Stravinsky in St Petersburg

The Stravinsky family lived in this apartment block on the Krioukov Canal in St Petersburg for more than eighty years. Their exact apartment can be located by the windows on the second floor above the entrance.

Now take a Path to Stravinsky - the last great composer?
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Shostakovich we'll allow, but take out Stravinsky

One of the recurring themes On An Overgrown Path has been the control of agents, broadcasters and record companies over the music we hear. The question is a simple one - do we hear the music we want, or do we hear the music chosen for us by others? A very perceptive comment today on my Peteris Vasks article by Daniel Wolf (do visit his blog Renewable Music) reminded me that hidden agendas among programmers are not new, and raised the interesting point that Shostakovich was actually promoted, rather than suppressed, by the Soviet authorities at certain times.

As soon as I read Daniel's comment I located Stormy Applause, Making Music In A Worker's State by Borodin Quartet founder Rostislav Dubinsky in my library. The events in the extract below took place in 1955. Goskoncert was (and still is) the Russian state run concert agency, and the programs under discussion were for the Borodin's first ever overseas tour to the German Democratic Republic.

At Goskoncert the program editor called me in immediately and amiably offered me a chair. Then he quickly read through the programs, looked at me in surprise, and said sourly, "You're new here. That explains everything. You see, out of all these programs I can accept the first, but not altogether. Stravinsky should be replaced, and Shostakovich ... Wait a minute, I'll be right back." He had, of course, run off to ask about Shostakovich. But whom did he ask? In all Goskoncert he was the only man with any musical education. On the other hand, it was not a musical but a political question: had the time come to rehabilitate Shostakovich? He had been banned in 1948, and it was now 1955, so for seven years he hadn't been performed. I wondered how the program editor would ask about Shostakovich. And, even more, what the answer would be ...

After half an hour the program editor returned. "It's like this: Shostakovich we'll allow, but take out Stravinsky." I said humbly - "They're three tiny pieces. They last only seven minutes, and for the whole program ..." He interrupted - "That's not the point. We don't perform Stravinsky at all." I looked at him as naively as I could and he decided to enlighten me. "Recently Stravinsky said in public that all Russian music died in the twenties. By this, he meant that our great composers Shostakovich and Prokofiev don't exist." I said to myself excitedly - "Great composers? That means they've been rehabilitated!"

The editor satisfied with my silence, continued: "Our musicians abroad should play as much Soviet music as possible. At a minimum, half of each program should be Russo-Soviet." I said - "I understand, let me correct it." He handed me my sheet of paper. "With pleasure. You may sit at that desk." He saw that I was crossing out all the programs and smiled. "That's right."

I quickly wrote new ones. Everything was clear. Out of every three compositions - two Russian. For example: Borodin and Shostakovich in the first half and Beethoven in the second, not too bad. Or Prokofiev with Mozart and Tchaikovsky, also pretty good. Or even better: Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and then Brahms and Schubert. Beautiful!

For more from Stormy Applause take An Overgrown Path to Shostakovich, this is myself.

Stormy Applause, Making Music In A Worker's State by Rostislav Dubinsky was published by Hutchinson in 1989, ISBN 091742579, but is now out of print, and I see my copy is quite valuable.
Shostakovich image credit Umich-edu plus Photoshop I think. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Composers struggle under Shostakovich regime

This week BBC Radio 3 broadcasts a series of programmes titled Shostakovich in Context, which means devoting yet more airtime to an already over-exposed composer. The saturation coverage of the Shostakovich centenary has meant the exclusion from concert and broadcast schedules of many other deserving composers with anniversaries this year. There is a particularly bitter irony in this cultural hegemony by a Russian composer for Peteris Vasks (left) who celebrates his 60th birthday in 2006. For Vasks is a Latvian, a country whose very culture was under threat for more than fifty years from Russian ideologies and military power.

Latvia is one of the so called A8 countries from central and eastern Europe which joined the EU in 2004, the others are Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Lithuania, Estonia and Slovenia. The A8 countries should be joined by Bulgaria and Romania in January 2007, although Bulgaria has a few money laundering and related problems to sort first - it has been said that Bulgaria isn't a country that has a mafia, but a mafia that has a country. Latvia is located on the Baltic between Estonia and Lithuania, and shares eastern borders with Russia and Belarus. The USSR annexed Latvia in 1940, and the country only regained its independence following the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. The last Russian troops left in 1994, and ten years later Latvia joined both the EU and NATO. The official language is Latvian, but 38% of the population speak Russian, and the ethnic and cultural diversity is shown by the mix of Lutheran, Roman Catholic, and Russian Orthodox among the countries religions. Latvia’s turbulent past and current EU membership have created an extensive diaspora, and there is a large migrant Latvian community working in agriculture here in East Anglia where I write this article.

Peteris Vasks was born in western Latvia in 1946. His father was a minister of the Church, and the religious intolerance of the occupying Soviets forced the family to move south to Lithuania where he attended the musical academy in Vilnius. He returned to his country of birth to play in Latvian orchestras, and then took up a teaching career in the Latvian capital, Riga, which continues today. His musical vocabulary is influenced by Witold Lutoslawski, Krzysztof Penderecki and George Crumb, and his unique style incorporates aleatoric techniques. Vasks is an important modern composer as he is one of the select group of eastern European composers who have successfully developed a nationalist style without compromising their contemporary vocabulary; others include Arvo Pärt (Estonia), Giya Kancheli (Georgia), Gyorgy Kurtag (Hungary) and Henryk Górecki (Poland), and interestingly four out of those five come from the A8 countries.

Not a single note of Vask’s music was included in the 2006 BBC Proms season. Rectify this by listening to four minutes of Anthony Marwood and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields playing Peter Vasks: Concerto for Violin and String Orchestra ('Distant Light') - Mosso - Cadenza II -

* As I upload this article the news breaks that BBC Chairman of two years Michael Grade is unexpectedly leaving to move to commercial rival ITV. As Grade has presided over a wholesale lowering of programme standards at the BBC, and is going to troubled ITV, where the programme standards are already the subject of universal derision, it is difficult to know what to think. Perhaps the rumoured £2m ($3.8m) salary renders thought superfluous?

Now read about the Roma - the forgotten Holocaust victims
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Classical music and the paid-for media

Norman Lebrecht recently roared “Until bloggers deliver hard facts and estate agents turn into credible critics, paid-for newspapers will continue to set the standard as the only show in town”. So on Friday it was good to see a paid-for newspaper setting the standard and covering the wonderful music education programme in Venezuela. In a major article that made the front page of the influential Film & Music supplement (above) Guardian journalist Charlotte Higgins visits both Venzuela and Rome, and sings the praises of what she calls ‘The System’, or to give the Venzuelan education programme its full title Fundacion del Estado para el Sistema Nacional de las Orquestas Juveniles e Infantiles de Venezuela.

Also championing Venezuelan music education is Simon Rattle, who gushes euphorically in the article about wunderkind conductor Gustavo Dudamel, and declares "If anyone asks me where is something really important going on for the future of classical music, I say here." Rattle and Dudamel are just two of the big names that appear in the article, the others are Claudio Abbado, and the Berlin Philharmonic, Gothenburg Symphony, and Simón Bolivar Youth Orchestras.

Now I am a huge advocate of music education, and have written about it on these pages, and I am also a great admirer of what is happening in Venezuela. But there are some hard facts that didn't make it into Charlotte Higgins' article. Music education in Europe and North America has been the victim of another system, known as the free market. This balances supply and demand, and, whether we like it or not, this has put a greater value on training computer programmers than orchestral musicians. But some in classical music have benefitted from this system, particularly the artists agents who have found a lucrative niche matching musical supply to demand.

The Guardian article prominently namechecked Simon Rattle, Claudio Abbado, Gustavo Dudamel, and the Berlin Philharmonic, Gothenburg Symphony and Simón Bolivar Youth Orchestras. Now follow this link to the website of leading artists agent Askonas Holt, and you will see that the artists represented by them include Simon Rattle, Claudio Abbado, Gustavo Dudamel, and the Berlin Philharmonic, Gothenburg Symphony and Simón Bolivar Youth Orchestras. Uncanny isn't it? - particularly as the footnote to the article is also rich in namechecks - "The Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela's recording of Beethoven's Fifth and Seventh Symphonies, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, is out now on Deutsche Grammophon".

