On An Overgrown Path

My photograph was taken at the Anglican Shrine at Walsingham, Norfolk, and celebrates both the birth of Joseph Haydn 275 years ago, on March 31st 1732, and the start of Holy Week. Now playing – Emerson Quartet performing Haydn’s ‘ The Seven Last Words’ . The cathedral in Cádiz commissioned Haydn, who was a devout Catholic, to write orchestral interludes for performance between the spoken parts of the service in the great Spanish Baroque church during Holy Week. The composer wrote seven adagios for the cathedral, and transcribed these for string quartet in the year of their first performance, 1787, and later made a choral version. The Emerson’s recorded ‘ The Seven Last Words’ in New York in 2002 as part of their complete Haydn project . Joseph Haydn was born in Rohrau , Lower Austria, and ranks as one of the most important composers of all time. However, unlike Mozart's , today's important anniversary of his birth has passed virtually unnoticed. He was the first great Vien...

Hello Pliable, No sooner than we speak of Weigl and a few of his students than I see this today: In Wednesday’s (3/28/2007) Greensboro News & Record (NC), Dawn Decwikiel-Kane reports: “Peter Paul Fuchs, longtime conductor of the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra and artistic director of the Greensboro Opera Company, died Monday night after a long illness. Fuchs, 90, died at Friends Home Guilford after a 17-year battle with Alzheimer's disease (follow this link for more on music and Alzheimer's - Pliable). The Vienna-born Fuchs brought his vast musical experience and pleasant temperament to the symphony and opera company from the mid-1970s through the early 1990s. Their leaders praised him Tuesday for his role in sculpting both organizations. ‘His expertise and talents led the orchestra to achieve the professional status and artistic excellence it enjoys today,’ said Dmitry Sitkovetsky , the symphony's current music director. Before arriving in Greensboro, Fuchs conduct...

No two modes of architecture could be more different from one another than the Muslim and the West Christian. West Christian architecture in its early phase is filled with the craving for weight and massiveness; and in its second phase, the Gothic, in that for a spectacular liberation from that weight in a skyward ascent ... Moslem architecture is quite the opposite. A mosque is to be a court, a square, a market-place, lightly built to hold a large concourse of people. Allah is so great that nothing human can vie with Him in strength or endurance ... Even the Moslem castles, large though they are, give the effect of being light and insubstantial. But a Mosque is also a place for the contemplation of the Oneness of Allah. How can this better be done than by giving the eyes a maze of geometric patterns to brood over? The state aimed at is a sort of semi-trance. ( Pliable - See my reference to the Mevelevi Order below ). The mind contemplates the patterns, knows that they can be unravelle...

A reader wrote yesterday and asked whether I agreed with everything I post here. The answer is an emphatic no. But I do try to provide food for thought. Which is why I offer an extract from, and link to this article in the current American Spectator . And for those arriving from Agonist.org I would point out that the words below are a quote (which is what an extract is) from the American Spectator article - not my words. So what should orchestras do to increase the numbers of minority violists? Perhaps they should follow Nazi Germany's lead which set quotas on the number of Jews who could attend medical or law school in order to allow more goyim to become doctors and lawyers? Orchestras could limit the number of white male and female Asian-American orchestra members, and instead of calling it a quota system, they could call it "diversity." Or orchestras could follow the lead of the professional athletic associations which 50 years ago stopped excluding athletes on acco...

Cormac Rigby (second from left above), who has died aged 67 of cancer, had two distinct careers: as a BBC radio announcer, and later as a Roman Catholic priest. Both called for an easy mastery of the spoken word, and to both he brought a naturally cultivated talent. As presentation editor of Radio 3 from 1972 to 1985, Cormac set the tone of the channel, supervising the work of established announcers such as Patricia Hughes and Tom Crowe, engaging younger ones (among them Tony Scotland) and himself taking a full share of the announcing and presenting load. After leaving the BBC in 1985, he trained for the priesthood, served first in Ruislip, Middlesex, and then in Stanmore, north London, where he was specially happy and very well liked. He was born in Watford, Hertfordshire; his mother had been born Grace McCormack, and his first name was a conscious recollection of her Irish maiden name. Baptised on May 21 1939, he was to be ordained on the very same day, 49 years later, by Cardinal B...

Preparing articles about composers such as Elizabeth Maconchy , Elisabeth Lutyens and Karl Weigl is difficult bcause there are very few photographs of them available. After he read my Karl Weigl article today John McLaughlin Williams kindly obtained permission from the composer's grandson to make available the family photographs here. John explains: 'Weigl was a good athlete. I saw other pictures at his daughter-in-law's house that showed him to be quite muscular in the manner of a wrestler. The lovely portrait above is with his wife Vally.' Now here is an exclusive picture of a very different kind. Many thanks to Karl Weigl Jr for permission to reproduce these photographs. 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

John McLaughlin Williams has just added this comment to my post Young composers sit at their computers : How woefully true about what supposedly can and cannot be done on the pro conducting circuit. I had a meeting with a well-known manager at a premiere New York management agency. Said manager inquired about my predilections, to which I answered a number of composers including Karl Weigl. He responded matter-of-factly "you can't do Weigl". The incredulous look upon my naive visage probably explains the subsequent course of my musical life! Karl Weigl (below) can't be done on the pro conducting circuit, but he can be done On An Overgrown Path - here is his story. Gustav Mahler was appointed director of the Vienna Court Opera in 1897, and in ten years there he transformed both the repertoire and performances. He brought a new focus on the classical repertoire including Gluck and Mozart, and in collaboration with Alfred Roller created revolutionary productions of ...

Mahler 9. Circuit training’ll be a dawdle after this. What a play. What a play-fest. Ilan (Volkov) (above left) skippered us through it in Glasgow and Leeds last week. The last time the band played it was 1976 – that’s the year Ilan was born. Christopher Adey conducted that time. It was one of his last gigs with us during his tenure as ‘Assistant Conductor’. He was desperate to do the piece, the producer couldn’t really budget for it, so they agreed (i.e. they forgot to discuss it with us down at the coal face) to do it on half the rehearsal time. The next ‘Assistant Conductor’ was Simon Rattle , and he tried the same trick with Mahler 7, but he programmed two studio recordings instead of the quick bash for one. Surprise, surprise: when we got to the first recording he announced that we weren’t ready and cancelled the recording in favour of a day more rehearsal before the second session. And they docked his pay! Which didn’t leave much, considering the pay those assistants got. In h...

Hello, I have read with interest your posts about Russian composers and Stalin. Your blog is highly informative and entertaining as well, and on an amazingly wide array of topics. I've been trying to find scores by and information about Vavera Gaigerova and Valery Zhelobinski (Jelobinsky). These tantalizing figures have proven completely elusive, yet they were published by the Soviet houses during their lives. Do you know of any resources that I might consult that may lead to performance material? I've been asking folks around the world to no avail. What did the Soviets do with music by composers who fell out of favor? Did they destroy it or bury it within archives? If I can find material I am reasonably sure that I can get recordings made. My apologies for bothering you out of the blue. Thanks for any info you might offer. Regards, John McLaughlin Williams . Can anyone help John? Add Comments below, or email to me at overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk and I'll pass i...

Berlin was thrown into great excitement last night by two fires - the one at the Reichstag building (the German Parliament) and the other at the former Imperial Palace. Fire broke out at the Reichstag shortly after 9 p.m., and burned so fiercely that within an hour the main hall in which representatives of the German people meet when Parliament is in session was completely destroyed. Flames leaping from the great glass dome surmounting the building could be seen for miles around, and attracted huge crowds to the scene. Police in full force on horseback and on foot kept the crowd back, while all the fire brigades in Berlin poured water on to the flames. The building was surrounded by the fire-fighting appliances, and high ladders were run up the walls and illuminated by searchlights. Firemen directed streams of water into the burning building, and hoses were run in through the numerous entrances to the seat of the fire, in the main session hall. It is believed (says an Exchange Berlin t...

When does a recording become a forgery ? How much can be added that wasn't created by the musicians on the label before it is a fake ? My post on a 'recreation' of Glenn Gould's 1955 Goldbergs raises some interesting questions, and so does the following story. By chance I bought last week the excellent transcriptions of Handel's recorder sonatas for cello and harpsichord played by Tatty Theo (cello) and Carolyn Gibley (harpsichord). The girls are part of the local baroque ensemble, The Brook Street Band . The recording was made a few miles from here in Raveningham Church in Norfolk, the label is Avie , and the producer and engineer is Simon Fox-Gál. Now here is the first interesting point. The sleeve contains the following message: 'Reverberation included in this recording from Classical Reverberations Impulses produced by Ernest Cholakis for Numerical Sound' . Research reveals the Toronto based Numerical Sound : 'develops low level manipulations of ...

Nazi numbers were down to 1,600 – among them extremists from Hungary, the UK, Austria and France – for the 2007 annual fascist commemoration of the Allied air raids on Dresden in February 1945. For several years the event has been a key date in the German and international nazi calendar. Two years ago more than 7,000 fascists attended. As usual the nazis marched with the slogan “No bombing Holocaust ever again”, ridiculing the victims of the real Holocaust, Hitler’s industrialised mass murder of Jews , Roma and Sinti. This year the demonstration was accompanied by an “action week” organised by an alliance of all Dresden’s rightwing extremists outside the National Democratic Party (NPD) under the leadership of “Free Nationalist”. The NPD’s leaders attended the march. The nazis were faced with a strong protest from 1,000 mostly young anti-fascists who repeatedly blocked their path, delaying them and finally forcing them to shorten their demonstration. Some of the more militant nazis ...

Academy of Ancient Music , Chief Executive - £na The Conservatoire , Director of Music - £32k Scottish Ballet , Head of Development - £32 - 38k Music at Oxford , General Manager - £na London Symphony Orchestra , Head of LSO Discovery - £38 - 43k Britten Sinfonia , Marketing Director - £na London Sinfonietta , Development & Marketing Managers - £na It's a beautiful spring day here, and the header photo was taken five minutes ago in our garden. On BBC Radio 3 this afternoon was a stunning performance by Martyn Brabbins and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra of that British masterpiece, Elgar's Symphony No 2 in E flat major. Today's Media Guardian lists the music vacancies above. Last Saturday we heard the Pergolesi Stabat Mater and Rachmaninov Vespers in Norwich Cathedral. On Friday it's Prokofiev and Stravinsky at Snape , and on Saturday Schütz and Pärt in Blythburgh Church. But it's all a mirage. Read here about the death of live classical music, and here ...

Albert Baez (left) has died age 94. A remarkable scientist and pacifist, he was also father of folk singers Joan Baez and Mimi Fariña . Follow this link to the San Francisco Chronicle for an excellent celebration of a remarkable life. Now read why we aren't marching in the streets anymore. 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

So much quality music had been unfairly forgotten and so much tat put on a pedestal. Top of my tat-list is Dmitri Shostakovich . I personally can't wait for his flatulent 'sarcastic' bubble to burst. A close second and third on the tat-list are two more po-faced Soviet gits, Alfred Schnittke and Sofia Gubaidulina (left). When will that old witchy bore Gubaidulina shut up? When, EH? And when will the quieter craftsmen composers, Edison Denisov , Valentin Silvestrov and Dmitri Smirnov , get their dues? Igor Toronyi-Lalic reminds us what music blogging should be about on the Telegraph website. And he links to my Elizabeth Maconchy article . Priceless, but I'm not so sure about Silvestrov. Now read how Soviet blacklist fatigue sets in . 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 o...

Arturo Toscanini was born on 25th March 1867 in Parma , Italy. My photograph shows him celebrating while on tour in the US in May, 1950. The photo was taken at Sun Valley , Idaho, where the maestro conducted an impromptu band of toy guitars, wash-tubs, and a clarinet for a refreshingly multi-cultural audience . Now listen as the maestro conducts a real orchestra (after a brief Finnish introduction) in the complete Prelude to the third act of Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg in November 1951 . The orchestra is Toscanini's own NBC Symphony , and the recording was made in Carnegie Hall, where the orchestra and its conductor can be seen in my picture below - Toscanini's Wagner may have been sublime, but his opposition to fascism was trenchant, read about it here . And for another Toscanini download take An Overgrown Path to Schoenberg on Toscanini Audio file credit YLE Radio 1 , NBC Symphony from Wikipedia/NBC TV . Any copyrighted material on these pages is included ...

Or is it a forgery? Read here how digital technology helps build a virtual concert hall. 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

Superb response to my article on the recordings of Elizabeth Maconchy's string quartets. Superb article in today's Guardian on Schubert's symphonies. Serendipitous synchronicity that Misha Donat produced the 1989 recordings and wrote the Guardian article this week. Now read about serendipity, synchronicity and Bernstein Fractal sample from Geodeomp.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

Recent reports that Sergei Rachmaninov's great-great-grandson is a control freak will come as no surprise to anyone who has read John Drummond's autobiography - it seems to run in the family. John Culshaw’s first foray into music, not long after leaving the RAF in the late 1940s, had been to write a very short book on Rachmaninov – at that time a deeply unfashionable figure, very little of whose music was played. The book was a triumph over the unavailability of material, and when the typescript was completed Culshaw went to see the composer’s widow in Switzerland. Ferried across Lake Lausanne in a private launch by a liveried servant, he was graciously received and asked to come back a week later, when Madame Rachmaninov would have read the typescript. Limited to twenty-five pounds ($48) in foreign currency, Culshaw had to explain that he could not wait that long. Grudgingly, Madame Rachmaninov agreed to a shorter time. When he returned, he was told to wait in the hall. Sho...

November 8 2006: Norman Lebrecht writes - Classical blogs are spreading but their nutritional value is lower than a bag of crisps. Unlike financial blogs, which yield powerful and profitable secrets, classical web-chat is opinion-rich and info-poor. 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. March 15 2007: Norman Lebrecht becomes a blogger. Now read how blogs bloom as Lebrecht blusters Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for 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've been doing some very rewarding media training with young victims of crime for the charity Victim Support Norfolk . Here are the results from BBC TV News. You can catch a glimpse of me in the middle of the human knot, which is kind of appropriate.

Hi Pliable, I just need to confess: I've enjoyed so much of your writing and reporting on music and humanity, and your postings have added much to my enlightenment and delight in life. But I may be coming to a point where I won't go there much anymore. I happen to live in the US, and I am getting very weary of the constant bashing of mostly anything US - politics, composers, music, morals, etc. I am a decent person, a pacifist (Quaker), to a degree a political activist (I attended my first anti-war protest *since* the Viet Nam war when Bush II invaded Iraq, and have continued)... you get the picture. But I just don't need to be constantly told how bad I am, how little I do, etc. I hope you understand my perspective. For those of us who fight regularly, and have for a good long time, to retain the best qualities of our country while attempting to contain or diminish the bad, it is hard to see ourselves - because we are here, not there - perpetually painted in very bad light....

"I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair. Some day, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed." (from Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood, 1939) The remarkable photo above was developed, carefully printed, and fixed in the 1970s, but has never before been published. It shows two of the feared East German Vopos ( Volkspolizei ) whose job it was to guard the Berlin Wall . The photograph was taken across death-strip from the West side of the Wall using a powerful telephoto lens. The original print was passed to me recently, and I scanned it to create the image above. The photographer tells me it has never been seen in public before. For long periods both sides in the Cold War stand-off exchanged nothing more than shots from cameras across the Wall. But for short periods the shots came from guns. Estimates vary as to how m...