen to you. In the early days of an overgrown path I tried to explain my reasons for starting the blog in Serendipity and collabarative filtering . The respon

Now Alpha shakes up web radio

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In February this year a lot of eyebrows were raised when the jury at the annual international marketplace for music and recording in Cannes, MIDEM , gave the French label Alpha Productions the prestigous Classical Label of the Year award . This was yet another example of a zany and innovative new label deservedly beating the corporate players at their own game. Alpha Productions is an independent label that was started just six years ago. Its fresh approach to repertoire and presentation, coupled with musical and technical excellence, means that it has already built a big following. And that includes this blog, with on an overgrown path highlighting its outstanding releases on several occasions . The catalogue specialises in early and baroque music, but extends into the 20th century. Artists include Gustav Leonhard, Pierre Hantaï, Capriccio Stravagante , Café Zimmermann and Les Witches. The cover image above is from their new DVD release of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. Alpha is l

Is classical music too fast?

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Time passes slowly in Orford. At the eastern end of the 14th century church of Saint Bartholomew the remains of the Norman chancel can be seen, with moulded arches and great shafted piers still standing. Six centuries later century the church saw the first performances of Benjamin Britten’s Noye’s Fludde , and the three church parables, Curlew River , The Prodigal Son , and Burning Fiery Furnace . (photo to right is a detail from the Church Parable window by John Piper in Aldeburgh Church ). Britten was a true polymath. His genius as a composer goes without saying. His genius as both pianist and conductor is immortalised in many great recordings. His genius as music visionary lives on today in the Aldeburgh Festival. In his autobiography Notes of Seven Decades Antal Dorati writes: “…the English-speaking world lagged far behind the Latin and German countries in creating and performing opera. The change in this century – a sudden and dramatic one – can be attributed virtually to the l

Do, Re, Me.....

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The Benedictine monk and choirmaster Guido d'Arezzo (990-1050), seen on the right, noticed that in the Latin hymn Ut Queant Laxis , which was sung in chant for the Feast of St John the Baptist, the tones rise progressively...... Ut Queant Laxis Re sonare fibris Mi ra gestorum Fa muli tuorum So lve polluti La bii reatum Sante Iohannes The notes in italics, Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La etc formed the basis of teaching music to children. Do replaced Ut in common usage, probably because the T in Ut could not be sung. Very clever monks those Benedictines .... If you enjoyed this post take the Overgrown Path to Master Tallis' Testament Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

My friends pictured within....

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Not many words, just some wonderful portraits of musicians. Artist June Mendoza has commissions that include members of the royal family , prime ministers , businessmen and sportsmen. Her mother was a musician, and brought the young Ms. Mendoza into contact with an artistic circle that included the De Basil Russian Ballet Company. This gave her a love of the arts that is reflected in her many portraits of leading figures from the music , ballet, and opera worlds. Working in oil paints on canvas by natural light, she uses an extensive palette of almost twenty colours due to the complex demands of realising flesh tones. The portraits require up to seven two hour sessions working straight into oils. June Mendoza says creating one of her portraits "involves gut feeling, experience, and the particular demands of the subject." A blog is not the ideal vehicle for showcasing paintings. So I urge you to visit her excellent web site which has many more wonderful portraits on it

Barbarians at the gates....

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"....sampling and synthesis technology gets better all the time -- we're on the cusp of an age when artificial orchestras will be indistinguishable in recordings from real ones, and of course be substantially cheaper to use. I suspect that the future of new orchestral music lies in this technology, and will thus remain healthy -- although the orchestra performance jobs will suffer." from a comment by Galen H. Brown on my post Is the Symphony Dead? on Sequenza21 . If you enjoyed this post take an overgrown path to Tallis' Forty Loudspeaker Motet

A neglected 20th century masterpiece

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Interviewer: "Did you think as you began to write the ninth symphony that it would be the last thing you wrote?" Sir Malcolm Arnold: "I was rather hoping it would be ....(pause)... the piece is an amalgam of all my knowledge of humanity." Interviewer: "It is a huge, bleak, finale isn't it?" Sir Malcolm: (long pause) "....Yes...I wanted it to die away into infinity....." These words are taken from the discussion between the conductor Andrew Penny and the composer Sir Malcolm Arnold which is included on Naxos' superb recording of his 9th Symphony. The symphony was written in a three week blaze of creativity in August 1986 as a birthday present for the composer's close friend, and carer, Anthony Day. Its composition followed five years of mental illness, and composing silence Sir Malcolm's career started as an orchestral musician. He was Principal Trumpet for the London Philharmonic Orchestra until 1948 when he turned to full time c

.....the desire to move and be moved, the Blues

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Went to the Old Granary Studio deep in rural Norfolk on Saturday to hear jazz pianist Julian Joseph playing with his acoustic trio of Adam Salkeld (guitar), and Mark Hodgson (bass). Fantastic evening, and nice quote on Julian Joseph's web site : "So much of music is a challenge but to achieve the "JAZZ" in Jazz is the ultimate, the hunger for Swing, the desire to move and be moved, the Blues. " If you enjoyed this post take an overgrown path to Michel Petrucciani.

Burning the bookshops

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"Where books are burned, human beings are destined to be burned too." Heinrich Heine In May 1933 when the Nazis wanted to hit at the heart of Jewish culture they didn't burn i-Pods or mobile phones, or any post-Weimar equivalent of today's technology toys. They burned books. In the UK the largest book retailer Waterstones , which operates 200 stores, has made what looks likely to be a successful £96 million ($175m) bid for the country's second largest bookseller, Ottakars. If the takeover succeeds the combined business (nick-named Wottakars by opponents) will control more than 25% of UK book distribution. More importantly it will control 50% of the 'literary' market if the mass market paperback titles sold through supermarkets are excluded. And crucially 29 of Ottakars stores are in the same towns as Waterstones , and will be subject to 'efficiency driven rationalisation'. Which in plain English means closure. And that is the 21st century equ

Art works....