The practice of music critics being supplied with free concert tickets and CDs is long established. But in the brave new global world of classical music the stakes are much higher. Follow this link and you will find that there are major international tours in 2007 by the Gothenburg Symphony and Simón Bolivar Youth Orchestra organised by Askonas Holt and conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, and some global exposure in the Guardian isn't going to harm ticket and CD sales for that is it?

This is not just an isolated example of global promotion. Several music critics, including Norman Lebrecht, have recently written reviews of the Vienna premiere of John Adams new opera The Flowering Tree. The orchestra for that premiere was another band from South America, the Orchestra Joven Camerata de Venezuela, and in December the opera is in the repertoire of Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic, who are of course in the Askonas Holt stable, before being performed by the San Francisco Symphony, who are co-commissioners and also Askonas Holt artists. The opera is also coming to London, so some exposure there in the Evening Standard doesn't go amiss either. And back with Venezuelan musicians the Guardian article won't hurt the 2007 Edinburgh Festival appearance of Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolivar Youth Orchestra, which is promoted by Askonas Holt, as is the major US tour that follows.

I am the first to agree that classical music needs all the exposure it can get, and also that our children need all the music education they can get. But, equally, don't readers of the paid-for newspapers need all the hard facts they can get on The System behind these glowing articles?

For more on The System follow An Overgrown Path to No such thing as an unknown Venezuelan conductor.

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A treasure trove of music recording history

An interesting, and rewarding, recent development On An Overgrown Path recently has been the interest in the recording process and sound quality, an interest also reflected in other new blogs including the excellent The Crunch. Recording history is a particular area of interest for me as I worked for both the BBC and EMI in my time in the music industry, so I was delighted this week when our internet sleuth Walt Santner sent me details of a veritable treasure trove of recording history links.

The links are part of the University of San Diego's project documenting the history of recorded sound. The timeline only currently goes up to 2005, so it doesn't yet cover topics such as SACD in depth, but there is some really interesting material there including a history of microphone development. But the real gem is the extensive list of internet resources and links. And please don't think this is just for geeks, there is important musical and cultural material there as well.

I've only just started to explore the resources, but already I've been fascinated by the Aaron Copland Collection from the Library of Congress, America's Jazz Heritage from the Smithsonian Institution, a discussion of recording and gender, an audio file of Stokowski talking about orchestra seating layouts, a very good summary of sound recording copyright, and one for the geeks - an illustrated history of world payphones. There are also a lot of downloads, check out the 44 recordings of Omaha Indian music, and Stokowski downloads of ten audio and two video files.

Ideal browsing for an autumn holiday weekend - enjoy!

* That wonderful header photo is from the the HybridSoundSystem.com website, and shows the Seattle Session Orchestra being recorded in Bastyr University Chapel - do check out the HybridSound site for the interesting audio samples.

For more Walt Santner discoveries visit a Treasure trove of historic MP3 downloads
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Musical riches for anyone to enjoy

Five hundred years ago the Italian town of Ferrara was ravaged by what today’s media would call a pandemic. Bubonic plague broke out in Europe in the 14th century, and continued sporadically until the 17th century. The plague was carried by rats, and population growth in medieval Europe slowed causing widespread economic decline.

Ferrara was the seat of the house of Este, and became a cultural centre with a university. During the late 15th and early 16th century the Duke of Ferrara, Ercole 1, became one of the most important patrons of the arts in Italy after the Medici, and the city was particularly noted for its music. Josquin Des Prez was employed by Duke Ercole, and wrote his Missa Hercule dux Ferrariae for him. Antoine Brumel was principal musician in the early 15th century, and the patronage of Ercole’s son Alfonso 1’s resulted in the city becoming an important centre for the lute. The cultural and economic strength of Ferrara attracted a large Dutch and German population, and in 1605 this included the Flemish priest-composer Jacob Obrecht. However Ferrara was particularly vulnerable to the plague, probably due to the proximity of marshes. In the severe outbreak 6000 lives were lost, and among those, in August 1605, was Jacob Obrecht.

Obrecht (below) was one of the leading composers of his period. He was born in 1458, the son of a Ghent trumpeter. He trained for the priesthood, and became choir director at Bergen op Zoom, before taking up appointments in Cambrai, Bruges and Antwerp. He travelled to Ferrara in Italy twice; first in 1496, and then in 1504 for the visit he was not to return from. Obrecht was a prodigous composer of sacred music. He wrote twenty-four masses and twenty-two motets. His masses retain the cantus firmus, but use a wide variety of techniques to transform the traditional monody into elaborate multi-movement works. His style is a development from that of the better known Johannes Ockeghem (c 1430-1495) with more use of melodies and cadences. This is very rewarding music to listen to. No specialist knowledge or appreciation of Renaissance polyphony is needed to derive a lot of pleasure from it - these are musical riches for anyone to enjoy.

It remains something of a mystery as to why the reputation of Jacob Obrecht is overshadowed by his better known Flemish contemporaries. He is adequately represented in the CD catalogues, and if you are not familiar with his music I urge you to explore it. An excellent starting point is the Naxos issue of his Missa Caput sung by the excellent Oxford Camerata under Jeremy Summerly. This fine Mass survives in a manuscript copy from the court at Ferrara, and is a 're-engineering' of the early 15th century anonymous English Missa Caput.

Also well worth exploring are the Clerk's Group recordings under Edward Wickham on Gaudeamus, particularly as there recordings are often available at a considerable discount through Amazon Marketplace sellers. (They are part of the financially challenged Sanctuary Music Group, so hurry as they may not be in the catalogue for long). The Clerk's Group's CD with the Missa Sub Tuum Praesidium is particularly recommended for Obrecht's elaborate twelve minute setting of the Salve Regina. Jacob Obrecht deserves to be recognised as an important composer, and his works should be celebrated alongside the other great Renaissance polyphonists.

* Jacob Obrecht is generally thought to have been born on November 22nd, 1458, although there is some debate as to whether it was 1457 or 1458 *

Picture credits: 15th century church fresco 'Dance of Death' - Needham High School's (Massachusetts) excellent plague web site, Jacob Obrecht - Classical composers. Report broken links, missing images, and other errors to overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk. 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).
If you enjoyed this post take an overgrown path to Brilliant Classics

Benjamin Britten – We Shall Overcome

There are four anniversaries today, and three of them are of important events connected by a fascinating thread. November 22nd is remembered by many for the assassination of John F Kennedy in Dallas in 1963, while on a happier note Benjamin Britten was born in Lowestoft on this day in 1913, and quite appropriately today is also the name day of Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of musicians. The connection between these three anniversaries also involves folk singer, political activist and pioneering conservationist, Pete Seeger. Here is the little known story.

In his Inaugural Address on January 20th 1961 President Kennedy vigorously defended the principle of liberty with these words: - Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world. Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

Despite this powerful rhetoric liberty was still under serious threat in the early days of the Kennedy administration. Prior to 1961 Pete Seeger had been investigated for sedition by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, harassed by the FBI and CIA, blacklisted, picketed, and stoned by conservative groups. In March 1961 Seeger (right) was convicted of contempt of Congress following his 1955 appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in New York. After his conviction, and before his successful appeal, Seeger obtained the court’s permission to tour England in the autumn of 1961.

In the two years since his last visit to England Seeger had developed a large following, and an audience of four thousand turned out at London’s Royal Albert Hall, which is best know today as the home of the BBC Promenade Concerts. The concert in 1961 was promoted by the English “Pete Seeger Committee” which had been formed to support the embattled musician; Paul Robeson was president, the great ballad singer Ewan MacColl was chairman, and the sponsors were Doris Lessing, Sean O’Casey and Benjamin Britten.

With acknowledgements to David Dunaway’s excellent biography of Pete Seeger (Da Capo ISBN 0306803992).

* This Path brings together Britten and J.F. Kennedy, but another one tells the story of how Britten felt unable to compose a memorial to the slain President - see Music does not exist in a vacuum.

* Eagle eyed readers will have noted I have only mentioned three of today’s four anniversaries. The fourth one is mere trivia – November 22nd is also my birthday.

For more on pluralism in the world of music take An Overgrown Path to BBC Proms - a multicultural society?
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You couldn’t ask for anything more ...

I missed this one because I was in France in September, but it is worth reprising. The top three aren't too much of a surprise, but numbers 4 and 5 are worth the click as well.

The Times September 02, 2006 - The top five websites. This week - classical music

1 On An Overgrown Path - This blog is updated every day with well-written posts on the likes of Britten and the BBC Proms, along with links to news articles and MP3s. You couldn’t ask for anything more.

