On An Overgrown Path

With the row over Iran's nuclear programme escalating I had to laugh at this visitor to On An Overgrown Path today. Atomic Energy Organization Of Iran Tehran, Tehran, Iran, Islamic Republic Of, 0 returning visits No referring link 31st January 2006 12:39:37 theovergrownpath.blogspot.com/2005/12/farewell-to-stromness.html The article the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran read is about the beautiful piano work Farewell to Stromness that composer Peter Maxwell Davies wrote in protest against a proposed uranium mine on the island of Orkney in 1980. Any takers among the many composers who read this blog for a new piece - Farewell to Tehran ? Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk Image credit - Swiss info Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to For unto us a child is born

Lots elsewhere about the Honda Civic TV commercial ( run the video via this link ). I hardly ever watch television so hadn't seen it myself, but anything that promotes choral singing must be great. I thought I would tag on to the thread by running a thought provoking quote about television from Christopher Rush's superb new book To Travel Hopefully : 'So the whirlwind of idiot hopes and idiot despairs comes spouting out of the pathetic little box, mixed up with all the soaps and meaningless froth of our sick society. Probably the pathetic little box is the real source of crisis, more powerful than any it mentions. It has the power to turn values upside down, to make fair foul and foul fair, to paralyse people into bored passivity for a quarter of their adult lives. Trapped in the triviality of everydayness, trapped in the treadmill of boredom and futility, they succumb. Or they look for an escape. Faust found it by reaching out to unseen forces, dabbling with the unknown...

"Orchestras must embrace new technology following a BBC experiment that highlighted the huge demand for classical downloads. More than 1.3 million people downloaded Beethoven's symphonies for free during a two-month period last year. That proved there is a large untapped market for classical music, according to US critic, composer and consultant Greg Sandow. " From BBC News report on last week's Association of British Orchestras Conference. Pliable says if I offer free Beluga Caspian caviar from my web site and there are 1.3 million takers does that prove "there is a large untapped market" for Beluga Caviar? And elsewhere some rather more rigorous research comes up with thought provoking results which I would have thought would have been of interest to critics, composers and consultants at a major orchestra management conference: "Music downloading creates listener apathy - internet downloading and MP3 players are creating a generation of people who...

Photo taken at University of East Anglia, Norwich 30th January 2006 by Pliable You can email this article to a friend using the envelope icon below. Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Size does matter

Last Friday's Guardian carried a full page interview with EMI Chairman Eric Nicoli but I didn't bother to link to it. The only thing I learnt from it is that Nicoli is one of the new generation of record company executives who can talk the talk on MP3 downloads and namedrop Coldplay, but thinks Má Vlast is a side effect of too many bean burritos. Meanwhile EMI license their crown jewels, such as Giulini's Missa Solemnis , to entrepreneurial little companies like Brilliant Classics who make a killing, and the orchestra owned labels clean up all the industry awards. But fear not, the future of the record company that brought you Jacqueline Du Pré's Elgar Cello Concerto, Herbert von Karajan's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and many more recorded masterpieces (and where I once worked ) is assured. Under the guiding hand of Eric Nicoli the EMI Classics web site tells me their "latest classical release is from Wild, the sensational new signing to EMI Classics,...

The Orthodox Church of Saint Seraphim of Sarov at Walsingham, deep in rural Norfolk, has been active since its foundation in 1966, and holds regular services as well as being a place of pilgrimage. The church is also home to an icon workshop , and publishes liturgical texts. In 1978 the priest of Saint Seraphim's became a monk and took the name of David, and the church became a monastic control until Archimandrite David died in 1993. If the architecture looks a little unorthodox (sorry about that) it is because the church was converted from Walsingham's disused railway station. The church is dedicated to Saint Seraphim of Sarov who was born in Kursk , a town in the west of Russia close to the border with the Ukraine. Below is an icon of Saint John the Wonderworker made by Leon Liddament - iconographer in Saint Seraphim's icon workshop Web resources: * Saint Seraphim in Walsingham web site - do visit it for the inspirational story of the church. * Icon workshop web site...

Kind of confusing isn't it? - while some urge us to celebrate Mozart by ignoring him others are showering us with free MP3s and podcasts. Following Danish Radio with their free downloads of the symphonies we now have Swedish Radio launching 25 hours of podcasts of Mozart performed by Swedish artists. The first programmes feature archive recordings from the Royal Opera House, Stockholm recorded during the 1940's and 1950's starting with a 1943 Don Juan sung in Swedish and conducted by Herbert Sandberg with Sigurd Björling in the title role. My reservations about the potential impact of free downloads have been aired here many times, but if you are going to do it archive recordings seem to be a less damaging way. With authentic performances all the rage it is worth remembering that my passion for Mozart was sparked by Bruno Walter's lovingly performed, but now politically incorrect, LPs of the late symphonies made with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra in the early 1...