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I'd like to turn people on to the fact that that the world is form, not just function and money." Claus Oldenburg Marc Quinn's sculpture of the artist Alison Lapper was unveiled in London's Trafalgar Square on Thursday. Lapper is disabled, and the off-white marble statue shows her naked and eight months pregnant. The visually arresting and controversial work is the first of a series of commissions to be displayed in a prominent position in the London square. After eighteen moths it will be replaced by Thomas Schütte's Hotel for the Birds Photo above shows sculptor Marc Quinn with a scale model of his statue of Alison Lapper: photo credit Reuters If you enjoyed this post take an overgrown path to Danish thread

Nielsen and Britten opera webcasts

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Britten's church parable Curlew River has been a recurring destination on an overgrown path . Don't miss the acclaimed 2005 Edinburgh Festival production which is being webcast tomorrow (Sunday 18th September) at 18.30h BST on BBC Radio 3 . Follow this link for webcast and 'listen again' services. Convert the time of broadcast to your time zone with this link And no, the production shot above is not Curlew River (and I know Curlew River is technically not an opera, but the headline is everything). The striking photo is from Covent Garden's new coproduction of David Poutney's new production of Carl Nielsen's Maskarade, which is premiered on Monday (19th September). The opera is based on Holberg's play, and interestingly is being given in a new English translation by Poutney, rather than the original Danish. Listen to this rarely performed (outside Denmark) work in a BBC Radio 3 webcast on Saturday 8th October. Maskarade is in that interesting group

Where's my bus?

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European Mobility Week is launched today with much fanfare. The laudable objective set out on the official web site "is to facilitate widespread debate on the necessity for changes in behaviour in relation to mobility and in particular the use of the private car. As usual, the Car Free Day will be the highlight of the whole Week." The East Anglian counties of Norfolk and Suffolk found a novel way to celebrate the week and contribute to the demise of the motor car. Drivers of the main bus operator, First Eastern Counties , started a week-long strike yesterday forcing the counties' 68,000 regular bus travellers to use private cars. Nice one. If you enjoyed this post take an overgrown path to Pie in the face for a dangerous buffoon.

Cracking Kuhnau from Skywalker Sound

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Harmonia Mundi USA have found a great way to add value to the CD format. Their new 1+1 series offers double CDs for the price of one full price disc, with performances drawn from their wonderful back catalogue giving a mix of mainstream and lesser known repertoire. I took two 1+1's on holiday to France in June, and was so impressed I bought another one there. Monastic Chant is a recital of 12th & 13th century European Sacred Music sung by the Theatre of Voices and directed by Paul Hillier in wonderfully atmospheric performances and recordings. Similarly William Christie's playing of Rameau's Pièces de clavecin (1724) and Nouvelles Suites de Pièces de clavecin (1728) also comes highly recommended. Strangely these entrancing Rameau pieces are not too well represented in the catalogue, so this 1+1 fills the gap nicely. But the real winner for me was the double CD of Kuhnau's keyboard works . Johann Kuhnau (see picture) was one of the last Renaissance composers, and

Webern day on BBC Radio 3

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Tomorrow, Thursday 15th September, BBC Radio 3 presents Webern Day , 60 years to the day after the Austrian composer's death. His complete works - about five and a half hours in total - will be broadcast in order of composition throughout the day, showcasing the entire creative output of one of the twentieth century's most influential composers. Listen via the web , full details and timings on the BBC Radio 3 homepage. Convert these to your local time zone using this link If you enjoyed this post take an overgrown path to Man in the Holocene

Pie in the face for a dangerous buffoon

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The automobile laconically runs down pedestrians. It gnaws into the side of a barn or else, grinning, it flies down a slope. It can't be blamed for anything. Its conscience is... clear... It only fulfillls its destiny. It is destined to wipe out the world. from Russian writer Ilya Ehrenburg's , The Life of the Automobile , published in 1929. Worldwide three quarters of a million people are killed every year on the roads. More people between five and 44 die in car crashes in the Third World than are killed by any single disease. 3,508 people were killed in road accidents in 2003 in the UK, and 33,707 were seriously injured. 171 of those killed were children. Since 1899 motor vehicles have killed over 2.5 million Americans, and permanently injured 43 million. The Humane Society estimates that more than one million animals are killed every day on US roads. It has been estimated that motor vehicles kill more animals than the fur trade and animal experimentation industry combined,

Music will rise from the wreckage.....

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Steel works, Snape Maltings fire: mixed media by Cavendish Morton linked from Island Arts It was a dark night, but as we came over the brow of the hill the sky was lit up by an orange glow, with a trial of thick smoke. If this was dramatic, seen from close to it was positively theatrical. Above our heads the black shell of the Maltings loomed like the flank of a stricken liner..... In the foreground, silhouetted against the bright lights, members of the English Opera Group chorus were collapsing into each other's arms. It was a devastating event, of course, but one whose aftermath - the triumphant rescue of the Idomeneo premiere at Blythburgh, and the Maltings rebuilding for the very next Festival - swiftly became part of the Aldeburgh legend. In 1965 the expanding Aldeburgh Festival urgently needed a purpose built concert hall. After much searching Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears found a disused maltings at Snape on the River Alde four miles upstream from Aldeburgh . Archit