2 Sandow - A long-standing critic, Greg Sandow asks the big question — “Is classical music dying?” — and explores it with angst and expertise. He also responds in depth to readers’ comments and questions.

3 The Well-Tempered Blog - If you like short posts delivered within three minutes of each other, you’ll like Bart Collins’ blog, which is essential reading for all classical music news junkies.

4 Classical pontifications with Professor Herbie McJeebie
It may sound like some crazy Open University programme made by Disney, but our professor investigates “the trajectory of contemporary canonic classical music”, focusing on young composers.

5 Múica Clássica - Spain has produced such fine composers as Manuel de Falla and Joaquin Rodrigo, and this blog offers a “special emphasis” on the country’s classical music scene.

Meanwhile, eat your heart out Norman Lebrecht. Music blogs continue to bloom with our reviews now being quoted alongside 'paid for' media such as The Times, Chicago Tribune and BBC Radio 3 CD Review

Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

November Woods by a brazen romantic

Photograph above taken at the Carmelite Monastery, Quidenham, Norfolk on November 18th 2006 by Pliable.

Now playing - November Woods (1917) by Arnold Bax, performed by the Ulster Orchestra conducted by Bryden Thomson (Chandos LP ABRD066). Bax described himself as a 'brazen romantic', so you won't find him on Sequenza21. His life and music were informed by literature and nature, and he drew on Celtic and Nordic mythology for inspiration. November Woods is a close companion to two other Bax tone poems, The Garden of Fand and Tintagel.

The legends of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table are linked to the Cornish castle of Tintagel, and Bax's eponymous tone poem is available on one of my nomination for the greatest records of the 20th century. This EMI recording was made in No 1 Studio, Abbey Road with Robert Kinloch Anderson producing in 1967. The coupling is one of the great 20th century symphonies, Vaughan Williams 5th, the score of which was completed in 1943, and is dedicated to Jean Sibelius 'without permission'. Both works are conducted by one of the great 20th century conductors, Sir John Barbirolli. As you may have guessed I recommend it. Also recommended is Bax's autobiography Farewell My Youth. Sadly it is now out of print, my copy is of a 1949 edition and expect to pay quite a high price if you find a copy.


The words on the crucifix at Quidenham in my header photo are: Wanderers stay and think of me here a while, how I hung on the cross so that thou could come to me. This message is reflected in Vaughan Williams' magnificent 5th Symphony which draws on material from his 1951 opera The Pilgrim's Progress which in turn was based on John Bunyan's 17th century allegorical novel. There is a classic EMI recording of the opera with Sir Adrian Boult conducting, and John Noble singing The Pilgrim. It was made in London's Kingsway Hall in 1972 with exemplary sound from the legendary producer and engineering team of the two Christophers - Bishop and Parker. My webname, Pliable, comes from one of the characters in Bunyan's novel. I have been married for 30 years today, and my wife thinks it significant that Pliable was one of the two residents of The City of Destruction in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. The other was Obstinate.


That mention of The City of Destruction brings this Overgrown Path through more November Woods to its final destination. The two photographs above were taken yesterday as we walked through the campus of the University of East Anglia to the Sainsbury Center for Visual Arts to view their magnificent Francis Bacon exhibition. Bacon shared Celtic connections with Bax, and was born in Dublin in 1909, although he spent much of his creative life in London. The exhibition focuses on Bacon's work from the 1950s, and quite stunning it is. Just as even the very best audio system cannot realistically reproduce an orchestral fortissimo from a recording, so Bacon's paintings cannot be done justice on the printed page. They must be seen in the flesh. Some are massive, black statements from the City of Destruction, but others, by contrast, celebrate with colour Bacon's love of van Gogh and travel. And those contrasts brings me the end of this Path. It has travelled from the enlightenment, through romanticism to the modern, and is a reminder, if we neeed one, of how fortunate we are to live in a society of contrasts that can embrace equally Bunyan, and Bax, and Bacon, and beyond.

* Listen to a 43 minute BBC audio programme on Vaughan William's Fifth Symphony -

* For more recordings of Bax, Vaughan Williams and their contemporaries take An Overgrown Path to Treasure trove of 20th century composers

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Killing classical music in the US .....

The following comment was posted by the irrepresible Henry Holland on my recent A shuttle maestro for the IPod audience, but it is well worth a post to itself:

<< "Playing the same old 19th century rep over and over is part of what is killing classical music in the US (that and no music education anymore)" - Oh, that again. *sigh* Where's the PROOF --I mean, actual rigorous stats, not wishful thinking-- for that view? I guarantee the bean counters on Grand Avenue rejoiced when Sariaaho's Passion of Simone got cancelled recently because of Dawn Upshaw's unfortunate breast cancer situation and was replaced by the Mahler 2nd. I was bummed, I love her music, but then I'm a distinct minority.

Having been to more concerts than I care to remember of concerts featuring contemporary fare that drew 1/2 full, heavily papered houses in the old Dot, I don't think your claim is true at all. I've been saying for years that orchestras should market themselves to people in their 50's and above, people whose kids have left home, which means they'd now have the time and money to explore classical music. But, no, that's not "cutting edge" or "pop culture friendly" or "reaching out to the youth of today".

Everyone went nuts over the Minmalist Jukebox last year but I couldn't see the relevance of a one-shot festival to the ongoing programming of the orchestra. Fans of minimalism do NOT automatically equal fans of the orchestral rep, though, of course, there's overlap. I'm a maximalist, I loathe minimalism, I love Birtwistle, Ferneyhough, Boulez, Murail type stuff, you'd have had to have paid me thousands of dollars to go to one of those concerts. And Salonen dropped out of the Shostakovich symphony cycle early on because he discovered after, what, 3 concerts in the first year of the five (4 symphonies in total) what me and my friends have been saying for years: his music isn't very good.


Look at concerts the LA Phil has done with contemporary pieces. They are almost always surrounded by crowd pleasers from....wait for it...the 19th century rep because it's been shown time and time and time again that that's the only way to keep people from fleeing in droves. In cities like Philadelphia, they don't even really bother with new stuff. Eschenbach is leaving partly because they don't like his conducting, but also because of complaints that he programs too much modern stuff (see: Boulez, Pierre; New York Philharmonic). Their audience has made it crystal clear what they want: Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, Wagner bleeding chunks, orchestral showpieces by Rimsky and Holst and maybe, just maybe some pretty Debussy or Ravel.

From what I understand, orchestra attendance is steady or even slightly up in the US, as it is for opera. If you're talking about "relevance to the wider culture" and "speaking to our times" all that Greg Sandowian stuff, I couldn't possibly care less, it would be impossible. People seem to forget that there's always going to be people for whom the Beethoven 5th or La Boheme is a brand new experience. >>

Now, for more on reaching new audiences with new music sample the New music lunch box

The header photo is not of classical music in the US, it is my own shot of the first night of the 2006 BBC Proms season, see BBC Proms - summer in the city. The lovely Boulez photo is by Murdo MacLeod via an interesting Guardian article. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

You read it first On An Overgrown Path

At least Norman Lebrecht was right when he wrote above that "the one blog that aims to break news, and occasionally does, is On An Overgrown Path."

On Sunday Nov 12 On An Overgrown Path sung the praises of Catherine Bott's new CD Convivencia in a big article about the new FRED label.

Six days later, on Friday Nov 17, Lebrecht's CD of the week was ....... Catherine Bott's new CD Convivencia.

And while on the subject, last week Lebrecht accused On An Overgrown Path of having "a bug about the BBC."

This week Norman devotes 936 words to ....... the BBC.

Now read how Norman Lebrecht blusters as blogs bloom
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A shuffle Maestro for the iPod audience

Today’s Guardian positively salivates over the news that Esa-Pekka Salonen (left) is taking over as principal conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra in London from Christoph von Dohnanyi. Martin Kettle gushes that “in this new battle of the batons the only certain winners look likely to be the London music public, who can look forward to an orchestral life of a quality and diversity with which no other city can compete … Salonen’s wide-ranging, non-traditional approach makes him the closest thing any London orchestra could have found to Sir Simon Rattle. Short of tempting Rattle back from the Berlin Philharmonic, it is hard to think of a more exciting appointment for the Philharmonia to have made”. But slipped in among the purple prose are the key words that Salonen “will remain in charge in Los Angeles when he takes over the Philharmonia.”

