American music strikes a remarkable chord

This weekend, Stephen Layton's Polyphony will reunite with the Britten Sinfonia and the American composer Morten Lauridsen. They will be performing Lauridsen's settings of poems by Robert Graves, Mid-Winter Songs, in Norwich and Ely Cathedrals. Fitting venues for music one critic described as "shamelessly ecstatic", but they are a far cry from the last time the Polyphony/Britten Sinfonia/Lauridsen combination were together in the public eye. That was at the Staples Centre in Los Angeles, home of the LA Lakers basketball team, for 2006's Grammy awards where they had been shortlisted in the choral music section for their Hyperion recording of Lux Aeterna, Lauridsen's settings of sacred Latin texts.

Layton (above), the Polyphony founder and director, says he reluctantly declined the opportunity to mingle with Kanye West and U2 - "it's a nine-hour ceremony!" - and the award eventually went to Leonard Slatkin's recording of Bolcom's Songs of Innocence and of Experience. But Layton professes himself delighted to have been nominated, although he was not particularly surprised. "I've become very interested in this American style of choral music, which does seem to have struck a remarkable chord with the listening public." Since Lux Aeterna, Polyphony have released a CD of music from another contemporary American composer, 35-year-old Eric Whitacre who has been called "son of Lauridsen", which went straight into the classical charts. A recording of Mid-Winter Songs follows later this year.

Lauridsen has sold over a million copies of sheet music in America, and Whitacre made the top 10 of the American classical music charts. Layton is aware that such success has been accompanied by a certain critical sniffiness, but he stands by the quality, as well as the accessibility, of the music. "I've conducted John Rutter's music and think it has provided a wonderful vehicle for anybody interested in music to celebrate. Whitacre has been compared to Rutter but these are pieces not written solely for amateur singers to enjoy. There is a complexity that can test professionals. Equally, the Lauridsen Winter Songs, which is an earlier work than Lux Aeterna, has a harmonic language that owes a lot to Copland. In essence I'm delighted that one day I can be conducting Schnitke or whoever, and then next doing something a little simpler that everybody can sing." Layton suddenly stops himself with a quizzical look. "But I seem to be inadvertently setting myself up as a populist champion which I am not really. However, I do think there might be a shift going on in that people who are seriously interested in music don't always feel they have to listen to Birtwistle."

From today's Guardian

Listen to six minutes of Hyperion's Grammy nominated recording of Lux Aeterna with Stephen Layton conducting Polyphony:

O nata lux [3'39]-

Veni, Sancte Spiritus [2'20]-

and their best selling Eric Whitacre release featured here in Eric Whitacre outsells Mozart , Water Night [5'03] -

Polyphony's recording of Morten Lauridsen's Mid-Winter Songs is released by Hyperion in the autumn, not in April as was stated in earlier versions of this article. Thanks to Prelude Records for spotting my error.

CDs featured in this article are available from Prelude Records. Image and audio file credits - Hyperion. Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. 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 Let the people sing and Harrison Birtwistle's cheesy 'Private Passions'

Visa bill stops top orchestra's US tour

One of Britain's leading symphony orchestras has been forced to scrap an American tour, partly because of the "mind-blowing palaver" and cost of securing visas for 100 players and staff.

The Manchester-based Hallé had been due to visit the US next year for two concerts, including one at the Lincoln centre in New York, the country's principal classical music venue. But managers said yesterday they had cancelled the tour when they realised that the cost of arranging the visas, estimated at £45,000, would render the trip uneconomic.

Other agents said rock musicians, also fed up with the process and expense, were refusing to visit the US to work. Katie Ray, of Traffic Control Group Ltd, which secures visas and work permits mainly for rock bands, said some artists were now choosing not to tour in the US.

John Summers, the Hallé's chief executive, said each orchestra member would have been required to go to London after phoning to arrange an interview at the US embassy. "We think this would have taken two days out of [our] schedule. The US visa service ... will not use consulates outside London. This palaver of getting visas is mind-blowing."

The cancellation of the tour is a bitter blow for Mark Elder (photo above), who has raised the Hallé to new heights since he became music director in 2000. "It seems a crying shame that the chance for this wonderful British orchestra to appear on the US east coast should be in part blighted by a too fanatical approach at the embassy."

New visa procedures have been introduced to protect the US against terrorists. Most visitors with machine-readable passports can still use the visa waiver scheme, but performers intending to work in the US cannot do this. They have to arrange an appointment at the US embassy in Grosvenor Square, London, via a phone line charged at £1.30 a minute, and then appear for an interview and fingerprinting. The fee is $100.

"It's not a level playing field," said Russell Jones, director of the Association of British Orchestras. "Journalists and sports people do not have to go through these hoops." He said officials were following orders from the US department of homeland security, but it meant that "that wonderful cross-pollination of orchestras coming from and going to the US is going to decline if it's too much trouble".

From today's Guardian

Visit the Hallé Orchestra's website via this link.

Image credit - Mark Elder from Sanctuary classics . Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. 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 Reflections on the Philadelphia Orchestra

Safe landing - but wrong airport

I am a frequent flyer with Irish budget airline Ryanair, including my recent Dresden, Berlin, Leipzig and Arhus trips featured in articles here, so I was interested to read this story in today's Guardian ...

From a height of 33,000ft, the world below can seem a tranquil if confusing place. Gazing down through a veil of cloud, it's not difficult to confuse one main road with another or to mix up two different towns. Apparently, it's also quite easy to mistake one airport for another, even if you're the one flying the plane.

That seems to have been the case when the captain of a Ryanair flight from Liverpool to the City of Derry airport brought his plane down at a military airbase five miles away.

The Airbus A320, which was operated by Eirjet on behalf of the budget airline, touched down at Ballykelly airfield at 2.40 yesterday afternoon, much to the bemusement of its 39 passengers. The jet was grounded by aviation authorities, who ordered an investigation, but it appears the incident was down to pilot error.

Ryanair confirmed that the plane had mistakenly landed at the military base and called for a full inquiry.

It said in a statement: "Flight FR9884, operated by Eirjet on behalf of Ryanair, landed safely at Ballykelly airport instead of City of Derry airport at 14.40 today. This incident arose as a result of an error by the Eirjet pilot, who mistakenly believed he was on a visual approach to City of Derry airport."

The airline explained that the pilot had been cleared to land by air traffic control at City of Derry, but had then mistaken Ballykelly for the flight's true destination. It said the passengers had been able to disembark normally and had then been taken by coach to the City of Derry airport.

The statement concluded: "Ryanair has notified both the Irish Aviation Authority and the Civil Aviation Authority of this Eirjet error."

Follow this link for Ryanair's website.

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If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Danish thread

Listen online to an orchestra of laptops

At Princeton University's faculty of music, the students are as happy to tickle a Powerbook's plastics as a piano's ivories. They have their own wireless-networked orchestra: a 15-piece band that can play anything from electropop to avant garde on instruments specially designed to interface with their laptops. A virtual conductor keeps them on the beat. The Princeton Laptop Orchestra, or PLOrk as it is known, has caused something of a sensation in academic circles, and avant-garde musicians are queueing up to compose for them.

"It's much more than I bargained for," says Dan Trueman, who created the orchestra with fellow college professor Perry Cook. "I'm delighted and terrified by the level of interest."

For Trueman, the project began several years ago when he created his own electronic instrument, a combination of a violin and a theremin that reacted to his bowing movements across a spherical speaker. "It was quite a trip to play," he says. "The question was, what kind of music could we make if we had 15 or more of these kinds of instruments?"

So Cook and Trueman challenged Princeton students to create their own. A speaker and a laptop to process the sound are the only compulsory parts. The methods of play can vary wildly, from traditional piano keyboards to graphics tablets, and even motion sensors worn on the hands and feet, adding an element of dance to the performances.

The orchestra's sound is equally customised - it is theoretically possible, says Trueman, to play Beethoven or Mozart, but why bother when a traditional orchestra can do that already? Isn't it more rewarding, he suggests, to create a symphony from chirruping crickets, thunder and fruit machines?

· Listen to PLOrk at: plork.cs.princeton.edu/listen/debut/ via downloads or streaming.

From today's Guardian

Image credits - Plork. Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
For more weird sounds online take An Overgrown Path to Is classical music too fast?

Condoleezza's musical mystery tour revealed

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visits Liverpool, the home of the Beatles, for two days this week. On Friday she is taking in a concert featuring the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and anti-war protesters have caused some local difficulties, including the loss of the compere.

Ms Rice likes her music. When visiting Paris she visited the Conservatoire Hector Berlioz, and reportedly plays in a weekly chamber music group. The good news is that the Liverpool gig is going ahead, but tight security has meant that the concert programme has been kept a secret until this afternoon. The Liverpool Phil's hard pressed Communications Manager, Jayne Garrity, has just emailed over the details, so here, as a little exclusive, are the headlines.

The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra will perform the first movement of Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances, Bernstein’s Candide Overture and Nimrod from Elgar’s Enigma Variations.

The RLPO will be conducted by Principal Conductor designate, Vasily Petrenko who takes up the baton in September 2006. Recognised as one of the exceptional musicians of his generation, at 29 years old, he is the youngest person and the first Russian in the 165-year history of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic to have been appointed principal conductor.

In addition to the orchestra the young voices of Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Choir will sing Stephen Hatfield's Las Amarillas (do follow that link, a fine young choral composer with a lot of audio files on his site), and other local music groups and dancers will perform.

It is good to see Condoleezza Rice supporting the performing arts in sharp contrast to our own Tony 'air guitar' Blair (left). Nothing too challenging in the programme, but two of the orchestral works are 20th century, and the Elgar only misses out by six months. But it is interesting that the Nimrod variation is well known as a threnody for the victims of war, and in Voltaire's Candide one of the best known passages refers to the execution of the British Admiral John Byng: 'Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres', which translates as 'In this country, it is wise to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others.'

Image credit: Ms Rice - Moveleft.com. Tony Blair - BBC News. Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. 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 'Glorious John' in New York

Neil Armstrong finally reveals his moon music

To celebrate today's total eclipse of the sun in Africa and Asia here is An Overgrown Path exclusive on a lunar story that has fascinating musical connections.Notoriously taciturn first man on the moon Neil Armstrong reveals his choice of fly-time music in a book that just been published. And his musical tastes open up undreamt of connections to Russian government research projects, Soviet agents and Communist propaganda films. Moon Dust by Andrew Smith is a new study of how the lives of the Apollo astronauts were changed by their lunar experience. Most of the nine surviving astronauts agreed to be interviewed for the book, but true to form the first man on the moon did not. But in an email exchange Armstrong identified the cassette of ' strange electronic-sounding music' that fellow Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins had reported him taking to Luna.
The cassette in question was transcribed from Neil Armstrong's own LP of Music Out of the Moon featuring Dr Samuel Hoffman. Author Andrew Smith decribes the theremin played by Hoffman on this album, and gives a short history of this unique instrument which mainly relates its use in rock music. But he completely misses out on a fascinating Russian connection. The story is too good to miss, so here it is.