Poet Laureate Andrew Motion said that since his appointment in 1999 he had wanted to work with the master of the Queen's music. But Sir Peter Maxwell Davies' late predecessor, Malcolm Williamson (right), was afflicted with long-term health and alcohol problems. " With the best will in the world, he wasn't available, in a profound sense, " said Motion. Andrew Motion was speaking with Sir Peter Maxwell Davies at this week's Association of British Orchestras conference in Gateshead Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk Image credit - Music Web International Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. If bandwidth is a problem with your permission I will host your image. If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Poetry to your ears

All those cool posts elsewhere about 'celebrating Mozart by ignoring Mozart' remind me that George Bernard Shaw once said: "If more than ten per cent of the public like a painting, it should be burned". * Image credit - Childrentoday.com * Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk * Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to An equal status with the Twelve-Tone boys ...

Orchestral musicians may appear, as they mould performances of consummate skill and artistry, to be paragons of grace and harmoniousness. In reality they can be prey to a range of physical and mental problems, from bullying, burn-out and stage fright to hearing damage and dependence on drink or drugs. The problems are so serious that this weekend the Association of British Orchestras launches the Healthy Orchestra Charter, creating a code of practice to help tackle or prevent the afflictions. Orchestral musicians have a notoriously unhealthy lifestyle, including working long hours in difficult or cramped conditions, spending lengthy periods on the road, and encountering the stress and tension associated with performing. Mental and emotional problems, according to the ABO's Joanna Morrison Mayo, are widespread - but difficult for musicians and orchestral managers to admit and deal with. "We are hoping this charter will open some people's eyes. We think there is an ostrich e...

The North Italian nobleman Carlo Gesualdo – notorious for having his wife and her lover murdered (and getting away with it) – produced in his later years of grief and guilt some of the most searingly expressive vocal polyphony of the High Renaissance. His 1610 setting of the liturgy for Holy Week, the Tenebrae Responsories, is music of tortuous chromaticism, vivid wordpainting and miserably beautiful intensity. Aldeburgh Easter Festival web site copy for the Hilliard Ensemble's performance of Gesualdo's Tenebrae Responsories in Blythburgh Church on Good Friday, 14th April. Despite the hard sell we've got our tickets, if you haven't hurry as the concert is almost sold out. * The painting Gesualdo and a Figure or Hospital Corridor is by J. Mark Inman who modestly describes himself as violinist, visual artist, keyboardist, composer, and artistic visionary. He is a member of several performance ensembles including the Benjamininjamninnman Duo , the synth rock keybo...

The canon changed and developed. It may surprise us now, but a good example of a composer who was slow to gain acceptance to the canon for any more than a handful of pieces was Mozart. Often he was seen just as the creator of naive but inspired miniatures that prepared the way for ‘real’ music and, in an age which saw music as ever-improving as it became ever larger and more complex, Mozart was bound to appear a mere precursor to Romanticism. Even a hundred years ago in Britain, to pick just one moment in the fluctuating history of Mozart's reputation, the academic consensus was sniffy; Parry famously dismissed one great set of variations as 'mere notespinning' . Sir William Hadow said the great operas contained 'no coherent story nor even any serious attempt at dramatic illusion' ; and when the Royal Musical Association eventually devoted a whole lecture to Mozart in 1906 it was called, with nicely judged severity, 'Mozart's Early Efforts at Opera`. What h...

Hey there! First off, I enjoy your blog immensely...you give me many tips for new music! I'm a musician from Brooklyn doing the night gig and day job thing (I work on a reality TV show at MTV and can afford you some prime gossip). I have toured nationally, have a good online presence, and am finishing up my sixth album and plugging away at a dream I really believe in. Anyway, I wanted to ask you if I can send you my new album. It's pretty awesome and I'm really proud of it and I'm trying to get it out into the world as much as I can. I figure if you listen to a track or two and giggle or wiggle your ass a little, my postage is well spent! And maybe just maybe you'll love it so much that you'll mention it on your blog. I figure anyone who runs a blog is down with guerilla word-of-mouth PR campaigns. At least I hope so.... ;) May I send it to you? I hope you'll feel comfy giving me a mailing address. But there we go! Thanks and keep rockin the web! Jenn Lindsa...

Behold, I have refined thee but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction. Isiah 48.10 As we mark the anniversary of the birth of one of Austria's most celebrated sons let us also remember that today is Holocaust Memorial Day . Hitler was born in Braunau, Austria in 1889, and his regime murdered six million Jews and many others. Auschwitz , the largest of the Nazi camps, where 1.1 million people died, was liberated by the advancing Soviet army on 27 January 1945. The photograph above is of the new Holocaust Memorial in Berlin by American Architect Peter Eisenmann . It was inspired by Prague's Jewish Cemetery with its closely packed gravestones, and comprises 2700 grey slabs. The photo was taken by me from where the Berlin Wall once stood and looks across to the centre of the former East Berlin, Alexanderplatz. It is from my recent photo essay I am a camera - Berlin . Holocaust Memorial Day is usually held on 27th January to mark the liberation of Auschwi...