Now if we leave aside the fact that some of the Berlin press may well have wished that Rattle had been tempted back from Berlin, we will soon have the Philharmonia headed by a conductor with one foot in London and one in the West Coast, and the London Symphony headed by Valery Gergiev, who will have one foot in London, one in Rotterdam, and his heart in St Petersburg. Shuffle Maestros may well appeal to iPod audiences, but there are many who would have welcomed an appointment by the Philharmonia in the style of Jonathan Nott at the Bamberg Symphony. This talented young conductor has raised an unknown band to world-class quality by working in the old Kappelmeister tradition, and keeping both feet, and his heart, firmly anchored in provincial Germany.

For more on shuffle maestros follow An Overgrown Path to Vienna Philharmonic in perpetual motion
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New music lunch box

Do we all agree that contemporary music needs a new audience?

And do we also agree that reaching that audience takes imaginative commissioning, innovative programming, a very wide reach, and some damn hard work from the musicians?

Well, I’ve just returned from the first in the new season of Britten Sinfonia at Lunch concerts in Norwich, and I challenge anyone to show me an ensemble that are doing more to reach new audiences with contemporary music. First let’s take the concerts. The 2005/6 Britten Sinfonia at Lunch project comprises five separate concert series. Now listen to this. Each concert series consists of four lunchtime concerts played over five or six days, and not only are all the four concerts in different venues, but three are here in East Anglia, and one is in the Philharmonic Hall in Kraków, Poland, which is 750 miles away. But stay with me, it gets even better. Everyone of the five concert series features a world premiere by a contemporary composer, and to complete the virtuous circle all the concerts are being broadcast from Cambridge in BBC Radio 3’s lunchtime concert slot.

The players each deserve a medal for their sheer commitment. The East Anglian concert venues are Aldeburgh, Norwich, and Cambridge, and the Polish concerts are made possible by the budget airline flights between Standsted Airport, near Cambridge, and Kraków. In December this concert series involves an ensemble of oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn (not to mention pianist), playing in Aldeburgh at 1.00pm on a Saturday, and Kraków at 12.00pm on a Sunday. I think someone planned that schedule before the current security restrictions on cabin baggage! You can catch up with the travel tales of the Sinfonia’s peripatetic oboeist via Nicholas Daniel’s own blog.

The Britten Sinfonia is a flexible ensemble and the At Lunch concerts use chamber sized groups. There are some real gems in the series, including first performances from female composer Tansy Davies (right), John Tavener, and Tarik O’Reagan, and rarely performed 20th century masterpieces including two of Peter Maxwell Davies’ arrangements of Bach’s Prelude and Fugues (a commercial recording PLEASE of those), Berio’s Folk Songs, and de Falla’s Harpsichord Concerto. This is imaginative and innovative programming with no Puccini Chrysanthemums or Copland Shakers to blunt the challenge.

Today’s concert was played by the trio of the Russian Alina Ibragimova (violin), Joy Farrall (clarinet) and Huw Watkins (piano), and contained two astringent 20th century masterworks in the form of the reduced concert suite from the Soldier’s Tale Suite Stravinsky’s and Bartók’s immensely challenging Contrasts, which was written for Benny Goodman. Balancing these were two contemporary works including. Michael Zev Gordon’s Fragments from a Diary. dates from 2005 (photo below), and here is a description in the composer’s own words.

’My music tends to pull between two very different characters: the passionate and the contemplative. The former is often expressed through kinds of lyricism, the latter through subtly altered repeating patternings, quite often broken into fragments. Sometimes these occur in the same work, and the music’s course has to do with moving away from “heat” into serenity. In others, the temperament is more a kind of steady state. Stylistically, my music often bridges quite different musical types too, frequently at the border between tonality and atonality. Recently, this has crystallised into a number of works rooted in a wide range of other music, including Dowland, Couperin, Chopin and Tom Jobim. Quite different to transcription, my pieces dip in and out of these past works - structurally exploring ideas of merging, layering and juxtaposing materials

At the time of writing I considered the seven short of Movements of Fragments from a Diary almost as private jottings to myself, hence the title. Most are brief and fleeting. The tone is often one of fragility. They each ‘look’, in the main at one musical object. Still I was interested in exploring how much can be ‘said’ in such short, immediate utterances. Kurtág was a contemporary point of departure; so too was the 19th century ‘confessional’ piano miniature. The title of one comes from a poem by Primo Levi, the titles of three others are words by Rilke.

Today’s first performance was Huw Watkins’ Dream. The 30 year old composer, who was also pianist, studied at Chetham’s School of Music, Manchester, and King’s College, Cambridge, and his teachers included Robin Holloway, Alexander Goehr, Peter Pettinger (biographer of Bill Evans) and Julian Anderson. Here is Dreams in the composer's own words - 'I wanted to use the same instruments as Bartók’s Contrasts, but to create something atmospheric rather than showy, exploring just one mood. Dreams evokes the feelings and moods associated with night and sleep .. It begins with gentle, hypnotic music played slowly and quietly on all three instruments. As the piece progresses there are faster, more troubled outbursts, but eventually the mood returns to that of the opening.'

All too often today, appealing menus of new music turn out to be measly meals relying heavily on technical gimmickry, self-serving cliques, bitchiness and cynicism. By contrast the Britten Sinfonia at Lunch project is a nourishing meal whose courses include imaginative commissioning, innovative and open-minded programming, a truly international perspective, and some damn hard work from the musicians.. But don’t take my word for it. Here are the words of clarinettist Joy Farrall as she introduced the Huw Watkins premiere at lunchtime - ”It is great to see such a large audience for this concert, and it is also really nice to see so many young people here today.

Other contemporary music groups and promoters please take note.

For more new music advocacy take An Overgrown Path to Hildegard comes to Norwich via IRCAM and Darmstadt
With acknowledgements to the Britten Sinfonia for use of programme notes. Bento box image credit Internetkookboek . Any copyrighted material on these pages is included for "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Ali Ufki - a 17th century Al Jazeera

Tomorrow the English-language news channel of Arab TV station Al Jazeera starts broadcasting. With four studios around the world, and presenters including Sir David Frost, Dave Marash and Darren Jordon the new service has summarised its ambitious plans as ‘building a bridge between cultures’ and ‘a forum for the West to speak to the Muslim world’. Impressive sounding rhetoric, but it is worth telling the story of how a 17th century scholar achieved exactly these aims using music instead of satellite broadcasts.

Wojciech Bobowski was born a Pole in 1610 in Lwów, then part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and now part of Ukraine. He was raised as a Protestant and trained as a church musician. These were times of great instability, with Lwów suffering frequent raids from Crimean Tartars. In one of these the eighteen year old Bobowski was taken prisoner by the Tartars, and his musical training meant he was sold to the court of Mehmed IV in Constantinople, whose reign saw the first flowering of Ottoman-Turkish music. Bobowski was a particularly valuable property as his enslavement in the sultan’s seraglio coincided with the growth of Calvinoturcism, a religious movement which is now forgotten, but interestingly stressed the common elements of Islam and Protestantism in opposition to the Catholicism of the Habsburg Empire.

The sultan (portrait below) provided an excellent education for Bobowski, with the result was that the Pole converted to Islam and took the name Ali Ufki. He learnt fourteen languages including Arabic, French, Greek, Hebrew and Latin, translated the Anglican catechism and Bible into the Ottoman, and wrote a Latin explanation of Islam. But today he is remembered primarily for his music. From his Protestant upbringing Ufki knew the French melodies of the Genevan Psalter. In a fascinating example of 17th century cultural bridge building he composed fourteen Turkish Psalms by notating them using the Turkish modal system and translating the texts into Ottoman Turkish. Ali Ufki’s unique psalter, Mezmurlar, remains in performance today, and has been brought to a wider audience by German vocal ensemble Sarband.

After 20 years in captivity Ufki regained his freedom while visiting Egypt. He continued to live there, and became an important dragoman in the Ottoman Empire. A dragoman is defined as “an interpreter and guide in the Near East; in the Ottoman a translator of European languages for the Turkish and Arab authorities”, which brings this Overgrown Path full circle.

* Visit Al Jazeera’s English channel homepage via this link, and listen to Psalms 5, 6 and 9 from Ali Ufki’s Turkish psalter on the excellent Sacred Bridges CD released by Signum Classics. As well as excerpts from the Ufki’s psalter the King’s Singers and Sarband also sing Protestant and Jewish settings of the psalms by Salamone Rossi, Claude Goudimel, and Jan Pieterszoon Sweelink. Here is a 30" MP3 sample from Ali Ufki's setting of Psalm 9 -

* Also highly recommended is - G. I. Gurdjieff, Sacred Hymns played by Keith Jarrett (piano). Although Gurdjieff is known for his advocacy of Sufism, which is a mystic tradition of Islam, he claimed to have studied more than 200 religions, and his compositions are linked to Greek liturgical music. Keith Jarrett made this recording in 1980 with the support of followers of Gurdjieff.