The theremin was an early electronic instrument invented by a young Russian physicist called Léon Theremin, and came about a side-product of Russian government-sponsored research into proximity sensors shortly before the outbreak of the Russian Civil War in 1919. The theremin (left) is the original 'hands free' instrument and requires no physical contact from the player. The player moves his hands close to two antenna, the right hand controls the pitch and the left hand determines volume. A variety of effects can be produced ranging from glissandi to staccato, but the instrument needs to be played from memory as notation is impossible.

The invention was enthusiastically received in Russia, and was personally demonstrated to the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin who went on to take lessons. But America won the ideological struggle and Léon Theremin patented his invention in the US, and it was put into production by RCA with limited success. But facts then gets stranger than fiction. Theremin was kidnapped from his US apartment by Soviet KGB agents who returned him to Russia where he was imprisoned for years, apparently for political reasons. After his release from prison Theremin developed military and espionage devices for the KGB (logo to right), before going to work at the Moscow Conservatory of Music, where he built theremins and taught music for ten years.He did not return to the US until after the collapse of Communism.

Shostakovich's second film score Odna (1931) uses a theremin among the huge orchestral forces. The film was made shortly after the declaration of Stalin's first five-year plan, and it embraces the positive aspects of Communism including teaching, collectivism and modern technology. The theremin had other exponents in the classical field, most notably Clara Rockmore who was famous for her transcriptions for the instrument which included Bach and Bloch's Schelomo. Mrs Rockmore's recording of the Concerto for Theremin and Orchestra by the American composer Anis Fuleihan conducted by Leopold Stokowski has been reissued on CD, as has her The Art of the Theremin which was produced by Robert Moog in 1977.

The Ondes-Martenot, which was invented in 1928 and used so effectively by Olivier Messiaen, as well as Pierre Boulez, Edgar Varèse, Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger, Bohuslav Martinů and André Jolivet (who wrote a concerto for it in 1947), is a cousin of the theremin that uses similar heteroyne oscillators controlled by a keyboard.

The theremin was popular in America for a time after the Second World War, but it was then eclipsed by the new generation of electronic instruments. The best known of these is the Moog synthesizer, whose inventor Robert Moog started his career selling thermin kits. Despite technology improvements the theremin continued to have its advocates. These included Brian Wilson (left) who had to accept a hybrid Electro-Thermin for the recording of the Beach Boy's 'Good Vibrations' in 1966 due to the non-availabiltiy of the real thing. Three years later the best selling album 'Led Zeppelin ll' featured a theremin solo on the opening track 'Whole Lotta Love'.

The other-wordly sound palette of the theremin makes it a natural for film scores. Probably the best known film appearance is in Bernard Herrmann's 1951 score for The Day the Earth Stood Still. The unusual scoring is for a small orchestra combining the acoustic and electric sounds of brass, reed organ, Hammond organs, pianos, percussionists, electrically amplified strings, and cello, and bass and two theremins which play in opposition to create disorienting swirls.

Dr Samuel Hoffman, who recorded the theremin album which started us down this fascinating Overgrown Path, was an American chiropidist turned musician. He met Léon Theremin while playing in a dance band in the 1930s and became an enthusiastic exponent of the electronic instrument. Among Dr Hoffman's claims to fame are playing the theremin part in Miklós Rózsa's score for Hitchcock's Spellbound. Music Out of the Moon is a Capitol album dating from 1947, and was written by classically trained light music composer Harry Revel, with arrangements and conducting by easy listening king Les Baxter.

Apollo 15 Commander Dave Scott and his crew were permanently grounded by NASA for the $6000 trust funds for their children paid for by a German stamp dealer as a reward for carrying unauthorised first day covers to the moon. I wonder what the FBI would have done had they known about the Russian connections of Neil Armstrong's on-board music? Fortunately Music Out of the Moon has passed the test of time better than J Edgar Hoover, and it is still in the Basta catalogue. Samples can be heard on amazon.com

Web resources * Wikipedia theremin article *New book on the history of the theremin - Theremin Ether Music and Espionage from University of Ilinois Press (ISBN 0252025822), there are also more theremin audio files on this site * Dr Samuel Hoffman * Clara Rockmore * Moon Dust by Andrew Smith * DVD Theremin - An Electronic Odyssey * Moog's history of the theremin *
Image credits: Apollo 11 - NASA, Theremin from Theremininfo.com, Brian Wilson - Houseofshred.com, theremin CD - Amazon
Audio file from Amazon.com. Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. 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 David Munrow and the Voyager golden record

This is the future of classical music?

Top-selling classical downloads on iTunes

1 Barber's Adagio for Strings, Op 11, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra
2 You Raise Me Up, from Russell Watson's album Amore Musica
3 Jerusalem, from the Last Night of the Proms Collection, performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra under Barry Wordsworth
4 Duet from Bizet's the Pearl Fishers, from Andrea Bocelli's Aria: The Opera Album
5 Pachelbel's Canon in D, performed by I Musici, from the album 100 Classical Favourites
6 Nimrod, from Elgar's Enigma Variations, from the Last Night of the Proms Collection, performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra under Barry Wordsworth
7 Land of Hope and Glory, from the Last Night of the Proms Collection, performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra under Barry Wordsworth
8 Somos Novios, from Andrea Bocelli's album Amore
9 Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, performed by Vladimir Horowitz
10 Bach's Air on the G String, by the London Symphony Orchestra

From Big demand for classical downloads is music to ears of record industry in today's Guardian.

Image credit - Ihateyouripod.com. Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. 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 Music-like-water

Now BBC presents Beethoven's greatest hits

Some time ago the BBC Radio 3 dropped its policy of only playing complete works, and started broadcasting single movements from symphonies and concertos. Yesterday, in their Morning on 3 programme, they took their drive for 'accessibility' still further by playing the Molto Adagio slow movement of Beethoven's sublime Op 132 quartet on its own. Shorn of the framing, and contrasting, Allegro ma non tanto and Alla marcia, assai vivaci Beethoven's great hymn of thanksgiving sounded horribly like film music - which is presumably what the BBC producer intended.

But I'm sure the market driven BBC will say the audience ratings justified it, and that they gave their nemesis Classic FM a bloody nose. So to help them understand what they actually did, I offer the noses of two other great works of art shorn of all those boring bits around them.

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If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Classic misunderstandings - Beethoven's movements

Led Zeppelin's 'Stairway to Heaven'

Guitar shop owners across Britain have banned it in fear of losing their sanity, but Led Zeppelin's eight minute 1971 epic, Stairway to Heaven, refuses to go away. Jimmy Page's solo, in a song which has led generations of music fans to sing "ooh, and it makes me wonder", is voted the best air guitar moment of all time.

In a survey that reveals just how frustrating those No Stairway signs must be for guitar shoppers, almost 2,000 readers of Total Guitar magazine voted Page's solo better than a list axe-hero moments by Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Queen's Brian May.

In keeping with the genre's reputation, every single solo in the air guitar top 10 was played by a man imagining a Fender Stratocaster in their hands, most with longer than shoulder-length hair, often permed, and none were recorded after 1991 after which time the popularity of the brazen rock guitar solo waned, derided as pompous and an all-too crass display of self-gratification.

Described as "incredibly ballsy and a little bit flash" by the magazine's editor Stephen Lawson, Page's solo has the ideal attributes for an air guitarist accompaniment. As any guitar afficianado knows, Page produced his masterwork on a 1958 Fender Telecaster but the beauty of his creation for the nation's air guitarists is it can be enjoyed with nothing more than a mirror for equipment, as long as the thought of a cover by Dolly Parton doesn't break their concentration.

US rockers Van Halen came second, and the solos in Guns 'N Roses' Paradise City, The Eagles' Hotel California, and Metallica's Enter Sandman were next. The remaining four were Eric Clapton's Crossroads as a member of Cream, Jimi Hendrix's Voodoo Child (Slight Return), Ozzy Osbourne's Crazy Train, and Free's All Right Now.

From today's Guardian

Image credit - Darkhorse.com. Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. 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 Dead '72

Here comes the sun ...

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
And I say it's all right
Little darlin' it's been a long cold lonely winter
Little darlin' it feels like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun ...
From the Beatles' Abbey Road

British Summer Time started this weekend, and we put our clocks forward an hour last night. The photo above was taken at Holkham Bay, Norfolk, on Saturday afternoon. The temperature was 15 degrees C (60F)!

Holkham is a few miles from Sandringham, the country retreat of the Queen. John Philip Sousa conducted his band there at a royal command performance for King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra on the Queen's birthday in 1901. The King demanded seven encores, and awarded Sousa the medal of the Victorian Order (right). "Where shall I pin it?" he asked the composer. "Over my heart," Sousa replied. "How American!" said the King.

In return composed his march Imperial Edward which is dedicated to the King. It was first performed in Montreal in 1902, and the manuscript is in the British Museum. But in an ironic example of 'you win some, and you lose some' Sousa considered the march to be one of his least successful compositions.

And, of course, the dedication on the score of Sir Edward Elgar's Second Symphony is '(to the memory of) King Edward VII'. Which neatly brings this Overgrown Path back full circle to Elgar, Alsop and Bernstein.

Sousa anectdotes from 'A Musical Gazetteer of Great Britain & Ireland' by Gerald Norris (David & Charles ISBN 0715378457 Out of Print). Image credit: Goodalls Tailors, now that is one interesting web site .... Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. 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 John Peel's 'Private Passions'

Live symphony concerts available as downloads

Two programs from the Los Angeles Philharmonic's hip "Minimalist Jukebox" series, performed this weekend, are scheduled for release through DG Concerts and iTunes on April 4. Although pricing is not final, each live concert will probably cost about $10 to download, less for complete individual works.

Both orchestras are part of a new initiative by the Universal Music Group built on its Deutsche Grammophon and Decca labels. DG Concerts and Decca Concerts will, between them, ultimately service about 10 orchestras in the United States and abroad. Negotiations are under way with orchestras in London, Paris and three German cities. The current intention is for each orchestra to offer, on average, four concerts a season for digital downloading, and one of the four would also be released on CD.

The New York Philharmonic, in its three-year project with DG Concerts, is taking a financial gamble in the hope of reaching a worldwide audience. As part of the contract, the Philharmonic members chose a percentage of royalties rather than their usual flat fee up front. The recordings remain the property of the Philharmonic, which has licensed them to Deutsche Grammophon.

"For us, it's all about getting a foothold in the new media," said the violinist Fiona Simon, the chairwoman of the orchestra committee that helped negotiate the deal. "Downloading is probably the way that classical music is going to be distributed in the future. The CD isn't dead yet, but it's fading."