Wilhelm Furtwängler was born on 25th January 1886. He was Music Director of the Berlin Philharmonic from 1923 to his death in 1954, and held this position for the twelve years that Hitler was in power. In January 1945 he was conducting in Vienna, and fled from there to Switzerland where he remained until the Battle of Berlin ended in the defeat of the Nazis. The musicians of his orchestra remained in Berlin during its darkest hour. Here is their story: On 28th March 1945 the Russian forces commanded by Marshal Georgy Zhukov were just twenty miles to the east of Berlin. A month previously Albert Speer had been replaced as Nazi armaments minister after trying to persuade Hitler that defeat was inevitable. Speer now turned his energies to preventing the musicians of his adored Berlin Philharmonic from perishing in the inevitable final battle. Reich Commisioner Dr Joseph Goebells, who was in charge of the defence of Berlin, had ordered the entire orchestra to be drafted into the Vol...

Classical music's "period instrument movement" has covered as much ground as music history can throw at it. With a tool bag of gut strings, valveless trumpets, white-noised sopranos and investigative musicology, it has tracked backwards in time from its 18th-century starting point to simulate the music of medieval Parisian troubadours, and forwards to Elgar and Wagner as they might have sounded then. Short of rearing, by barbarous means, some castrati to recreate a night at the opera in Handel's London, where else can the search for musical "authenticity" go? The answer lies not in brilliantly obscure PhDs about harpsichord string lengths in 18th-century Potsdam, or experiments with grain-fed oboists - but it is almost as kinky. It lies in the world of tribute bands. There are 60 or so Genesis impersonators around the world right now. Lots in middle Europe (a territory where unfashionable rock lives on), one each in Brazil and Japan, and several in the UK an...

Google has said it will censor its search services in China in order to gain greater access to China's fast-growing market. Google has offered a Chinese-language version of its search engine for years but users have been frustrated by government blocks on the site. The company is setting up a new site - Google.cn - which it will censor itself to satisfy Beijing's hardline rulers. Google argued it would be more damaging to pull out of China altogether. Critics warn the new version could restrict access to thousands of sensitive terms and web sites, many of which are already off-limits to users because the Chinese government blocks them. Such topics are likely to include independence for Taiwan and the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Google's move in China comes less than a week after it resisted efforts by the US Department of Justice to make it disclose data on what people were searching for. The company argues it can play a more useful role in China by participating than ...

Want to find out about concerts tonight in Cleveland, Cologne or Copenhagen, or sixty-seven other cities around the world? A good starting point is the Opus 1 database which lists more than 16,000 concerts and operas. This innovative Paris based site was chosen by Time Magazine as one of their top ten 'cool' websites . It isn't totally comprehensive, and it does focus on the bigger venues, but it is still a very useful tool which I frequently use when travelling. For instance it sent me to the chamber concert given by the Berlin Symphony Orchestra which I wrote about recently in Music history rewritten . And there is a lot more on the Opus 1 web site , including chargeable file downloads with a wide range of music by 20th and 21st century composers. The resources also include 50,000 audio tracks from 1,900 composers, 620 biographies, 5,300 programme notes and 12,200 composer images. The web site can sometimes be slow , and membership is needed for some areas, but it is ...

The UK television licence fee is to rise to £131.50 ($237 US) from 1 April, a 4.2% increase, the government has announced. Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell said it would enable the BBC to continue to provide a "strong and distinctive schedule" . The current fee is £126.50 ($228 US). She said the licence fee for 2006-7 would enable the BBC to remain at the "forefront of broadcasting technology" . The current settlement allows for the fee to be increased by the level of inflation plus 1.5% up to April 2007. The corporation has already asked the government for its next settlement, to run for seven years from 2007 to 2013. BBC director general Mark Thompson said a 2.3% rise above inflation would fund programmes and digital services. From BBC News Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk Image credit - E.V.Amusements Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will b...

A reader recommended a campsite with a pub in Clonakilty, West Cork, where you might see Noel Redding (ex-Hendrix) jamming (Ask a fellow traveller, page 20, Travel, January 14). Noel Redding died in May 2003 From today's Guardian Corrections and Clarifications : Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk Image credit - Mrlee.com If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Classic misundertandings - Eastern tunings

In 1980 Peter Pears commissioned a song cycle from the 'holy minimalist' composer John Tavener . Pears suggested the texts should be taken from the writings of the Greek poet Cavafy . But to quote Tavener's biographer Geoffrey Haydon: "Tavener found Cavafy's poetry too blatantly homoerotic. Instead he chose six lyrics about love and death from an anthology of poetry written in Baghdad during the Abbasid dynasty" (1). On January 20th 2006 the Tallis Scholars gave the world premiere of a new choral work by Sir John Tavener, commissioned by Symphony Hall, Birmingham where the first performance took place. The title of the new work is Tribute to Cavafy, and to quote the Symphony Hall web site it "draws on the writings of the famous Greek poet." And completely unrelated to that is the following story. Once when Horowitz was scheduled to give a concert in Providence, Rhode Island he asked his friend Rachmaninoff if the acoustics were good there. The an...

A real discovery to share with you today. Despite widespread interest in their culture Shaker song remains virtually unknown with one glaring exception - Simple Gifts. This song has been reworked by Aaron Copland and so many others to the point that it is generally assumed that Simple Gifts and Shaker song are one and the same. This is both wrong and a great pity as there is much more very fine music which deserves to reach a much wider audience. My discovery may help to do that. The library of the Shaker community at Sabbathday Lake , Maine has valuable music archives, including important manuscripts by Elder Otis Sawyer who was an important figure and musician in the Shaker movement. In 1994 a number of songs were transcribed from the Sabbathday Lake archive by Joel Cohen , who then recorded them direcing an ensemble made up of singers from the Sabbathday Lake community, Boston Camerata and Schola Cantorum of Boston. The result was a CD titled Simple Gifts - Shaker chants and ...

The American blogs have been poking gentle fun at the parochial writing in the Penguin Guide to CDs. Well, the new edition of the competing Gramophone Guide clearly hasn't reached the land of the Pilgrim Fathers yet. Last night I came across this review of Carole Cerasi playing Thomas Tomkins' keyboard works: But though about as fashionable as a 'Welcome home, Walter Raleigh' hat, these pieces have a quality to them - showing by turns something of the exuberance of Bull and the eloquence of Byrd - that's more than enough to maintain their currency today. This disillusioned early version of a Daily Telegraph reader was nothing less that the last representative of that great school of keyboard composers known as the English virginalists, and more than 350 years on, it matters not a bean to the listener which decade he was writing in. Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk Image credit - Amazon Image o...

Tony Blair's Education Secretary Ruth Kelly has had a torrid week over her department's decision to to allow a registered sex offender to work as a Physical Education teacher in a Norfolk school. The furore reminded me of this musical story: For the first performance of John Tavener's The Cappermakers at Charleston Manor in 1964, students from the Royal Academy and the Royal College were bolstered by professionals. Tavener (right) himself conducted, and Francis Steiner took the prominent piano part in the ensemble, which consisted otherwise of woodwind, horn, trumpet, harp and string quintet. The chorus was the St Christopher Singers, who also provided the male trio to sing the part of Christ. One solo tenor and one baritone shared the parts of Lazarus and the four Jews. In a volume of Stravinsky's conversations, Tavener had read the great composer's description of the part of Satan in his opera The Flood : 'a high, slightly pederastic tenor' . Having no ...

From my server log yesterday: 19th January 2006 13:41:36 relay1.ucia.gov ( Central Intelligence Agency ) Virginia, Fairfax, United States, 0 returning visits WebPage http://theovergrownpath.blogspot .com/2005/07/jerry-springer-rebel -grabs-gramophone.html Hope they enjoyed Antony Pitts' contemporary choral work Seven Letters - which is what the article they landed on is about. And from BBC News today: The internet search engine Google is resisting efforts by the US Department of Justice to force it to hand over data about what people are looking for. Google was asked for information on the types of query submitted over a week, and the websites included in its index. The department wants the data to try to show in court it has the right approach in enforcing an online pornography law. Hope Google will now take the same line in China. As I've written before their 'sizeable' investment in Chinese search engine Baidu.com is supporting both music piracy and intern...

As other orchestras lurch from crisis to crisis it is great to see the BBC Scottish Symphony on a winning streak. The orchestra is playing better than ever, in Ilan Volkov they have one of the hottest young conducting talents as Chief Conductor, and they have just moved into a superb new concert hall in the centre of Glasgow. The BBC Scottish was formed in 1935, and is first and foremost a broadcasting and recording orchestra. Almost all its performances are aired on BBC Radio 3 or Radio Scotland , and it has recorded for record companies including Hyperion and BIS. 27 year old Israeli born Ilan Volkov is the youngest conductor ever to lead a BBC orchestra, and his first concerts with the orchestra drew superlative reviews from the notoriously cynical Scottish critics. Volkov has already guested with the New York, Boston, Detroit and Gothenburg orchestras, and he follows a distinguished line of conductors who have worked with the orchestra. These include Simon Rattle who was thei...