* And in a week when bridges between cultures are big news folk singer Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stephens, has released his first album for 28 years. As Cat Stephens the singer had a string of hits including Moon Shadow, Peace Train and Morning Has Broken. He converted to Islam in 1977, and supported the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, but has denounced terrorist acts. Yusuf Islam’s new album, An Other Cup (sic), has received lukewarm reviews.

* With Al Jazeera getting all the attention this week we should not forget that France 24 launches on Thursday. This is the long-awaited French government-backed global 24-hour French language satellite TV news channel which Jacques Chirac has described as 'CNN à la française'.

For more on music, religion and politics take An Overgrown Path to The Pope has another Regensburg moment
Audio sample linked from a-cappella.com Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

New record label delivers music with real sting

This classical music thing just gets weirder and weirder, and to prove it I bring you today the story of a contemporary art gallery that has started a record label. Here, to set the scene, is the extraordinary story of the Fred label taken from their website, followed by a review of their remarkable first release, and no, the date is not April 1st:

Why Fred (Label) Ltd?
Fred (label) is the brainchild of Fred Mann. Following the success of his contemporary art gallery, Fred [London] Ltd Mann decided to look at his other great love, Music. The label will work as a sister company to the gallery and, like the gallery, will respond in a close knit and creative way to the recording artists it seeks to nurture and promote.

What For?
FRED has been set up to record, produce, distribute and promote new music by a wide range of artists. The label, unlike a large slice of the established indie or major labels has the luxury of being able to respond to projects by different recording artist as and when they come up. Rather than setting out to release rock, R&B, classical or pop, FRED will cross musical genres. Despite the variety inherent in how the label will work, FRED has a commitment to quality of the first order and to encourage innovation and experimentation throughout our releases. To celebrate this spirit of diversity, our first two releases will be suitably wide reaching.

Why Now?
FRED has been set up during 2006. Whilst beavering away recording and planning our releases, we noticed that the music industry is changing. Global brands and multi nationals have been challenged by downloads, and small, creative projects. It seems to us that the time to do something personal, detailed and above all lead by ideas was right now! The whole project was kicked started by New York art rocker, Guy Richards Smit who asked Fred Mann to help sign his band to a cool independent label. One month later Mann had set up Fred (Label) LTD and contracts were drafted. Finding himself with a label and one recording artist, Mann cold called his favourite English soprano, Catherine Bott (right) and nervously asked if there was an album she had always wanted to make but had never had the chance. After a long lunch chatting through ideas firm plans were made and the label began to take shape. Future plans include an album of music in response to the sculptures and poetry of Cathy de Monchaux by Pop legend Martyn Ware and a compilation to celebrate the history of the Colony Room Club in Soho.

Fred Mann
Fred Mann has had a mixed and colourful career that has included everything from DJing at Glastonbury, running illegal nightclubs and raising money for arts education in East London schools. After he finished studying sculpture, he worked art directing music videos, and making films, before exhibiting his sculptures as an artist. After a long association with rebel art gallery Milch, he took over as co-director in 1996. He then ran a contemporary are gallery partnership in Hoxton from 2000 ­ 2005, before setting up his first solo gallery project FRED (London) LTD in 2005. He has now opened his second gallery in Leipzig, Germany at the invitation of Judy Lubke of Eigen + Art. Having his own record label has been on his mind for many years.

Well, that's the Fred PR blurb, so what about the music? I stumbled across the label through their first release, Convivencia featuring soprano Catherine Bott (below), which hit the streets on November 1. Let's get the weird bits out of the way first. The very distinctive sleeve design is below, the hand decoration by Riffat is an example of the Indian art of mehndi. If you can't read the title of the album in my image don't worry, you can't read it on the sleeve itself unless you use a magnifying glass. You won't find any description of the music on the sleeve, and when you get inside you won't find any track or overall timings, the typeface for the notes is tiny, and if you want them in any other language than English forget it. The disc is produced by Stephen Henderson (who also plays on the CD, see below) and Catherine Bott, with Steve Price engineering. Recording venue was Angel Studios which is a former United Reform Church in Islington, London. It is an excellent studio, but the sound on Convivencia is a little dry and close. This may be to accomodate the spoken tracks, but it does not compare well with the signature sound that Alia Vox achieve on similar repertoire in more resonant acoustics such as the Collégiale du Château de Cardona which was the recording venue for Orient-Occident which I wrote about recently.

Now if you think this is shaping up for a seriously negative review you are quite wrong, Convivencia is one of the most innovative, challenging and ultimately satisfying new CDs I've listened to this year. Convivencia is the Spanish word for living together harmoniously, and it was also used to describe the co-existence of different faiths in medieval Spain. Iberia was under Muslim rule for more than 700 years, and the final re-establishment of Christianity resulted in exile or conversion for many Moors and Sephardic Jews. The collection of songs and poems on the CD is taken from the 11th to 16th centuries, and mirrors the cultural melting pot that was medieval Spain. (Many common Spanish words are derived from Arabic including ¡Hola! and azúcar). Convivencia certainly delivers innovation and experimentation with its mixture of song and prose, and Spanish and English, and also crosses from classical to World Music with an eclectic instrumental mix of vihuela, lute, guitar (all played by David Miller), oud (Abdul Salam Kheir - above) and tar, tablah, tbilat and douf (Stephen Henderson).

But the real star is Catherine Bott, who is also a presenter for BBC Radio 3's Early Music Show. She turns this extraordinary CD into a double celebration of the wonderful music and seductive langauge of Spain. This new label's first release may be weird, but it is also a remarkable achievement. Perhaps I am weird as well, but for me this bold new venture shows that there is a future for the classical recording industry beyond established rock stars 'discovering' John Dowland.

* With many thanks to the indefatigable Andrew Cane at Prelude Records who actually managed to find me a copy of Convivencia. If you can't find a copy just contact Andrew.

For more on Moorish Spain follow An Overgrown Path to Spanish Recognitions
Header image from Mehendiworld.com, a site well worth visiting for background on the art of Mehendi. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

This Requiem is a real discovery

Today is Remembrance Sunday in the UK when we remember all those who gave their lives for the peace and freedom that some of us are fortunate to enjoy. Wilfrid Owen's poems from the First World War and the War Requiem of Benjamin Britten, which sets Owen's poetry, are two of the most moving tributes to the victims of war, and tonight (Nov 12) BBC Radio 3 are broadcasting the War Requiem, followed in the coming week by Owen's complete war poems. But today, as part of my remembrance, I turned to another Requiem by a little known English composer who was profoundly affected by his traumatic experiences in the Second World War.

George Lloyd was born in Cornwall in 1913, and achieved considerable success as an operatic composer in the 1930s when his opera Iernin enjoyed a long run in London, and he had an opera performed at Covent Garden when he was just 28. Lloyd served with the Royal Marines in the Second World War, and his ship was sunk by one of its own torpedos when protecting an Arctic convoy. Lloyd was one of just three survivors, and this dreadful experience caused him to abandon opera, and turn instead to orchestral and choral works.

He wrote twelve symphonies, and three were recorded by Lyrita in the early 1980s with Edward Downes conducting, and were released on superb sounding vinyl LPs which I still treasure. Sadly these recordings haven't yet made it into the rejuvenated Lyrita CD catalogue which I wrote about recently. I also have a 1984 LP of Lloyd's Fourth Piano Concerto played by Kathryn Stott with the composer conducting on the Conifer label.

The Requiem was George Lloyd's last work, and he only completed it two months before he died in 1998. It uses the Latin text, and was written for small chorus and counter tenor with only organ accompaniment as Lloyd (photo below) feared he would be unable to complete an orchestral score. This is one of his few works for counter-tenor, and this voice gives an etheral feeling to the work, while the bold organ writing underlines the spiritual dimension. Despite dating from the end of the 20th century this is not an avant garde work, and today the score's dedication 'Written in memory of Diana, Pricess of Wales' seems incongruous. The Requiem follows the Italian style, and moves between the modal and romantic. It ends optimistically with the Lux Aeterna, but both musically and philosophically it encourages reflection on the past, and that is entirely appropriate for Remembrance Sunday. There is no claim that Lloyd produced a masterpieces to rival Britten's, but with Requiems such as John Rutter's achieving such popularity it is difficult to understand why this fine work by George Lloyd is not better known.