The orchestras involved in the Universal initiative will provide the record companies with edited tape. The labels will do the mastering, prepare the tape for downloading, supply artwork and liner notes to the digital music services, and handle promotion costs.

From today's New York Times

More information via this link.

With thanks to 'American in Europe' Vanessa Lann for the heads-up. Image credit - Walt Disney Hall, venue for the 'Minimalist Jukebox' series from Gayot.com. Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath .
If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Philly's profit share fillip

Elgar, Alsop and Bernstein

Sir Edward Elgar is currently suffering at the hands of my friends across the Atlantic. First blogger James Reel over at KUAT-FM in Southern Arizona set history straight by telling us that: 'If you are not English, you are more likely to perceive the Elgar Violin concerto as a thematically amorphous, bloated corpse of Romanticism. Sorry, Limeys: Elgar was not a great composer. He wrote a lot of lovely, endearing miniatures (and remember that the "Enigma" Variations are a series of miniatures), but only one large-scale work, the Cello Concerto, of truly international stature. Otherwise, Elgar, like Bruckner, is a provincial composer of severely flawed scores that fervent little fan clubs have bullied us into accepting as masterpieces.'

Then last night, on BBC Radio 3, Marin Alsop showed us how it really should be done, in what the BBC presenter tactfully described as her first 'stab' at Elgar's mighty Second Symphony. Now as my photo sequence shows Ms Alsop was a pupil of Bernstein (that is Marin to the left), and, oh boy, did it show. She has clearly been listening to Lenny's infamous Enigma Variations recording which was universally panned, and described by one reviewer as 'excruciatingly slow, protracted, and mannered'. Alsop dutifully pulled the tempi in the E flat major Symphony all over the place with the final pages of the concluding Moderato e Maestoso taken so slowly that even the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra players, who can busk with the finest, came close to breaking down. You can hear it via the BBC 'listen again' service until 31st March - if you must.

I'm afraid the return match I was trying to organise with Sir Adrian Boult conducting Charles Ives' Third Symphony isn't going to happen. So let's settle it at the soccer World Cup in Germany in June instead.

Image credits, Marin soaks up the histrionics from Marinalsop.com. Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. 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 Simply chic symphonies?

The music of Taize

Function in music - Adoramus te Domine by Jacques Berthier (7.59) -

Function in architecture - The Church of Reconciliation (above) was built for the Taizé Community in 1962 by the German organisation Sühnezeichen. This group of architects was formed after the Second World War by German Christians to build symbols of reconciliation in places of war-time suffering. The original design was by one of the Taizé Brothers, and the Church groundplan has been added to over the years to form a functional and flexible space for worship. Movable partitions are used to adapt the interior, and the usable space can be expanded outside in the summer using tents.

The founder of the Taizé Community, Brother Roger (left), was born in Switzerland in 1915. After studying theology in in Strasbourg and Lausanne he searched in France for a suitable location to found a religous community. The derelict rural village of Taizé, near the Abbey of Cluny, was chosen. The hamlet was just a few kilometres from the demarcation line separating unoccupied France from the Nazi occupied zone. The Community sheltered many refugees, including Jews, at considerable risk to Brother Roger, who had to flee to Switzerland at one point to avoid arrest by the Gestapo. When France was liberated the Community also worked with German prisoners of war.

Since the war the Taizé Community has developed into a leading ecumenical body committed to reconciling the different Christian Churches, and it has worked closely with Catholic and Protestant groups. The Community has been particularly successful at appealing to young worshipers, and its use of music in the liturgy is central to this appeal.

Taizé has created a uniquely functional style of liturgical music that reflects the meditative nature of the Community. The music emphasizes simple phrases, usually lines from the Psalms or other extracts from the Scriptures, and these are repeated and sometimes also sung in canon. The repetition is intended to aid meditation and prayer, and is illustrated by the audio file at the start of this article.

In its early days the Community used 16th century settings of the Psalms, and music by the Jesuit Father Joseph Gélineau (1920 - ). Subsequently the French composer Jacques Berthier (1923-1994) was commissioned to write liturgical music, and his compositions, which include the Adoramus te Domine above, are responsible for the widespread popularity of Taizé music today. Berthier, who studied at the César Frank School in Paris, had an extraordinary ability to write truly functional music that could be sung in more than twenty languages on a wide variety of instruments ranging from guitar and keyboard to full orchestra. As well as creating music for the Taizé Community he composed much Catholic liturgical music including Masses. The widespread currency of Jacques Berthier's tuneful music probably debars him from categorisation as a 'serious' composer. But his beautifully crafted output does mean he belongs to an exalted category of composers of functional liturgical music that includes Bach and Palestrina.

Helped by its music the teachings of the Taizé Community have spread through Western Europe, and into the United States. The annual New Year meetings, which are attended by tens of thousands of young people, have been hosted by most leading European cities including former communist countries. The 90 year old Brother Roger was killed in August 2005 when an apparently mentally-disturbed Romanian woman stabbed him during evening prayer at Taizé. Brother Alois, a German Roman Catholic, was chosen to succeed him.

* Follow this link for a photo essay on the Taizé community.
* Adoramus te Domine audio file linked from Carmelite of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Montreal, with many thanks.
* MP3 audio files of Taizé music can be downloaded from Taizé.fr
* There are many commercial recordings of Taizé music available. The Songs of Taizé (image above) on Naive is recommended for its 60 page illustrated booklet with meditations by Brother Roger.
* Adoramus te Domine is on the Auvidis CD Catate (T 505) which contains fifteen Taizé works by Jacques Berthier.
* A Universal Heart - the Life and Vision of Brother Roger of Taizé by Kathryn Spink is published by SPCK, ISBN 0281057990
* More information and web resources are available from the Taizé web site.

Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk. Sorry about the missing accent in the headline, but it does terrible things to some software.
If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to There is a green hill far away called Taizé

I am a camera - Britten's Aldeburgh

Brilliant weather here today with astonishing light, so no words, just pictures. All photos taken this afternoon (23rd March) in Aldeburgh and Snape using a Casio EX-Z120, and (c) On An Overgrown Path.
Other Aldeburgh resources on An Overgrown Path include * Music will rise from the wreckage * Easter at Aldeburgh * A direct line to Britten * East Anglia 1953 - New Orleans 2005 *

Another Elgar 'discovery' - it will never end ...

Back in December I wrote - Another Elgar 'discovery' - will it never end?

Fellow blogger Jessica Duchen writing in yesterday's Independent would have us believe not.

Nobody seems to have answered my question - Why is classical music so obsessed by 'realisations', 'elaborations' and 'reconstructions' when they are derided elsewhere?

Image credit - Soundandvision.com. Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. 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 Elgar's other enigma

The wheel would scar the earth ...

In today's UK budget, the chancellor Gordon Brown raised taxes for gas-guzzling vehicles, with the worst offenders now attracting a vehicle excise duty of £210 ($380). The move has been coupled with a zero rate for a small number of cars with the lowest carbon emissions, and £40 duty for cars with low emissions.

The only wheel in constant use in old Tibet was the prayer wheel: either the huge fixed prayer wheels, embossed with sacred mantras that were spun by pilgrims at monasteries, or the miniature handheld prayer wheels. The monks were none too keen on seeing the wheel, or close replicas of it, used elsewhere for purposes such as barrelling along a road. An ancient prophecy held that the use of the wheel would scar the surface of the earth, releasing evil spirits and destroying the social fabric of Tibet (and that may yet prove correct). From Heartlands - Travel in the Tibetan World by Michael Buckley (Summersdale ISBN: 1840242094)

Now playing: Lou Harrison's La Koro Sutro scored for 100 voice chorus with American Gamelan, harp and organ, conducted by Philip Brett. (New Albion Records NA015). Lou Harrison (below) was a practicing American Budhist, and in September 2005 His Holiness the Dalai Lama attended a performance of the late composer's 'Peace Piece One' at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, with Patrick Gardner conducting the Rutgers Kirkpatrick Choir. An accompanying exhihibition featured Tibetan sculpture, paintings, masks, and musical instruments in conjunction with an audio-video installation of Patrick Gardner conducting La Koro Sutro.

Image credit - Gridlock from Grinning Planet. Lou Harrison from Jinhair.com. Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. 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 Chinese puzzle

More passion for books ...

I started my recent article What exactly is a 'classic'? with a quote by Marc Van Doren. This was taken from Robert Giroux's Introduction to The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton which I bought the book last year in the wonderful Libraire Shakespeare English bookshop in the Rue de la Carreterie in Avignon, and then read it in the cloisters of the Benedictine Monastery of Sainte-Madeleine at Le Barroux.

La Libraire Shakespeare is owned by Wolfgang Zuckermann (photo above), author of five books and former owner of Zuckermann Harpsichords, New York. His magical shop follows the tradition of English bookshops in France first started by Sylvia Beach in Paris in 1919 with the original Shakespeare & Co.

Why do so many Americans open bookshops in France? The answer can be found in another quote from The Seven Storey Mountain (first published, remember, in 1948), this time from Thomas Merton himself: 'How does it happen that even today a couple of ordinary French stonemasons, or a carpenter and his apprentice can put up a dovecote or a barn that has more architectural perfection than the piles of eclectic stupidity that grew up at the cost hundreds of thousands of dollars on the campuses of American universities?'

* Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain is published in a Harvest Books edition, ISBN 0156010860.
* Photo of Wolfgang Zuckermann in Libraire Shakespeare linked from his website. 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 Passion for books ...

More and more Mozart ...

The silly craze for wall to wall programming of a single composer's works is spreading beyond the BBC. This week all 23 of Mozart's original piano concertos are being performed in six days by six orchestras and 19 soloists in the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, thankfully counterbalanced by a little Penderecki and Messian.

As if all that wasn't enough the 'inclusive' festival will include audience participation via a collection of Steinways in the Bridgewater Hall foyer which concertgoers are invited to play.

How 2006.

Image credit - Jan Op De Beek who kindly gave permission for use, do visit his website for more wonderful caricatures, particularly Mahler. 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 Shostakovich and Strictly Come Dancing

What exactly is a 'classic'?

Scholar and poet Mark Van Doren said: 'A classic is a book that remains in print'. So let's assume that a 'classic' music composition is one that receives regular performances. By this definition 'classic' status has been achieved by the Passion settings of Schütz, Haydn, and of course the incomparable St Matthew and St John Passions from the composer 'whose light blots out the feeble rays of other composers.' But which of the modern Passions will be performed regularly, and become 'classics'?

The trial has only just begun for Oswaldo Golijov's St Mark's Passion. But the verdict on Arvo Pärt's Passio was passed down soon after its 1982 Munich premiere - a contemporary masterpiece that endures today through live performances and recordings. Passio is a setting of St John scored for a quartet of soloists (SA/CtTB) as Evangelist, bass and tenor for Jesus and Pilate, a quartet of instrumentalists (violin, oboe, bassoon and cello), and choir. In it Pärt uses tintinnabuli, with the melody and the accompaniment fused into one. The work is remarkable for its use of silence, with the duration of the silences between the sections determined by the number of syllables in the final word of the preceeding sentence.