* An excellent recording of George Lloyd's Requiem sung by the Exon Singers conducted by Matthew Owens is available from Albany Records, together with many other recordings of his works. Here is a brief 30" MP3 file from the Sanctus as a taster -

Now discover another very moving, and neglected, 20th century Requiem by taking An Overgrown Path to Dresden Requiem for eleven young victims.

George Lloyd is BBC Radio 3's Composer of the Week starting November 13th 2006. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Are musicals the new opera?

English National Opera's new Opera Guide lists sixty-one performances between April and July next year. Twenty-two of the performances are of three operas, Philip Glass' Satyagraha, Benjamin Britten's Death in Venice and Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito, and thirty-two them are of two musicals, Bernstein's On The Town (ENO production shot above) and Robert Wright & George Forrest’s Kismet.

For some personal memories of Leonard Bernstein take An Overgrown Path to Simply chic symphonies?
With thanks to the letter by Stewart Trotter in today's Independent for the heads-up. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Schoenberg on Toscanini

"One of the biggest phenomena in my time was Toscanini. England, for one, certainly went crazy for him - so much so that he was an absolute pest as far as I was concerned. First and foremost, I did not like his conducting. I have to give him credit for the fact that he got an incredible clarity out of the orchestra. But it was absolutely without humanity, even rigid. If Toscanini had been in one hall and Beecham in another I would have gone to see Beecham any day. Toscanini seemed to have a power over people and could do no wrong. On one occasion he snatched the camera from a journalist, threw it to the ground, and stamped on it!

However it was more than ones' life was worth to criticize Toscanini or to say you didn't like him. You would have to defend yourself to a degree that I didn't feel like doing. One summer I was doing a summer school in Santa Barbara, California with Schoenberg. One day I gathered my courage and asked him, "Arnold, what do you think of Toscanini?" And he spat and said, "That bandmaster," with a great deal of derision in his voice. He went on to tell me that Toscanini had received all his musical training in military school, which explained everything."

Now listen to a 15 minute MP3 file of "that bandmaster" conducting Beethoven (after a brief Finnish introduction) "without humanity" and make up your own mind -

The quote above is taken from A Cellists Life by Griller Quartet cellist Colin Hampton. It is a fascinating read which roams across a wide range of composers. About Ernest Bloch he writes: "His string quartet No 1 is to me one of the great works in this world. It was a logical conclusion, as far as I am concerned, to the Beethoven quartets. I would put Bloch in front of Schubert and Brahms anytime."

Ernest Bloch is one of those unfortunate composers branded by a single work, in his case Schelomo (which I have to confess I wouldn't shed a tear if I didn't ever hear again). His string quartets, which inhabit a sound world somewhere between Shostakovich and Schoenberg, are very different, and something of a challenge, with the first lasting for almost an hour. But they are most certainly great works which reward exploration. And the recent re-issue of Colin Hampton and his colleagues in the Griller Quartet playing Bloch's four string quartets gives us a chance to explore and reappraise these neglected works.

The sound from these mono 1954 Decca studio recordings is staggeringly good. The producer is my old boss from my EMI days, Peter Andry, recorded when he was at Decca. I was talking to a violin playing friend about why early recordings such as this have such a good string tone. (The various Artur Grumiaux recordings on Philips are another outstanding example). His view was that it is not the recording technology that has gone backwards (although some would argue that is also the case), but rather that string playing technique has evolved to a leaner, more analytical sound. If that is so it is a shame, and may explain why so-called 'authentic instrument' recordings with their gutsy string tone are so popular (I was listening to the Salomon Quartet recordings of Mozart using original instrunents on Hyperion the other night, thinking what fantastic sound the players were producing) .

A book remains to be written about the Griller Quartet, who based on these recordings deserve their place up their with the Amadeus and Hollywood in the pantheon of all time great quartets (I must explore their Mozart and Haydn on Dutton). John Amis writes in his autobiographical 'Amiscellany': "Later the Grillers went to the States, their stay their ending in stark tragedy when an internal homosexual fracas ended in denunciation to the police and sudden death, at which point the always happily married Sidney Griller came back to England."

* A Cellist's Life by Colin Hampton is published by Back Stage Books, ISBN 1890490350
* MP3 file of Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony in the adagio molto e cantabile from Beethoven's 9th symphony from the superb Finnish national radio station YLE Radio 1, many more wonderful audio files there - do visit.

If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Discovered - the online Arnold Schoenberg jukebox
Image credit: Schoenberg from Education musicale au collège Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Norman Lebrecht blusters as blogs bloom

In today’s Evening Standard and online Norman Lebrecht declares ‘until bloggers deliver hard facts … paid for newspapers will continue to set the standard as the only show in town’ and goes on to take a swipe at On An Overgrown Path’s story about the BBC King’s College broadcast. Now I don’t think for a moment Stormin’ Norman has an axe to grind even if he does write for a paid for newspaper and presents a BBC Radio 3 programme, but his blustering cannot be ignored. Among the many accusations he flings around are that I do not deliver hard facts, I trade in unchecked trivia, and I did not check my story with the BBC, so let's look at these points.

Not hard facts - I reported that the BBC had announced a 1956 Argo commercial recording as a 1954 BBC broadcast. Here is a transcript from the broadcast of the presenters introduction:

' This week's broadcast of choral evensong.... Today, a stunning broadcast from 1954, a service from the chapel of King's College Cambridge. The choir was conducted by Boris Ord, who was Director of Music from 1929 to 1957..... '

Both Lebrecht and the BBC now admit that the broadcast was the 1956 Argo recording, but the transcript above shows it was announced as 'a stunning broadcast from 1954'. Can the facts be any harder than that? No, despite attempts to obscure them by a BBC and Lebrecht smokescreen of 'erased tapes.'

The story was not checked with the BBC and was unchecked trivia - before running the story I checked a number of sources including a choir member on the 1956 Argo recording who had heard the broadcast. This choir member had raised the deception with the BBC and received an automated response from them, and nothing has been heard since. Lebrecht's ability to get a response from the BBC surely cannot be connected with the programme he presents for them?

Elsewhere Lebrecht says 'online blogs won't be required reading until they start focussing on the facts' - a soundbyte worth closer scrutiny. On April 5th 2006 a journalist called Norman Lebrecht wrote the following in a paid for newspaper "in fact, no label had issued a (Beethoven) symphonic cycle in three years, and none was likely to do so again." When I read this I immediately emailed Norman to point out that Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra were currently recording a Beethoven cycle. Back came a blustering reply that 'confidential sources said the Minnesota cycle would proceed no further'. Unfortunately Lebrecht's facts were well and truly out of focus, symphonies 3, 4, 5, 8 and 9 are now available.

I can only agree with Lebrecht's statement that 'paid for newspapers will continue to set the standard'. The only problem is it is a double standard - among Lebrecht's scoops today are that On An Overgrown Path 'flagged up this week's John Taverner premiere through the blogging of its soloist, Nicholas Daniel'. Norman, any music blogger focussed on the facts will tell you Nick Daniel was giving the first performance of a work by the contemporary composer John Tavener, and that John Taverner was a 16th century choral composer.

For more on Norman Lebrecht's blusters take An Overgrown Path to Wagner downloads and Beethoven cycles
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Britten's champagne moment

My mention of Benjamin Britten's The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra in my recent article about his Violin Concerto reminded me of this little story told in John Bridcut's Britten's Children: - During what was intended as a spoken interview in 2003, a transported David Hemmings (left) sang, hummed and groaned his way through the Young Person's Guide (which he remembered Ben playing to him the first time he visited Aldeburgh as a boy), and as he reached the triumphant return of the theme in the brass, he cried out: 'That's the champagne moment! Fucking great!'.

* Britten created the role of Miles in his opera The Turn of the Screw for the twelve year old David Hemmings, and Hemmings sung the part in the premiere at La Fenice in Venice in 1954. He also sung in, and recorded, The Little Sweep and Saint Nicholas with Britten. But eventually Hemmings became another one of Britten's 'corpses'. His voice broke during a performance of The Turn of the Screw at the Théâtre Champs Elysées in Paris in 1956, and he was immediately dropped from Britten's circle.

* As I have been writing this I have been listening to Britten's champagne moment in his own recording of the Young Person's Guide with the London Symphony Orchestra. This is a Decca CD re-issue of the 1963 Kingsway Hall sessions produced by Eric Smith and engineered by Gordon Parry. This is a true demonstration disc, the sound stage has width and depth, the orchestral strands are clearly delineated without spotlighting, the bass is firm but tuneful, and overall the sound is about as close as you can get to a concert hall without actually being there. Why, with our wonderful digital tools and download technologies, can't we make recordings like this today?

For more on Britten's relationship with children follow this Overgrown Path.
Quote taken from Britten's Children by John Bridcut, published by Faber ISBN 0571228399 Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

BBC historic broadcast was fraud say experts

King's College Choir, Cambridge is one of the glories of the English choral tradition. They are best known for their many acclaimed recordings of the mainstream choral repertoire, but they also sing choral evensong daily in the College Chapel. There are fewer recordings of choral evensong in King's, but one of the classics was made in 1956 by Argo under the direction of Boris Ord who was organist and choirmaster there between 1929 and 1957, and we are fortunate that this is still in the catalogue as Belart CD120 (see sleeve below).

The many students of the King's choral tradition were therefore delighted, and surprised, when the BBC announced that as part of the 80th anniversary celebrations of their choral evensong programme they were to broadcast on October 25th 2006 "a 1950s archive broadcast from the Chapel of King's College, Cambridge." The surprise from King's experts was because it was not known that such a recording existed. When the programme went on air it was announced as a BBC archive broadcast from 1954, but when the music started it was clear why the recording was unknown to the experts - it doesn't exist. On An Overgrown Path can exclusively reveal that what in fact the BBC played was the 1956 Argo recording which was passed off as a BBC archive broadcast from two years earlier. And the story doesn't end there - the two anthems following evensong were again announced as BBC archive recordings when they were actually taken from the Columbia Anthology of English Church Music, also recorded in the 1950s and now re-issued on Testament.

On An Overgrown Path has rightly praised the BBC for their support of classical music. But they have also been criticised here for their sheer arrogance with the Beethoven MP3 downloads, copyright, Barenboim Ring broadcast (which was also from commercial recordings), Bach Christmas, errors in their Annual Report, lack of female composer representation, and Shostakovich saturation.

The BBC should be ashamed of their deception over the King's evensong broadcast. It is yet another example of their fixation with anniversaries and spin. But what is even worse is that the BBC has a vast archive of historic broadcasts which they are failing to exploit. On an Overgrown Path has already drawn attention to the innovative way in which the Finnish national broadcaster YLE is making archive recordings of contemporary and historic recordings available as internet downloads. The very same year that the historic King's evensong recording was made by Argo, Peter Hanslett, writing in the Cambridge Review, described the BBC's Third Programme as 'a service which is literally the envy of the world.' How times have changed.

Update - now read the BBC's disingenuous justification of their fraud via this link.

Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Monteverdi in Cambridge

John Tavener world premiere gets blog coverage

There are an awful lot of music blogs out there, but not many of them are written by top-flight performing musicians, yet alone one who tomorrow gives the first performance of an important work by a leading living composer. Nicholas Daniel (left) has built quite a reputation as principal oboe with the Britten Sinfonia, and as a conductor. Tomorrow (November 6) Daniel and the Britten Sinfonia give the world premiere of John Tavener's oboe concert Kaleidoscopes at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall. The new work is Tavener's tribute to Mozart; but, as well as an oboe soloist and chamber orchestra, the score calls for the distinctly non-Mozartian forces of a very large gong and four Tibetan temple bowls! Nicholas Daniel is blogging in the run up to the first performance, and here are his latest entries:

03 November 2006 - later
I think the top Bb may be in! Am going to surprise John with at the rehearsal and see what he says. Terrible risk! I love risk! If only my Mother In Law’s dog would stop barking every 10 minutes it might be possible to get some work done!

03 November 2006
I’m just back from rather a marathon and very enjoyable teaching stint in Germany . I managed to find time for work on ‘scopes’ (as I’ll minimize it to), but it was really quite challenging to work on the piece after 8 hours teaching before a 2 hour masterclass!
It’s just that the oboe plays in this piece for about 30 or 35 minutes without ever really taking it out of the mouth. It’s a huge challenge, a bit like playing the famously lethal Strauss Concerto (actually not so lethal but one of the harder pieces for stamina) twice, having cut out all the orchestral tuttis!. I worked out that there are several points with the metronome mark that I am playing repeatedly for 30 second stretches with no breathing place and circular breathing (puffing out with cheek muscles and inhaling through nose simultaneously) just seems somehow wrong. It may of course be necessary! Add to the mix Tchaikovsky String Serenade, some Mozart, a 3 hour rehearsal on the day and on some days a pre-concert talk too and you can see why I need to be so well prepared! Of course the reed is absolutely crucial and I had delivery of a new batch of my amazing reeds made by Dimiter Jordanov in Montreal. Environmentally inexcusable I know, reeds with air miles, but my goodness they are little treasures. At least I buy locally grown veg round here, apart from the sweet potatos that my Doctor insists I eat every day!

For the whole story of John Tavener's Kaleidescopes follow this link to Nicholas Daniel's blog.

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If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Copland 'In the beginning'

John Dowland's Infinite Riches

Lots of interest in John Dowland, Sting et al, so it is worth revisiting the following article which was published On An Overgrown Path in May 2005: - Recent interesting exchanges online with Richard Friedman and Will Benton about the merits (or otherwise) of 'non-authentic interpretations' by the Hilliard Ensemble and Jan Garbarek with Officium (see Officium live - a triumph of music theatre) and Jacques Loussier (see Jacques Loussier close up) prompts me to sing the praises of a fascinating 'interpretation' of John Dowland's Lachrymae by the jazz pianist, 'envelope pusher', cellist, and accordion player Huw Warren (above). He is better known for his work with innovative jazz group Perfect Houseplants who have worked with violinist Andrew Manze, recorder player Pamela Thorby, and early music vocal ensemble the Orlando Consort.

The recording by Huw Warren I have returned to many times is Infinite Riches in a Little Room. (The title comes from Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta Act 1). The CD is on the independent Babel label, and can be bought direct from them. In Infinite Riches Warren takes themes from Dowland's Lachrymae on piano, keyboards and samples and gives them treatments that vary from the 'lightly cooked' to more innovative. But in contrast to Uri Caine Warren knows when to stop, and has left his more indulgent excesses in the out-take bin, rather than padding out the finished commercial offering with them. Think the best bits of Caine's Goldberg Variations, without all those tracks you have to programme the CD player to skip. But make up your own mind and listen to some Huw Warren audio files at his MySpace site.

Since I wrote my original article Warren has won the 2005 BBC Jazz Award for Innovation, and his latest project is a major new work with his Orchestra Helclecs titled This is Now! (Nawr!) featuring the virtuoso guitarist John Parricelli, hip hop MC Nobsta Nutts, singer Lleuwen Steffan and an ensemble originally formed for a concert at Brecon jazz festival in 2004. If you want to hear a really innovative musician pushing the envelope with Dowland's music give Infinite Riches in a Little Room a spin.

For more on improvisation take A journey with Jack Reilly
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The music stops at major talent agency

Bloomberg.com reports - International Creative Management, one of the world's largest talent agencies representing actors, writers and musicians, said it will sell its classical music division to focus on its core entertainment business. The firm's ICM Artists unit in New York will be acquired by a group of eight employees led by IMCA President and Chief Executive Officer David Foster and Executive Vice President and Managing Partner Byron Gustafson.

Discussions about a buyout began in July, and Foster said the purchase will provide more "financial independence'' and more flexibility for classical music management - "the big difference with classical music is that you spend a lot of time with immortal, creative works, whether it's Beethoven's symphonies or Verdi's operas, so the artists' careers in this field are much, much, much, much longer.''

ICMA has been a unit of Beverly Hills, California-based ICM since 1975. Its artist roster includes Grammy Award-winning cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the Cleveland Orchestra, conductor Marin Alsop, mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, pianist Daniel Barenboim and violinist Gidon Kremer. The classical music talent agency business has struggled in recent years as agent fees for artists have shrunk and larger firms prefer to represent more profitable acts in rock and popular music. In the past decade, classical music's share of the U.S. record market has declined to 2.4 percent last year from 3.4 percent in 1996, according to the Web site of the Recording Industry Association of America. Over the same period, total sales slipped to $12.3 billion last year from $12.5 billion in 1996.