On Saturday night Norwich's soaring Norman Cathedral was the setting for a performance of Passio. The six immensely demanding solo roles were taken by members of Tonus Peregrinus, the instrumentalists were the principals from Chamber Orchestra Anglia, and the University of East Anglia Choir supplied the chorus and promoted the performance. Howard Williams provided incisive conducting which successfully maintained the balance between the soloists and the unusually large choir. 'Remaining in print' may seem a cruelly commercial criteria for judging a work of art. But Arvo Pärt's masterpiece, which is not yet 25 years old, held the large audience spell-bound in rapt silence for more than an hour, surely proof that Marc van Doren's definition is more than just a criteria for bean-counters?

Passio has been recorded several times. If you don't know this work look no further than Tonus Peregrinus' award winning, and very low priced, Naxos version (right) directed by Antony Pitts, and stunningly recorded in the Abbey Church of St Peter and St Paul in Dorchester-on-Thames, here in the UK. The principal roles are taken by Robert Macdonald (Jesus) and Mark Anderson (Pilate) - the same soloists as for the Norwich performance.

It is excellent news that there are several good recordings of Passio available. But recordings are not the equivalent of books in print. A healthy music scene depends on healthy composers, and healthy composers need royalty income, and that royalty income depends on live performance or broadcasts. Both the costs , and rewards, for making and distributing recordings have fallen sharply in recent years, while the cost of mounting concert performances has risen. This means generating royalties from live performances is more difficult than ever. Malcolm Arnold's (right) Ninth Symphony illustrates this difficulty. This work, dating from 1986, has been recorded by three major labels, Naxos, Chandos and Conifer, and has been described as a 20th century masterpiece. Yet there is not one single live performance, anywhere in the world, in the composer's 85th anniversary year. I do not suggest they are works of equal stature, but it is interesting to reflect that Elgar's First Symphony received more than a hundred performances within twelve months of its premiere in 1908, well before the era of music-like-water. By contrast, in the twenty years since its composition, Arnold's Ninth Symphony has received just three concert performances.

In Elgar's day regional performances were vitally important to the promotion of new music, and Elgar himself conducted the premiere of his Sea Pictures in Norwich Cathedral in 1899. Thankfully these regional performances do continue, albeit at a greatly reduced level. The performance of Passio is one example, the only US performance of the Arnold symphony is another. Of the latter a critic wrote: 'In March 2000 I attended the U.S. premiere of Malcolm Arnold's Ninth Symphony which was presented by the Susquehanna Symphony Orchestra, a fine community orchestra in northern Maryland, with Sheldon Bair on the podium. It was a highly emotional event; Sir Malcolm was present. However, as I listened I couldn't help but wonder why one of the major American orchestras wasn't presenting this major premiere.'

Although the difficulty of getting live performances is most acute for contemporary music, it also applies to some surprisingly established masters. The catalogue contains fine recordings of Passion settings by Obrecht, Vittoria, Guerrero (left), Byrd and the grossly under-rated, and elusive, Jacob Handl which are rarely, if ever, heard live today.

CDs and MP3s are wonderful things. But the error is to think that they are substitutes for live performance, either artistically or commercially.

The header image is of sculptor David Begbie's magnificent steelmesh Crucifix which I wrote about in Pilgrimage. 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 Is recorded classical music too cheap?

Why computers will not take over our world

'Here is the relaxing thought: computers will not take over our world, they cannot replace us, because they are not designed, as we are, for ambiguity' - Lewis Thomas' late night thoughts on listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony.

Disambiguation in Wikipedia and Wikimedia is the process of resolving ambiguity—the conflict that occurs when a term is closely associated with two or more different topics. In many cases, this word or phrase is the "natural" title of more than one article. In other words, disambiguations are paths leading to different topics that share the same term or a similar term - Wikipedia guideline.

Lewis Thomas' The Lives of a Cell is published by Penguin, ISBN 0140047433. 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 * Lost in translation * Wot no computers * Wikipedia is remix *

Steve Reich premiere on BBC webcast

BBC Radio 3 broadcast an unscheduled Steve Reich premiere yesterday evening. Reich was making a guest appearance on Radio 3's In Tune programme to celebrate his upcoming 70th birthday. The live interview with presenter Sean Rafferty was interrupted by an unfamiliar Reich composition which turned out to be the ringtone on his mobile (cell) phone. It took several moments for the embarassed composer to locate the offending phone in a pocket of his voluminous coat, during which time listeners were treated to some exclusive Reich. You can hear this premiere via the BBC 'listen again' service until 23rd March, the performance is 100 minutes into the programme.

Presenter Sean Rafferty was nonplussed. At least it was a composer, and it wasn't a concert ....

Image credit - Adfreak.com Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. 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 Pianissimo

Antal Dorati the composer

Antal Doráti's reputation was justifiably built on his conducting. Just one example is his recording of Stravinsky's complete Firebird ballet which was made for Mercury in Watford Town Hall in 1959. It is one of the major achievements in the history of recorded music and was made on Ampex 350 series three channel ½ inch recorders using valve (tube) recording electronics. (See link in web resources below). Listening to it again does raise the question as to what real benefits do digital recording and jet-setting maestros bring us today?

Less well known, but very well worth finding, is a live Missa Solemnis recorded in the Philharmonie in Berlin with Doráti conducting the European Symphony Orchestra, University of Maryland Chorus, and a distinguished group of soloists on BIS. Beethoven's Missa Solemnis was a very personal work for Doráti, and its score gave the title, and inspiration, to his posthumously published book 'For Inner and Outer Peace' which can be bought from IPPNW Concerts in Berlin.

Antal Doráti is not so well known as a composer, although his First and Second Symphonies have achieved some currency through his own excellent interpretation on BIS. Today (16th March) at 2.00pm GMT there is a very rare opportunity to hear a performance of his Cello Concerto in a live concert by the BBC Symphony Orchestra from their Maida Vale Studio (click here for a time zone converter) . Here is the complete, and very enterprising programme which can be heard live via a webcast, or until 25th March via the BBC 'listen again' service:

Ludwig Irgens Jensen: Passacaglia
Dorati: Cello Concerto with Raphael Wallfisch (cello)
Lutoslawski: Symphony No 4

Well done the BBC for presenting such an innovative programme, this is what the BBC Symphony are so good at - showcasing rarely heard modern music with little preparation time. But one small gripe I'm afraid - the cult of the media personality (or just plain sloppy sub-editing?) means both the BBC Radio 3 and the BBC Symphony websites tell us the name of the continuity announcer and soloist, but not the conductor.

Web resources:
* For audio file of an interview with legendary Mercury producer Wilma Cozart Fine follow this link.
* Antal Dorati web site
Image credit - Antal Dorati from WFCR . Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. 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 Who am I? - attaca

BBC MP3 downloads fail to get compliments

And regular reader, and contributor, Alex Noel-Tod writes .....

' In view of your ambivalence about the BBC (and others') download offers, you might be amused by this bit of PR illiteracy in a press release on the BBC Philharmonic website.

" ... featured performances of all the nine symphonies written by Beethoven and was complimented by a free download offer of the performances on the BBC Radio 3 website."

There's a world of difference between 'complemented' and 'complimented', but a world blithely unknown to the BBC Phil website. If Ludwig was around to claim royalties, I don't suppose he'd be offering them many compliments ... '

Image credit from BBC Radio 3. Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. 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 The BBC's frost with the music business

Shostakovich and Strictly Come Dancing

On An Overgrown Path is a huge fan of Shostakovich, and has devoted many articles to him in recent months. But if I hear another note of his music on BBC Radio 3 in the next few weeks I am likely to kick in the fronts of my extremely expensive speakers.

Wall to wall Shostakovich makes no more sense than wall to wall Bach cantatas, or wall to wall Wagner. Shostakovich is a first-rate composer, but even his most ardent fans must acknowledge that his music lacks the sheer range that distinguishes a true master such as Beethoven. To put it bluntly an awful lot of Shostakovich sounds the same, and some of it is the aural sound equivalent of secondhand chewing gum. Broadcast single composer marathons lacking the frisson of live performance do no more than grab media headlines and boost short term ratings.

The Government White Paper published yesterday on the future of the BBC gave some hope as it directed that the BBC 'should not merely chase ratings or copy successful shows on other channels.' But that hope was quickly extinguished by the next paragraph which praised the TV show Strictly Come Dancing for its creativity.

Sadly the BBC has turned composer anniversaries into a media friendly stick to beat audiences with. But there is one anniversary this year which shouldn't be overlooked. The influence of Shostakovich is not hard to find in the symphonies of Sir Malcolm Arnold, and in fact Arnold met Shostakovich when he visited Russia as the representative of the UK Musician's Union. I am told that Communist party member Dimitri Kabalevsky also had to be present at these meetings to make sure the two bad-boys of 20th century music didn't misbehave.

Sir Malcolm is 85 this year. Here is a tonic to the current Shostakovich saturation in the form of a four minute long hi-res MP3 download (10.5MB) of the first movement of Arnold's Quintet for Brass (1961). It is scored for two trumpets, horn, trombone and tuba, and is played by a brass quintet from Berkeley, whose members are AJ Shankar, Nikhil Kacker, Kate Stewart, Avik Chatterjee, and Matt Pereira -

Audio linked from Umesh Shankar's Recordings Page. Image credit - BBC . Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. 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 Arnold's 9th - neglected 20th century masterpiece?

The essence of India

Photograph Steve McCurry

Having just returned from 2 weeks in this extraordinary country, I felt that a glimpse of its warmth, scents and colours would perhaps brighten some dark days. I first visited the subcontinent in 1963, touring round the world with my father. I was just 19, and the done thing was of course to go overland with a backpack, but I wasn’t going to turn my nose up to the offer of 2 months in Asia in comfortable hotels! The shock of discovery of another world, where a huge number of people lived with completely different standards and values than those I had grown up with, was one of the significant experiences of my life. I remember feeling with great clarity, on the streets of the holy city of Benares, “the West has lost its soul”.

Amidst the chaos of bullock carts, rickshaws, bicycles, goats, dogs and cows, the riot of colours and smells and the cacophony of truck horns, bells and assorted shouts, I somehow felt at home, and did not resist much when an eager shopkeeper draped me in a sari and exclaimed how well it suited me. Nearly twenty years later, I returned, not as a tourist, but as a pilgrim to the shrine of Meher Baba, the holy man who has given the King of Hearts its inspiration, its name, and the friendly face on its sign.

Photograph Steve McCurry

Since then, I have visited about a dozen times, and the feeling of belonging has remained. India is a country of paradoxes and contradictions, symbolised by its constant contrasts: in the streets of the bazaar, the stench of rotting garbage is suddenly replaced by heavenly fragrances of sandalwood and frangipani; religion is expressed by frozen superstitious rituals and fanaticism as well as refined scholarship, sublime poetry or deep devotion. Deep spirituality and rampant corruption rub shoulders everywhere.

Even though Western influence is rapidly transforming the cities, in rural areas there is still a sense of timelessness and grace; women wear the sari and carry great brass pots on their heads with elegant poise, and the men, slight and dark, greet you with a hand on their heart or joined hands with the traditional “Namaskar”. The site where Meher Baba is buried is a hill on the Deccan plateau, from which the view extends in every direction. A sense of peace pervades the immense space, in spite of the many noises, whistle of a steam train, bird calls of all kinds, shouts of children playing cricket, and tooting horns. Diesel trucks, lavishly decorated in bright colours and tinsel streamers, rattle over the bumpy road producing clouds of smoke. “Horn Please” says the completely unnecessary inscription on the back.

Photograph Steve McCurry

At the bottom of the hill lies a small shrine with a charming story. It belongs to the cook of Queen Victoria, who, having served the Queen for many years, declared that he must now return home to serve God. The Queen accepted regretfully and gave him a purse of gold, which he threw in the river as soon as he arrived back in India, to adopt the life of an itinerant sadhu. He gathered quite a following and one day, led his disciples to a deserted, arid spot outside the city of Ahmednagar, and told them that this was where he should be buried. As they remonstrated, saying: “Master, how will we tend your shrine in this out of the way place”, he replied: “You don’t know what you are talking about. A very great master will come to live here, and the dust of his feet on my grave will be enough to honour it.” Some years later, in 1923, Meher Baba established his headquarters on that very spot, and the saint’s prophecy was realised. Such stories carry some of the essence of India, which remains under the current varnish of materialism, and I believe cannot be lost. Aude Gotto

This inspirational article was written by Aude Gotto. The wonderful music making at the King of Hearts in Norwich, and the beautiful harpsichords made by Alan Gotto have been featured several times On An Overgrown Path, and Aude Gotto is founder and Director & Artistic Manager of the King of Hearts, and her husband is Alan Gotto.

In March there are some very exciting things happening at the King of Hearts. On Saturday 25th March the Tudor building will host a display and demonstration by Alan Gotto of virginals, spinets, harpsichords, clavichords, and square pianos. Keyboard players are invited to bring their own music to try out the instruments.

And on the following day (Sunday 26th March at 11.00am) there is A Morning with Mr. Bach, with harpsichordist and actor Geoffrey Thomas playing and acting the great composer's music and life. Both events should be wonderful, more details from The King of Hearts web site.

Image credits - all from photographer Steve McCurry, his online gallery is unmissable. Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. 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 Messiaen stars in early music festival

Demon Internet - caveat emptor

Quite a lot of work goes into producing On an Overgrown Path, and to support this a robust internet connection is essential.

For many years I used as ISP Demon Internet who are owned by Scottish Power. Towards the end of last year I experienced repeated service outages and other problems with my ADSL connection. A lot of time was spent calling the Demon helpdesk, the response was invariably 'we have no problems, it must be your router, reboot it.' But Googling Demon showed we weren't the only ones having problems, and problems, and problems ...

When I felt I had exhausted reasonable attempts at resolving the problems by calls to Demon I terminated the contract and switched to Freedom2Surf, who so far have kept the Path on the straight and narrow without problem.

But that wasn't the end of my association with Demon. They then pursued me for the money for the period outstanding on the contract. I wrote to Demon, my solicitors wrote to Demon, and I then wrote to 1st Credit who debt collect for Demon. All the letters said: 'The service provided under the terms of this contract was not of merchantable quality. Moreover I made every effort by calls to your technical help department to rectify the problem. I was told repeatedly that the problem was with my router, when in fact it appears it was due to inadequate network capacity within Demon."

Demon did not reply to any of the three letters.

I then received a letter from Chivers, Easton, Brown, solicitors, whose credentials include Community Legal service and regulation by the Law Society. These solicitors act for Demon Internet, and their web site says: Chivers Easton Brown is a modern, well-run law practice that provides a wide range of legal services in a cost-effective, flexible and personal way.'

I quote from their letter of 10th March 2006 verbatim, the bold type is their's, not mine:

'We act on behalf of 1st Credit Ltd who has instructed us to write to you concerning this seriously overdue account. Unless full payment is made to our client within 14 days from the date of this letter we are instructed to issue proceedings aginst you in the County Court for recovery. Should that step prove necessary our client's claim will include statutory interest, Court fees and Solicitors costs. If judgement is obtained against you then, after a period of 28 days, it will automatically be registered at the Register of County Court Judgements and will have an adverse affect on your credit rating.

Please note that we are not instructed to enter into correspondence with you regarding this matter as our involvement is purely in relation to the conduct of legal proceedings. '

I have payed the outstanding amount.

Caveat emptor

Image credit - Portnetworks.com
Related resources On An Overgrown Path - Access denied

Churchill statue fails to overcome prejudice

Yesterday I wrote about the statue of Britain's wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill in a straitjacket (right) displayed in Norwich by action group Rethink to draw attention to the stigma surrounding mental health problems.

The statue was to be on view until March, but it was ordered to be removed today by the management of the Forum in Norwich, where it was on display, following complaints from other tenants.

Just goes to show that Rethink Chief executive Cliff Prior was right when he said: “The three biggest mental health problems are prejudice, ignorance and fear."

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 Over my dead body

Good grief, or is that Greif?

Isn't intelligent computer software wonderful? A search on Amazon.co.uk for Harmonia Mundi's new release of Olivier Greif's moving Sonate de Requiem (1979-1993) brings up the following useful sponsored link.

* Consult with an Online Grief Counselor -- Psychologists available for private one-on-one grief counseling over the Internet for affordable fees - live via chat or e-mail. Visa and MasterCard accepted. -- www.kasamba.com *

For more on Olivier Greif (1950-2000) follow this link, or listen to a sample from his Trio (1998) from the same recommended new Harmonia Mundi release -

Image credit - Olivier Greif website. Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. 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 Classic misunderstandings - Beethoven's movements

The Da Vinci Code's hidden meaning

The best selling novel The Da Vinci Code certainly isn't my taste in literature. But the current London High Court case in which the book's author Dan Brown is the defendant (via his UK publisher Random House) has an importance far beyond the literary value of the book. Authors Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh have brought the action, claiming Brown stole "the whole architecture" of research used in their 1982 book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.

The implications are far-reaching if the High Court rules in favour of Baigent and Leigh. They are not claiming that Brown copied parts of their work verbatim. Instead they are suing because they allege that Brown took the output of their own research, remixed it and published it in a different form as The Da Vinci Code.

On An Overgrown Path has repeatedly pointed out that remixing is a central component of creativity, and is used in everything from blogs (part of this article is a remix of yesterday's Observer article by Nick Cohen) to Shostakovich's Fifteenth Symphony. Forget about the effect of Mr Justice Smith's decision on royalty rich Dan Brown. A High Court ruling that copyright gives protection against remixing, as well as wholesale plagiarism, could put a lot of genuine artists, from Bach to Berio, on the wrong side of the law.

Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Remix resources On An Overgrown Path include Culture is remix * Guilty of remix? * Wikipedia is remix * Great minds think alike .. *

Churchill statue challenges prejudice

A statue of Britain's wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill in a straitjacket (right) has been unveiled in Norwich to draw attention to the stigma surrounding mental health. The controversial statue had been banned from display in London's Trafalgar Square in 2004 by the Greater London Authority 'on grounds of good taste' despite the Authority's endorsement of the much praised Alison Lapper statue at the same location.

Norwich North MP Dr Ian Gibson and Cliff Prior, chief executive of mental health charity Rethink, revealed the statue in The Forum as part of an ongoing campaign in the city that is striving to stamp out prejudice, stigma and ignorance surrounding issues such as manic depression.

Churchill was chosen as the subject because despite dealing suffering from manic depression throughout his life, he was able to become Prime Minister, lead the country during World War Two and be voted “The Greatest Briton” in a recent national poll. The controversial sculpture has been criticised as 'absurd and pathetic' by Churchill's grandson Conservative MP Nicholas Soames. In 2004 the Sunday Times famously dubbed bon viveur and gourmand Soames 'Fat Boy Dim' after an incident in a Chinese restaurant.

The statue, which is on display in Norwich's Forum for the next few days, is intended to illustrate how for hundreds of thousands of others the discrimination surrounding manic depression and other forms of severe mental illness acts like a straitjacket, denying people work and other opportunities to participate fully in society.

Chief executive Cliff Prior said: “Mental illness is the last taboo. People deny it, try to hide it and hide from it. We need everyone in Norfolk to break out of the 'stigma straitjacket' and help challenge the three biggest mental health problems: prejudice, ignorance and fear."

“We chose the former Prime Minister to show that mental illness should not be a barrier to leadership, historic significance and popularity. If the general public's negative views on mental health held sway, Winston Churchill would never have been an MP, let alone Prime Minister."

“Rethink's innovative anti-stigma campaign in Norwich is challenging the notion that people with mental health problems cannot hold public office or contribute to the world around them."

“Prejudice, ignorance and fear are the three biggest mental health problems in this country today. They destroy lives, prevent recovery and create discrimination in housing, jobs and health services. They must be defeated.”

Among those who made a massive contribution despite experiencing the 'straitjacket' were:

Robert Schumann, who in 1854 began to hear voices and a terrifying music (auditory hallucinations) in his head. He wrote to his friend the violinist Joseph Joachim: "the night has started to fall." Schumann had always dreaded the possibility of madness, but on February 6 1854 he fled from the house and threw himself in the Rhine. After being rescued he voluntarily agreed to confinement, and the last two years of Schumann's life were spent in an asylum close to Bonn - read more in Rare Romantic Requiems in Avignon.

Nick Drake, whose struggle with depression was one of the catalysts for his extraordinarily moving music. He abandoned live performances in 1971, but went on to record his final masterpiece, Pink Moon, in 1972. He died of an overdose of anti-depressants on 25 November, 1974. The coroner's verdict was suicide, but friends and relatives and acquaintances have always felt that his overdose of prescription drugs was accidental - read more in A Skin Too Few.

David Munrow, who completed the sessions for his last recording, Music of the Gothic Era, in October 1975. He took his own life on 15th May 1976, aged thirty- three. He was known to suffer from depression, and the Coroner's records show that he was deeply upset by the death of both his father and father-in-law who died within a short space of time - read more in David Munrow - Early Music's Pied Piper

Time has told me
You're a rare rare find
A troubled cure
For a troubled mind.
From Nick Drake's lyrics for Time Has Told Me from his first album Five Leaves Left

Visit Rethink's web site via this link. Photo acknowledgements, Statue - Eastern Daily Press, Robert Schumann - Münchner Philharmoniker, Nick Drake photo Tiscali.music Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. 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 Art works and Conference of the birds

The cult of the arts administrator

Have we reached the point where the arts administrator is more important than the performer?

The glossy colour brochure for the 2006 Norfolk and Norwich Festival features no less than six separate colour photos of the Festival organisers and their friends, with a mugshot of the Festival Director on page 3 before we are allowed a glimpse of any of the performers.

The lavish brochure is matched by some equally lavish prices. Tickets for the Philharmonia Orchestra's gig in the Saint Andrew's Hall, with its 'grin and bear it' acoustics, range from £26 ($47) to a whopping £45 ($81), plus a token few at £5 ($9). Despite this On An Overgrown Path remains a huge supporter of the Festival. Check out the 2006 programme, which runs from 3rd to 14th May and includes The Sixteen performing Victoria's Requiem and a new choral work from Joby Talbot, via this link.

If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Officium live - a triumph of music theatre

New music scored for burning harpsichord

On March 10th, 8 pm, sound artist Bill Thompson will premier a new work for prepared harpsichord and live electronics at Peacock Visual Arts, Aberdeen, Scotland. In his performance Thomson tries to explore the sounds laying dormant in the instrument that have never been exploited before. On the night of 11th March, the artist takes his project one step further, by publicly burning the harpsichord on the beach in the Aberdeen area of Footdee.

Thompson: “In this new work I treat the harpsichord as a sound icon free of its past and traditions. I use various preparations, contact microphones, and extended playing techniques and these sounds are then set in dialogue with the 21st century sounds of laptop, electric guitar, and live electronics, resulting in an interesting ‘conversation’.”

On the night Thompson is assisted in this endeavour by Patrick Keenan on harpsichord. The evening will start at 8pm with musician James Wyness performing on homemade instruments and live electronics. Admission free.

On March 11th, 9:30pm, on the beach of Footdee, Bill Thompson will present his outdoor installation, ‘HARPSICHORD: BURNING’, which will involve the instrument being set on fire.

Thompson: “When I first told people about my plans for this installation, many of them were understandably dismayed. Why would I do this? For me, it involves both a letting go as well as an acknowledgment. In many ways I think we’re restricted by our reverence for the past, as though nothing of our own time could compare. And yet many people know little to nothing about the artists that created these works. They were almost always innovators, rebels, or pioneers in their own time. As much as I appreciate their work, as an artist I feel a responsibility to be as pioneering, as innovative, and as daring as they were in their time. I prefer to draw my inspiration from their example rather than from their artefacts. This is my tribute to them, and to artists of our own time.”

More information at www.billthompson.org.

Image credit - TmiWEB, Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. 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 Instruments of extreme beauty and The latest avant-garde tricks ...

I am a camera - Leipzig

Creative home of Bach, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Wagner, the setting for a scene of Goethe's Faust, birthplace of GDR dictator Walter Ulbricht and home to the dreaded Stasi secret police, victim of Allied bombing and Communist urban planning, a thriving university city with a dynamic arts scene ..... that is Leipzig. I was a camera there last weekend, here are my snapshots ...

4th March - 5.00pm
Grosser Saal, Gewandhaus
Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707)
Praeludium in F BuxWV 144
Cantata 'O wie sellig sind, die zu dem Abendmahl des Lammes berufen sind' BuxWV 90
Chorale Prelude 'Nun lob mein Seel und Wohl' BuxWV 213
Cantata 'Wie schmeckt es so lieblich und wohl' BuxWV 108
Chorale Prelude 'Nun lob mein Seel und Wohl' BuxWV 215
Chorale Prelude 'Nun lob mein Seel und Wohl' BuxWV 214
Cantata 'Lauda Sion Salvatorem' BuxWV 68
Chorale Prelude 'Vater unser im Mimmelriech' BuxWV 219
Cantata 'Pange lingua gloriosi' BuxWV 91
Merseburger Hofmusik with Michael Schönheit organ and direction
Friederike Holzhausen & Julie Koch sopranos
Annette Reinhold alto, Gotthold Schwarz bass

Johann Sebastian Bach held Dietrich Buxtehude in high esteem, and according to legend walked more than 200 miles to meet him in Lubeck, yet today Buxtehude still does not receive the recognition he deserves - I wonder why? This excellent concert underlined the importance of Buxtehude as a direct predecessor of Bach. The concert was held in the main concert hall of the Gewandhaus and alternated organ chorales with cantatas. It was a physical as well as musical feat for organist and director Michael Schönheit as he directed the cantatas from a chamber organ on the main platform, and then trotted up several flights of stairs back-stage to appear at the console of the mighty Schuke organ for the chorales, then trotted back down for the next cantata.

The Gewandhaus Hall of 1884 was reduced to ruins in a bombing raid in 1944, but the shell of the hall was kept in the hope that it could be rebuilt. But in 1968, in a spate of GDR vandalism masquerading as urban renewal, the ruins were demolished together with the University Chapel (see below) and other historic buildings to make way for the mixture of concrete cubes and towers beloved by communist urban planners. As well as the new concert hall the 34-storey Universitatschochhaus skyscraper is the legacy of this urban renewal. This new home for Leipzig University was a pet project of the then GDR dictator Walter Ulbricht, a native of Leipzig. The Universitatschochhaus is typical of the empty gestures totally lacking in any economic or aesthetic substance that started the peaceful revolution in Leipzig in 1989 described below. It is particularly appropriate that the collapse of the Communist GDR began in this city with its many connections to the despised regime, not the least of which was the headquarters of the dreaded Stasi secret police (logo above) located on the Dittrichring.

The new Gewandhaus, which opened in 1981, has a wonderful interior and acoustics, but the exterior with its 70s brutalism does not let us forget it is a product of the GDR. And I apologise for the gallows humour, but the fine Schuke organ with its array of silver pipes facing the audience reminds me of the 'Stalin organ' rocket launchers used by the Russians in the Battle of Berlin.

5th March - 9.30pm
Sunday service at St Thomas' Church (photo above) with St Thomas' Boys Choir
Johann Sebastian Bach
Motet 'Ich lasse dich nicht, du segnest mich denn' BWV Anh. lll/159 with Choral BWV 421
Gunther Ramin
Chorale prelude 'Mache dich, mein Geist, bereit'
(Ramin directed music at the Thomaskirche for sixteen years from 1940, always swimming against the tide of contemporary tastes, fighting the Nazis to uphold the Christian basis of the Thomaskirche’s musical tradition and fighting the post-war socialist governing party [SED], which finally had to concede that the choir would only continue to be a source of foreign revenue if it were allowed to pursue the Bach tradition.)
Carl Philip Emanuel Bach
Adagio from Sonata in A Wq 70/4
Johann Sebastian Bach
Fugue BWV 552/2

To hear Bach's music in a liturgical context in his own church, and sung by the choir of which he was Cantor from the very organ loft where he made music for twenty-seven years is one of life's great moments. As if this was not enough the service I attended marked the twentieth anniversary of the appointment of the current organist of St Thomas', Ullrich Böhme. The service closed with him playing the great five-voice triple fugue BV 552/2 from the Clavier-Ubung lll on the new 'Bach organ' built by Gerald Woehl for the Bach 250th anniversary year of 2000 - Rarely, rarely comest thou, Spirit of Delight!

J.S. Bach became Cantor of St Thomas' and Musikdirector of Leipzig in 1723, and worked in the city until his death in 1750. (His predecesor as Cantor was the little known Johann Kuhnau who I wrote about recently.) During his period in Leipzig Bach composed many of the masterpieces of Western music including the St Matthew and St John Passions, the B minor Mass, the Christmas Oratorio, the Art of Fugue and the Clavier-Ubung lll.

The history of the four churches in Leipzig in which Bach worked is closely associated with the turbulent politics of the 20th century. His teaching appointment was at St Thomas', and this historic church has thankfully survived, with the famous statue in my heading photo standing outside. The 15th century triptych altar (photo above) by an anonymous artist was moved to the church when the University Church of St Paul, with which Bach was also associated, was destroyed in 1968 by the GDR redevelopment described above, also lost was the organ there on which Bach often performed. The specification and casing of the new 'Bach organ' in St Thomas' were built to resemble the instrument in the University Church.

St Thomas' contains Bach's mortal remains. They were moved there from their previous resting place in another of his churches, St John's, which was totally destroyed in World War ll. My photo below shows the simple black stone that marks the final resting place of the composer that Max Reger described as the beginning and end point of all music.

We can rejoice that St Thomas' survives while sadly the University Church of St Paul and the church of St John's are no more. Also surviving is the fourth church closely linked to Bach, the Nicolai Church. This is famous as the venue for the first performance of the St John Passion. But today Nicolai Church is best known for the the candle-lit vigils and demonstrations that started there in 1989 before gathering momentum to become the Wende, the peaceful revolution that toppled the Communist dictatorship, and opened the door to the elections that led to German re-unification in 1990. The truly inspirational story of these events is best told by the Rev. C. Führer of the Nicolai Church:

'From 8 May 1989, the driveways to the church were blocked by the police. Later the driveways and motorway exits were subject to large-scale checks or even closed during the prayers-for-peace period. The state authorities exerted greater pressure on us to cancel the peace prayers or at least to transfer them to the city limits. Monday after monday there were arrests or "temporary detentions" in connection with the peace prayers. Even so, the number of visitors flocking to the church continued to grow to a point where the 2.000 seats were no longer sufficient. Then came the all-deciding 9 October 1989. And what a day it was!

There was a hideous show of force by soldiers, industrial militia, police and plain-clothes officers. But the opening scene had taken place two days before on 7 October, the 40th anniversary of the GDR, which entered into GDR history as Remembrance Day. On this day, for 10 long hours, uniformed police battered defenceless people who made no attempt to fight back and took them away in trucks. Hundreds of them were locked up in stables in Markkleeberg. In due course, an article was published in the press saying that it was high time to put an end to what they called "counter-revolution, if necessary by armed forces". That was the situation like on 9 October 1989.

Moreover, some 1.000 SED party (logo above) members had been ordered to go to the St. Nicholas Church. 600 of them had already filled up the church nave by 2 p.m. They had a job to perform like the numerous Stasi personnel who were on hand regularly at the peace prayers. What has not been considered was the fact, that these people were exposed to the word, the gospel and its impact!

Thus, the prayers for peace took place in unbelievable calm and concentration (see press photo from dhm.de below). Shortly before the end, before the bishop gave his blessing, appeals by Professor Masur, chief conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra, and others who supported our call for non-violence, were read out. The solidarity between church and art, music and the gospel was of importance in the threatening situation of those days. The prayers for peace ended with the bishop's blessing and the urgent call for non-violence. More than 2.000 people leaving the church were welcomed by ten thousands waiting outside with candles in their hands - an unforgettable moment. Two hands are necessary to carry a candle and to protect it from extinguishing so that you can not carry stones or clubs at the same time. The miracle occurred.

Troops, (military) brigade groups and the police were drawn in, became engaged in conversations, then withdrew. It was an evening in the spirit of our Lord Jesus for there were no winners and no defeated, nobody triumphed over the other, nobody lost his face. There was just a tremendous feeling of relief. This non-violent movement only lasted a few weeks. But it caused the party and ideological dictatorship to collapse. Horst Sindermann, who was a member of the Central Committee of the GDR, said before his death: "We had planned everything. We were prepared for everything. But not for candles and prayers".'

Political awareness remains high in Leipzig, and my photo below is of a candle-lit vigil for political prisoners that was taking place while we were there this week.

5th March - 4.00pm
Mendelssohn Haus, Goldscmidstrasse
Georg Philipp Telemann - Sonatine in G for violin and bass continuo (1718)
Arcangelo Corelli - Sonata Vll for violin and bass continuo Op 5 (1700)
Jean-Philipp Rameau - Suite in A from Premier livre de clavecin (1705/06)
Johann Hermann Schein - Sixth suite in A from 'Banchetto musicale' (1617)
Georg Philipp Telemann - Sonata Nr 5 in E from 'Sonate metodiche' (1617)
Johann Sebastian Bach - Invention from Sinfonia for Harpsichord (1723)
Georg Friedrich Handel - Sonata in A Op 1 Nr 3 for violin and bass continuo
Kristina Gerlach, baroque violin and Christian Hornef, harpsichord

Finally to remind us of the many other musicians associated with this most musical of cities a recital at the Mendelssohn House, the Biedermeier dwelling of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy in the last years of his life. Mendelssohn was Kapellmeister at the Gewandhaus, and in 1829 directed a pioneering performance of the St. Matthew Passion at the Berlin Singakademie, and is commemorated as a champion of Bach in a stained-glass window in St Thomas'. Hearing this programme of exquisite chamber music in the very rooms in which Mendelssohn lived was an appropriate end to an unforgetable weekend.

CDs bought in Leipzig:
J.S.Bach - Leipzig Chorales played on the 'Bach organ' in St Thomas' by Almut Rossler, Motette DCD 13151 - pure digital magic!
Bach und die Romantik - music for organ, chorus and harp from composers ranging from Desprez and Palestrina, through Bach to Britten and Erhard Mauersberger (brother of Dresden Requiem composer Rudolf Mauersberger, a fine composer in his own right) sung by the Dresden based vocal ensemble Die VokalRomantiker whose members include former choristers from the Dresden Kreuzchor and St Thomas' in Leipzig. This is the group's fifth 'concept' CD and it is very well worth getting hold of, programmers for PSB stations will find it particularly rewarding, Querstand VKJK 0509.
Mendelssohn Choral Works - 10 CDs for €25 another Brilliant bargain with the Chamber Choir of Europe directed by Nicol Matt, Brilliant Classics 99997.
Salvatore Sacco - Missa 1607, Templum Musicae directed by Vincenzo Di Donato, a wonderful early 17th century Mass from this little known pupil of Palestrina on the Carus label which brought us Mauerberger's Dresden Requiem, Carus 83.191.
Buxtehude - not purchased in Leipzig but worth noting is Francis Jacob's excellent Pièces pour Orgue which offers a selection of Buxtehude's chorales for organ and voice, released on the enterprising Zig-Zag Territoires label which also brought us Jacob's Clavier-übung III.

More small print ... the practical details - we flew London Stansted to Altenburg (Leipzig) with Ryanair. Altenburg is best known for the 1739 Trost organ in the Palace Church which was audited by Bach. We stayed at the Holiday Inn, Garden Court in Leipzig using a very good deal via Lastminute.com. We also visited Zwickau, Schumann's birthplace, but that is another article .... All photos taken by Pliable on Casio EX - Z120 digital camera, (C) On An Overgrown Path. Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Related resources On An Overgrown Path include * I am a camera - Dresden * I am a camera - Berlin * A Passion for Bach * Gentlemen, old Bach is here * Mortal defeat for the mob in Paris * Dresden requiem for eleven young victims * Karl Richter in Munich *

Howell's and Lambert's Clavichord

Another wonderful recommendation of a super-budget priced re-issue. Herbert Howells wrote his three books of clavichord pieces between 1927 and 1971.They recreate the dancelike spirit of Tudor keyboard music while paying homage to many well known English musical figures of the 20th century.

Although written for clavichord they are thankfully played by John McCabe on the piano, and avoid the almost insoluble problems of reproducing the sound of a clavichord. The concept of the works is rather similar to Elgar's Enigma Variations with its 'friends pictured within'. Although this is not profound music it is beautifully turned, evokes the style of the great Tudor composers beautifully, and has great fun gently parodying fellow musicians including Ralph Vaughan Williams, Malcom Arnold, Julian Bream, Edmund Rubbra, Gerald Finzi and William Walton.

Howell's and Lambert's Clavichord is perfect late night listening, and is a must both for fans of the great Tudor composers and of 20th century English music. I bought it when it was first released on Hyperion, and it has now been re-issued on their super-budget Helios label (catalogue number CDH55152) for round £5 ($9 US) - unmissable. Audio samples can be found on Hyperion's website.

If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Elgar's other enigma
Image credit - Double-Fretted clavichord, anonymous.Germany, c.1770 from Russell Collection of EarlyKeyboard Instruments. 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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

These moments are rare in radio ...

Pliable reports lots of Bach on Radio 3 for Christmas- great. Lots of vacuous chat - less than great. The insult to the injury must be knowing that your taxes support this noise pollution.

I’ve nearly abandoned radio these days, for those reasons and more. But it could be worse. You could live here in the United States and be subjected to the pain of our domestic radio programming. Forget about the commercial stations; I have. I’d swap our network of National Public Radio-affiliated stations, the rough equivalents of Radio 3, with you any time. These publicly supported stations do have their charms – classical and world music, jazz, news, some dedicated and knowledgeable announcers. But the downsides make it less than rewarding – announcers who don’t know when to shut up and the fund drives with their monotonous pleas for more and more money.

I’ve trolled my way through many of BBC Radio’s offerings and have been more rewarded than alarmed with what I’ve found. But it’s Late Junction on Radio 3 that for me captures much of the spirit of radio that educates, informs, and entertains. The four-night weekly program is usually about an hour and 45 minutes long, filled with music that crosses borders, both state and musical. One recent program included Hungarian folk music, British hornpipes, Eastern European church organs, modern Chinese music from an upcoming Real World release, folk music from Anatolia, and a Kodaly adagio from ECM. Not lowest-common-denominator programming, for sure. I’d be less than honest if I didn’t say most of it is unidentifiable to me. I depend on the playlists and the announcers to set me straight. Fiona Talkington and Verity Sharp keep the musical interruptions tolerably brief. They attempt, and succeed at, difficult pronunciations of artist names and song titles that my eye drifts from in fear of getting wrong.

I think of Late Junction as a mix tape that comes from friends in Britain four times a week. There are some duds, there is some music that just flat out goes by me (Teflon music; it never sticks), and some head turning moments. One was Tommy McCook’s (right) Blazing Horns, traditional horn-section ska coupled with a dub mix. It was haunting, with a beat and ambience that induced me to actually stop what I was doing and sit and listen. I went straight to Amazon when I found out the artist and title and bought myself a copy.

These moments are rare in radio. Yet it’s crucial for the medium. Remove the frisson that comes with being pleasantly surprised at what’s being played and much of the life is drained away. American radio is wall-to-wall with the absence of surprise. Familiarity is what it seeks and it’s what audience, advertisers, and programmers get, courtesy of near-constant rating sweeps. In many ways, it’s perfect a deal because, in this way, mass markets get what they want and deserve. But it also leaves a great many people grasping for what they aren’t getting, including variety and surprise.

Late Junction has startled me many times. The program is a great advocate of certain musical niches, such as Indonesian gamelan, and Scandinavian jazz, the kind specifically promoted by ECM. For those who say and truly believe that jazz died a natural death when Ornette Coleman showed up, or when John Coltrane disbanded the quartet, I point them to this Munich-based label with the roster of world-class improvisers. Saxophonist Jan Garbarek (right) is a regular on Late Junction, whether it’s an ECM recording or his 2004 appearance at the London Jazz Festival. He’s the perfect ECM artist, walking through an aural landscape that is at once bleak and beckoning, all seemingly conjured on the spur of the moment. There’s always someone who isn’t going to like this modern variant on jazz. Their loss. Only loosening a too-tight grip on the past is necessary.

There have been some confusing moments, yet they too have been rewarding. Bluegrass isn’t a Late Junction staple, but one night the sounds of Jim and Jesse’s version of Georgia Mail came tumbling from the speakers, a concise, banjo-driven ramble from the American past. It sounded perfect next to whatever songs it was bookended by, most likely European or Asian. A feat of broadcasting magic.

I’m a beneficiary of the BBC’s audio archiving. Late Junction airs at about 6 p.m. here in Atlanta. In order to listen live, I have to sit near my computer and stream in the signal. It’s much easier to listen at my leisure, when I’m ready, not when the station is. I still catch everything from the archive and if it’s something worth listening to again, I’ll either replay the program or buy a copy of the recording. A perfect example: In an unusual move, Verity Sharp (right) played Gong Chio Xia’s late 1920s recording of “Chiang Wei Cu Cu Kai” from the Rough Guide to the Music of China. It’s a catchy slice of Shanghai pop from the past that delivers the goods in three riveting minutes. I felt as captivated as the announcer. And how often does that happen in radio? Not often, but I get more of it from the BBC than anywhere else.

I don’t want to subscribe too heavily to the romance of the BBC, though it’s an undeniable ingredient. The Internet has turned my Beeb listening from catch-as-catch-can shortwave World Service listening to digital clarity in the past few years. I’m more of a fan now than ever, but that may be due to distance and money. I’m not a prisoner of its enormous broadcasting shadow because I can escape elsewhere, such as satellite radio, my iPod , or my own music collection. And I’m not offended by the news department or by its programming quirks because I’m not paying for it with my taxes.
So call me a stealth listener, and one who gets away with it. I’d be offended too if a BBC fat cat thanked me for my positive email when I’d sent them a negative rant. But I’ve learned to ignore these people in American mainstream media. They’re everywhere and the only way to survive is to pay no attention and move on. Like you, I’m no fan of needless chat. I am a fan, however, of finding good music and Late Junction is consistently my stop of choice. It embodies what I wish radio consistently delivered. But those days are gone.

.........................................................................................

That is guest contributor Lee Landenberger's take on BBC Radio 3. Lee has already guested here with the very well received The Year is '72, and based on this new article I'm sure we will be hearing more from him. Lee can be contacted at - ddewitt4 at bellsouth dot net

Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Image credits:
Header - Seven South Record Shop, Santa Barbara
Tommy McCook - Reggaevibes.com
Jan Garbarek - Musicolog.com
Verity Sharp - Arts.telegraph
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.
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The Saint John's Bible - illuminating dark times

The peaks of contemporary culture are reached when new technologies and traditional skills complement each other. Recorded music is one example, with digital technology complementing traditional performing skills. Another inspirational example is the Saint John's Bible which is currently being created at Saint John's University in central Minnesota and a scriptorium in Monmouth, Wales.

The Saint John's Bible is being handwritten using traditional calligraphy skills by artistic director Donald Jackson and a team of skilled scribes in Wales. The finished Bible will be two feet tall, three feet wide, and will comprise nearly 1,100 pages in seven volumes, with 160 illuminations. It is being written on calfskin vellum with goose and swan quills, using natural handmade inks, hand-ground pigments and gold and silver leaf. The Bible should be completed in July 2007 after more than five years work, and here is one of the wonderful illuminations.

Supporting the traditional calligraphy skills is state-of-the-art technology. While each letter is being rendered by hand, The Saint John's Bible uses state-of-the-art computer technology to create and manage page layouts. A computer is used to size text and define line breaks. These pages are laid out in full size spreads with sketches in position. Artists use these layouts to guide their work. Saint John’s is working with ColorMax in Paynesville, Minnesota, to preserve the images of The Saint John’s Bible digitally and make high-quality reproduction possible in the centuries to come. The first step in the reproduction process is digital photography to capture the image. Their digital camera records one millimeter at a time. It takes 28 minutes to photograph a single, nearly 16" by 25", page. Plans call for providing high-quality reproductions of illuminations and facsimile editions of the Bible.

Saint John's was founded by Benedictine monks almost 150 years ago, and is now one of the leading Catholic universities in America. In the Middle Ages, monasteries helped preserve knowledge and culture for the sake of the greater community. By commissioning a handwritten Bible, Saint John’s revives a tradition and affirms a commitment to religion, the arts and education. In the present climate of religous conflict let's revel in this extraordinary and uplifting story, and let's feast our eyes on the superb illuminations.

Image credits from Saint John's Bible web site: Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. 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 L'Orgue Mystique' - the images

Good Night, and Good Luck Shostakovich

Shortly afterwards I formed a trio, together with violinist Israel Baler and cellist Edgar Lustgarten. We called ourselves the Pacific Art Trio and played concerts up and down the West Coast, for anybody who wanted us. We were all involved in film studio work, and this endeavour was a sort of life raft for the three of us. It was far from unusual for us to work throughout the day on a Tom and Jerry cartoon and then meet ater supper to prepare the Ravel trio.

One time we were planning a performance of the Shostakovich trio, fairly new at the time. We had the typical chamber music discussion (otherwise know as a screaming argument) about the tempo of the first movement. The printed metronome markings in the score seemed arbitrary to us, and none of us believed them. I had an idea. "Let's call Shostakovich," I offered. My two colleagues laughed. "Where?" asked Eddie. "Do you happen to have his phone number?"

A few more scathing remarks back and forth, and I got on the phone in Eddie's split-level Van Nuys living room and asked for Moscow Information. It took endless time and some surreal dialogue, but I was finally put through to an English-speaking member of the League of Composers in Russia. I explained who we were and what our problem was, and by God, we were given an appointed time twenty-four hours later to put through the call, at which time an interpreter would be on an extension. So there I was the next day, with a flushed face, inquiring about metronome markings and being answered by Shostakovich, by way of an interpreter.

My conversation to Moscow went something like this: "At seventeen after A, does a quarter equal 132?"
Answer: "No no, that's wrong, read eighth not quarter, and eleven later, just before B, it should change to half equals 60."

My two trio companions were listening to all this and excitedly taking notes, when suddenly Iz Baker began to laugh uncontrollably. I waved at him in a fury, but he finally had to leave the room. When my monumental hone call came to an end, I asked him, in icy tones, just what he found so amusing.

"Think about it," he gasped. "The whole town is seething with the activities of the House Un-American Activities, everybody's afraid to give any kind of opinion, obviously a phone call to Moscow is monitored by the FBI or somebody, and they will almost certainly think you were talking some kind of code."

I had happy visions of Senator McCarthy being given the new metronome markings of the Shostakovich Trio and trying to manufacture a sinister plot to overthrow Van Nuys out of it, but at the time nothing official ensued.

André Previn writing about 1950s Hollywood in No Minor Chords (Doubleday ISBN 0385269595)

Image credits - Shostakovich illustration by Nathan Jensen who kindly gave his permission for image to be used - check out his web site. Young André Previn from Sony BMG. Web resource - The Good Night, and Good Luck film website - the film is a 'must see'. 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 'Tis the gift to be free

Tessa Jowell - size does matter

Tessa Jowell (right), the UK's culture secretary, and the minister in charge of our successful Olympic bid, has been having a little local difficulty. Italian prosecutors are examining claims that a £344,000 payment was made to her husband, an international lawyer, in return for helpful testimony in a corruption probe into Italian premier and media magnate Silvio Berlusconi in 1997. Ms Jowell was drawn into the affair after it emerged that she had co-signed a £408,000 loan taken out against the value of their house, which was paid off just weeks later, apparently using the Italian money.

Looks like my article in April 2005 about the loss of her CD collection, titled Size does matter, was remarkably prescient.

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If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Respect starts at the top

A Royal birthday without spelling or music?

A new website on our monarch's life has been launched today to mark the Queen's 80th birthday on 21st April. Unfortunately the Government literacy drive doesn't seem to have reached Buckingham Palace as the site says: 'The search functionality allows you to search for the pressence (sic) of a word or words on the website.'

If we leave that aside there are photographs, documents and other archive material charting the life of the Queen online. The new site promises: 'This web site celebrates Her Majesty's life and times and provides information about events taking place to celebrate her birthdays'.

But the site search engine delivers more disappointments. Searching for the term 'music' gives the following result: 'Sorry, your search didn't return any pages.'

A recent Guardian interview about a royal birthday commission for the new Master of the Queen's Music Sir Peter Maxwell Davies reported: ' Sir Peter, who as an anti-establishment figure surprised many when he accepted the position, said the royal family were "very good. I was surprised that they are so helpful and keen. They have been falling over backwards to help. I have had in-depth conversations with the Queen and Prince Charles about music. The Queen in particular has shown great understanding and perception. The idea she's a philistine is complete rubbish".'

The last sentence in the second paragraph is not a typo, the Queen may not have two dictionaries or two CDs, but she does actually have two birthdays.
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If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to * Teach our children to play music * Orchestras are "boozy cultures" - continued * The bookless Mrs Beckham * A musician with teeth

Russian conductor proves to be a hard liner

Conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky (right) has withdrawn from a series of concerts with the Amsterdam Sinfonietta because the orchestra left him out of its liner notes, the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad reports.

Rozhdestvensky, the former principal conductor of the Bolshoi Theatre, the BBC Symphony, and other orchestras, was scheduled to lead the Sinfonietta in four concerts in Amsterdam starting February 24 and on a tour to Utrecht and Frankurt. The program featured the work of Shostakovich, one of Rozhdestvensky's specialties.

According to NRC Handelsblad, Rozhdestvensky arrived in Amsterdam on February 20 and led a rehearsal before checking into his hotel; there, he found a package of gifts including the Sinfonietta's 2005 CD of Beethoven and Walton. The liner notes packaged with the CD apparently did not list Rozhdestvensky, who previously led the ensemble in 2003, among the past guest conductors of the orchestra.

The conductor "became enraged," orchestra manager Mark Vondenhoff told the paper, saying that he had been "hurt to the core" and that the snub "ruined his life." Vondenhoff and concertmaster Candida Thompson went to the hotel and apologized, but Rozhdestvensky and his wife, pianist Viktoria Postnikova, who was to appear as well, left immediately for Paris.

Ukrainian Roman Kofman, the artistic director of Bonn's Beethovenhalle Orchestra, replaced Rozhdestvensky on the program; Alexander Melnikov stepped in for Postnikova.

From PlayBill Arts

Image credit: Old Boshoi. Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. 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 A year at the symphony

Conductor caught in PR spin

The PR machine continues to spin for wunderkind conductor Gustavo Dudamel (right), shame the critics aren't onside though:

'Love at first sight: that’s what we are told happened when the Philharmonia Orchestra first worked with the young curly-haired dynamo from Venezuela Gustavo Dudamel.

Passionate music-making, I rush to say, is usually delightful to hear. Dudamel’s fancy wrist work is a relief in itself after the routine stabs of some veteran maestros. But love can generate overindulgence. Bernstein, Prokofiev, Shostakovich and the exuberant Mexican Revueltas: here was nothing but the fizzy, the loud, and the propulsive, all turned extra frantic by Dudamel’s supercharged approach.

To be fair, sometimes Dudamel hit the bull’s-eye. Shostakovich’s Festive Orchestra of 1947, opening the concert, had extraordinary zip and sheen: this flag-waving piece might be an empty bucket, but painting it red and moving it fast is the only solution. The magic couldn’t be repeated at the end with the Sensemaya of Revueltas. By that point we’d been battered flat. Love is beautiful; but so is restraint:' from Richard Morrison's Times review of Gustavo Dudamel conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra.

First Dudamel was spun as the unknown conductor of Venezuelan youth orchestras who just happened to have the same agent as Simon Rattle and the same record company as Claudio Abbado. Now he is touted as the child-bride of the Philharmonia. In fairness Andrew Clements over in the Guardian gave a much better notice, but he does say: 'He's clearly not the finished article, of course, and I don't think I want to hear him conduct Mahler's Ninth or the Missa Solemnis for a while yet.'

The sorry sorry fate in London of the over-hyped Franz Welser-Möst showed what too much exposure too early can do to a conductor. And ironically it was the Missa Solemnis that Welser-Möst brought to the Proms last year with his Cleveland Orchestra - to an almost universal drubbing from the critics. I am sure Gustavo Dudamel is really a very talented young musician. He just needs to become the finished articles by putting a few Brahms symphonies in the Caird Hall in Dundee under his belt away from the musical spin doctors and London critics.

* To read about a remarkable performance of Mahler's Ninth by the finished article follow this link
* I have nothing against the Caird Hall in Dundee. It has magnificent acoustics, and I remember a quite outstanding Shostakovich 'Leningrad' Symphony there many years ago with Paavo Berglund conducting what was then the Scottish National Orchestra. The temperature outside the hall was authentically Russian as well.
* Image credit - Askonas Holt . Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
For more on the problems facing wunderkind conductors take An Overgrown Path to * No such thing as an unknown Venzuelan conductor - an article which incidentally holds the record for this blog of 22 comments * Review of now quite well known Venezuelan conductor * Cleveland leave a bit of a Missa behind in London *