For more on this thread take An Overgrown Path to The hidden power of the music super agents
Image credit - Dollar Sign by Andy Warhol from Allposters.com Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

I am a camera - Prinknash Abbey

In the glamorous world of contemporary architecture ecclesiastical buildings lack the media appeal of the more spectacular art galleries, museums and concert halls. But despite this low profile recent years have seen the creation of some very exciting new churches, and Le Corbusier's monastery at La Tourette with its detailing by Iannis Xenakis, and Egon Eiermann's Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin have already featured in these pages. Both these magnificent buildings were the result of well funded commissions to high profile architects, but not all projects are as fortunate. I have already featured the inspirational Church of Reconciliation at Taizé built to a very limited budget in 1962 by the German organisation Sühnezeichen, a group of architects formed after the Second World War to build symbols of reconciliation in places of war-time suffering. And here today, in my words and pictures, is the story of another sacred building which was completed triumphantly against the odds, and which we visited this week.


The story of Prinknash Abbey starts on an island off the South Wales coast which has been a refuge for monks and hermits for 1500 years. In 1928 the Benedictine community on the island were forced to abandon their monastery to seek a more hospitable home at Prinknash on the slopes of the River Severn in Gloucestershire looking across to Elgar's beloved Malvern Hills. The community moved into a 16th century manor house in Prinknash which they eventually outgrew, and in 1939 the foundation stone for a monastery was laid, but almost immediately the Second World War intervened.

When work was restarted after the War it was found that the designs by the architect H.S. Goodhart-Rende were impractical. (In a strange link with La Tourette and Xenakis Goodhart-Rendel studied music at Trinity College, Cambridge and was a minor composer and writer as well as architect). A second architect, F. G. Broadbent, was appointed with a brief to create a more practical plan. Even though the monks now had a usable design their problems were not at an end as they were struggling to build the new monastery themselves while working to a very limited budget. Salvation came in the form of a gift from the original architect H.S. Goodhart-Rendel. He donated a painting, "The Flight into Egypt" by Jacopo Bassano , which was originally thought to be worth about £10,000, to the community. But the painting sold at auction for £360,000 in the 1960's. This allowed a specialist building firm to complete the Abbey in 1972 - 33 years after the foundation stone was laid. To complete the happy ending the Bassano's The Flight into Egypt is now on public display in the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California.


As my photos show function most definitely takes precedence over form in the completed Prinknash Abbey. The architects clearly had to work within the twin constraints of a spectacular but sloping site, and a tight budget. (The limited funds meant the organ was built by one of the Brothers). The resulting design is very unusual for a Benedictine monastery as it is does not use the traditional floor plan centred around a cloister, and the Abbey Church has the High Altar at the western end. The stone clad exterior may resemble a crenallated office building, but this is a building built to serve the needs of a contemporary monastic community, and it does so triumphantly. My photograph below shows the apse, while the interior shots show how stained glass and natural light are used in the Abbey Church to transcend practical limitations and produce a space which is truly awe-inspiring.


Now playing - Compline and other chant sung by the monks of Prinknash Abbey and the nuns of Stanbrook Abbey. The evening office of Compline is a divine marriage of ritual and art which renders religous dogma irrelevant, and the plainsong Salve Regina is one of the peaks of Western music. In this recording the monks of Prinknash sing Compline in Latin, while the nuns from their sister convent offer an English version. This CD is on the Saydisc label and they have other treasures well worth exploring. With Christmas approaching I recommend the Christmas Chants sung by the same forces and featuring the dawn and midnight masses and other Latin plainsong for the festive season. As well as their musical value these performances also offer demonstration quality sound despite (or because of?) their 1980s vintage. Recorded in the superb acoustics of the Chapter House of Gloucester Cathedral and Stanbrook Abbey they benefit from simple microphone set-ups with the Christmas disc using AKG C414s in crossed hypercardioid configuration. This gives a sense of space and depth that is often lacking in the musically definitive chant recordings from Solesmes. Saydisc's wide range of recordings also includes an extensive catalogue of World Music.

* Visit Prinknash Abbey's website via this link, and Stanbrook Abbey's via this link.

It may not be contemporary architecture but the story of the rebuilding of Dresden's Frauenkirche is truly inspirational.
All photographs taken by Pliable on 1st November 2006, and copyright On an Overgrown Path. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Berlin Philharmonic box stupid

How about an annual award for the weirdest attempt to market classical music? We’ve already seen the London Symphony Orchestra targeting babies as a new audience, a concerto for tap dancer, and classical music night-clubs. Now comes the Berlin Philharmonic’s contribution to this bonanza of weirdness, the launch of their own record label with 12 individual CDs celebrating the orchestras 125th anniversary of the orchestra. Not too much weird about that you may say, but read on. The recordings are of live performances licensed from German radio stations, and many of them have never been commercially released, although a quick browse through the titles probably explains why.

The full price single CD releases range from a 1913 acoustic recording of Alfred Hertz and Arthur Nikisch conducting Wagner, to Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting the non-period orchestra in a 2002 mixed bag of Bach. The only 20th century composers represented are rather predictably Shostakovich, Debussy, Richard Strauss and Mahler, and a little less predictably Milhaud with his Suite Française. Hardly new music, and this is a real missed opportunity for the orchestra that gave first performances of much contemporary music including Schoenberg's Variations for Orchestra, op. 31 2nd version in 1928. It is difficult to believe there were there no radio recordings of the many contemporary compositions by Pfitzner, Hindemith and the many other composers I wrote about in Furtwängler and the forgotten new music.

Now thinking that many people will pay £15 ($27) for a 1928 recording of Jascha Horenstein conducting a single Bruckner symphony, or for David Oistrakh conducting Tchaikosky in 1972 when you can download an apparantely non-copyright recording of Stokowski conducting the same work for free is pretty weird, but things get even weirder. The Berlin Philharmonic anniversary edition comes in those nasty, easily damaged, sleeves which the industry calls digipacks and I call cardboard. But it doesn’t end there. Follow this link and look at the front of the sleeve in the photograph and tell me if you can see anything wrong? Yes, the name of the conductor and orchestra is there but the name of the work does not. And as any retailer will tell you a CD that doesn’t tell the customer on the front the name of the music is dead in the water.

But my header photograph gives the story away. Some smart marketing person at the orchestra decided to produce a 12 CD box of historic recordings. Unfortunately the good burghers of Berlin didn’t buy the lavish edition in the numbers expected, and the hapless orchestra was left with a lot of stock. So someone had the bright idea of splitting up the boxes and selling the individual CDs at full price. The only problem was that everyone person was so dazzled by the brilliance of that solution they just didn’t notice that the names of the works were missing off the covers.

For more on the orchestra take An Overgrown Path to the Berlin Philharmonic’s darkest hour
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Hugo Distler - a forgotten victim of fascism

During the period between Martin Luther and Johann Sebastian Bach the chorale developed from congregational hymn to high art form. After Bach the vocal chorale lost favour, although Mendlessohn, Schumann, Brahms, Reger and others introduced it into the concert hall. But the 20th century saw a short-lived choral revival with composers such as Ernst Pepping, Hugo Distler (left) and Kurt Thomas once again setting chorales for voices.

The story of Hugo Distler is a tragic one. He was born in Nuremburg in 1908, and attended Leipzig Conservatory as a conducting student before switching to composition and organ. He taught at the School for Church Music in Spandau before being appointed professor of church music in Stuttgart in 1940. He produced a small body of progressive and technically demanding compositions including fine chorale settings. Distler was a profoundly religious man who was deeply disturbed by the escalating war which brought the horrors of bombing raids and the loss of many friends and colleagues on active service. Creative artists respond in different ways to despotism and war. Furtwängler, Karajan and Schwarzkopf fraternised, Britten fled to America (only to return), and Tippett went to prison as a conscientious objector. (Do check those links, they are not the usual biographies). The Nazis stigmatized Distler’s compositions as ‘degenerative art’, and when he received his conscription papers he took his life by gassing himself. He died in Berlin sixty-four years ago today, on 1st November 1942. Hugo Distler was just 34.

For more on Hugo Distler follow this link, and to hear an associated four minute audio programme click here -

Now playing – Hugo Distler’s setting of Philipp Nicolai’s Chorale Wie schon leuchtet der Morgenstern (How beautifully shines the star of morning) from the fascinating CD The Art of the Chorale which combines chorales sung by the Memphis Boychoir and Chamber Choir with organ settings played by John Ayer. (Pro Organo 7064 now deleted). Nicolai’s chorale has also been set for organ by Telemann and the American Paul Manz.

Now read about the how music, and culture, regenerated after these terrible events in Music rises from the ruins of Berlin
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included for "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk