Glenn Gould - the ultimate download

My personal overgrown path is leading back to the radio studio, and that has set me thinking recently about how to create programmes that are distinctive, inclusive and personal.

Over in Holland the creator of Big Brother, Endemol, has its own formula for distinctive broadcasting, and this week launches De Grote Donorshow (The Big Donor Show) which gives three dialysis patients the chance to win a dying woman's kidney - or not.

Back in 1969 Glenn Gould took a different approach to producing great broadcasting when he created his 'contrapuntal radio documentary' The Latecomers. The main subject was the new Canadian province of Newfoundland, but there was a second subject of solitude, isolation and non-conformity seen from a cultural perspective.

The Latecomers, with its basso continuo of the ocean, is both a land-mark in twentieth-century broadcasting and a seriously neglected aspect of Gould's work. Now, thanks to reader Walt Santner, you can hear the whole documentary via an MP3 download. Walt contributed to previous features here locating downloads of historic, Stokowski and recording history MP3 files. He is now back surfing the net after some health problems, welcome back Walt.

Genn Gould's The Latecomers runs for 53 minutes, you can download it from this website, note copyright health warnings may apply.

Now view the 'score' for The Latecomers and read more about Glenn Gould's love affair with the microphone.
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Elgar - the first of the new

Elgar was the first of the new. Since Purcell, England had not produced a composer for the European common market. Against -much against- the background of academicians who were destined to remain dilettanti, there emerged a self-taught amateur destined to become a master.

At the time of Elgar's birth Brahms was 24, Dvorák was 16, and Wagner 44. When he died, Vaughan Williams was 62, Walton was 32, Britten was 20 and Schoenberg 60. Elgar's musical fathers were far away; many, almost all of them were of the Austo-German tradition, with Brahms, rather than Wagner, as the most powerful influence; and none of them English.

In a penetrating article in the current issue of Music and Letters Donald Mitchell goes so far as to submit 'that to find Elgar today specifically English in flavour is to expose oneself as the victim of a type of collective hallucination.' Elgar's early success on the Continent, and with Continentals, was indeed striking. It needed a Continental - Hans Richter - to introduce the Enigma Variations, The Dream of Gerontius and the first Symphony (dedicated to him) to English audiences, and Düsseldorf heard Gerontius before London.

Hans Keller writes in Music and Musicians in June 1957, and contradicts the currently fashionable view that Elgar was not appreciated outside England.

Now playing ...

The Dream of Gerontius conducted by Benjamin Britten. The decision of the 'East Anglican' Britten (left) to record Elgar's Gerontius, with its hardline Catholic text by Cardinal Newman, was a surprising one. As a young music student Britten recorded in his diary in February 1931 that he listened on the radio to '1 minute of Elgar Symphony 2 but can stand no more,' and a few months later he condemned the Enigma Variations for their 'sonorous orchestration' which 'cloys very soon'. But in his sleeve note for the original LP release the composer William Alwyn described Newman's text as a 'Passion Play', and this may have appealed to Britten the composer of church parables.

Britten conducted an Aldeburgh Festival performance of Gerontius on June 9 1971, and the recording was made in the same month in Snape Maltings. William Mann described the concert performance as 'urgent, unsentimental and totally lacking in bombast', and Alan Blyth described the original LP release as 'a searing re-creation of the drama that I find at all times involving and convincing...Britten removes the veneer of sentimentality, even sanctimoniousness, that has for long come between us and Elgar's compulsive vision.'

The 1971 recording made by Decca, with the 'dream' cast including Peter Pears (left) and the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, is one of the classics of the gramophone. In the section that leads up to the life affirming chorus Praise to the Holiest in the height Britten shows his masterly control of the large forces, and the pre-digital sound is outstanding both for the lower registers and the three dimensional sound-stage captured by the Decca recording team. Elgar was a master composer, and Britten a master musician, this Dream of Gerontius is now back in the catalogue, buy it before it is again deleted.

Inclusiveness is out of fashion in classical music today, which means if contemporary music is your scene late-romantics like Elgar are the musical equivalent of dead meat. Next month we will be at Yoshi Oida's new production of Death in Venice in Snape Maltings. We should all remember that Britten recorded Elgar's great late-romantic masterpiece, Gerontius, in July 1971 in Snape Maltings while he was composing one of the great twentieth-century operas, Death in Venice, for performance in the same venue.

I started by quoting Hans Keller's view that Elgar was 'the first of the new'. We should also remember that Keller (left) championed Britten's music from the 1940s when it was still viewed as 'new' by the establishment. He was joint author of a Britten symposium in 1952, and the composer's 1975 String Quartet No. 3, with its last movement quote from Death in Venice, is inscribed to him. Britten died on December 7 1976, and his String Quartet No. 3 was given its first performance by the Amadeus Quartet two weeks later in Snape Maltings.

Benjamin Britten and Hans Keller recognised the greatness of Elgar's music. They also recognised the importance of inclusiveness, and embraced composers from Purcell to their twentieth-century contemporaries. Two very important messages as the 150th of Elgar's birth on Saturday June 2 approaches.

The music of Britain, and Britten ...

Hans Keller's headline, the first of the new, is a wordplay on the title of a patriotic 1942 film that Elgar would have approved of. The First of the Few was a biography of R.J. Mitchell (left), the designer of the Supermarine Spitfire (the film was renamed Spitfire for US release). The title comes from Winston Churchill who used these words to describe the Battle of Britain aircrews: "Never in the face of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few." And this overgrown path leads us to another great twentieth-century English composer; the soundtrack of The First of the Few, including the famous Spitfire Prelude and Fugue, was written by William Walton.

Contemporary music was as bitchy in the early twentieth-century as it is today. Elgar was not a fan of Walton's music, and said about Walton's Viola Concerto that the composer had murdered the poor unfortunate instrument. Elgar and Walton only met once, according to Lady Walton it was in the lavatory at a Worcester Three Choirs Festival concert. After the Second World War Walton fell out with Britten and Pears, and supposedly said that the all-male Billy Budd should be retitled The Bugger’s Opera or Twilight of the Sods (original production shot above).

Another late-twentieth-century composer who was a surprising champion of Elgar was Michael Tippett whose overseas concerts often included Elgar's music. In his autobiography (Hutchinson ISBN 009175307) Tippett describes a "stunning" Enigma Variations in Brussels with him conducting his beloved Leicester School Symphony Orchestra, and tells how 'afterwards a Belgian composer came to me and said, "What an extraordinary work - more interesting than Brahms' St Anthony Variations!"', and Tippett describes another Enigma played by the Saint Louis Symphony in 1968 under his baton as "one of the best performances (of the work) in the USA I guess". Tippett (left) was inclusiveness personified and embraced everything from Tallis (he made the first-ever recording of Spem in alium in 1948) through Elgar to the blues. But he also shared some of Walton's reservations about Billy Budd. Tippett stayed at Britten's house in Aldeburgh while the opera was being composed and told the story of 'a marvellous remark in the libretto - I think it got changed - when they were going to clear the decks in order to let off the gun, and the wonderful order, given by Claggart or somebody, "Clear the decks of seamen" I roared with laughter!'

Walton may have been irreverent about Billy Budd, but when the chips were down he came to Britten's aid. In 1942, the same year as The First of the Few was made, Walton appeared as a supporting witness at Britten's successful appeal for registration as a Conscientous Objectors. Britten's pacifism, like Tippett's, was controversial, but if his appeal had failed Britten could well have joined young composers such as Ivor Gurney and George Butterworth whose careers had been cut short by the previous World War, and who were lamented in the elegiac 1919 Cello Concerto of Edward Elgar. Which is where this path started.

For more on Elgar read the excruciating boredom of pure fact.
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Winds of change at Glyndebourne

Rows at Glyndebourne are usually confined to polite disagreements over a picnic spot or the staging of The Magic Flute. But the organisers of the quintessential summer opera festival now find themselves at the centre of a planning dispute over a proposed wind turbine that would be higher than the face of Big Ben.

Lewes District Council will determine the fate of a scheme that has divided opinion in East Sussex. Glyndebourne Opera House wants to build a 70m (230ft) turbine in its grounds in the South Downs, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and National Park designate. It claims that, by using the 850kw turbine to generate electricity, the opera house will cut its carbon emissions by 71 per cent.

However a coalition of four environmental groups – the South Downs Society, the Council for National Parks, the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) and the Ramblers’ Association – is determined to block the application, to Lewes District Council, which is expected to be heard on June 20.

They say that the turbine will ruin the surrounding countryside, destroying views over “hundreds of square kilometres”. While the organisations are in favour of renewable energy, they say they do not want a turbine on land due to become a National Park.

From today's Times. But there's better news on Glyndebourne in Britten's women.
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Since I believe ....

Since I believe that there is in every man the spirit of God, I cannot destroy...human life...The whole of my life has been devoted to acts of creation (being by profession a composer) and I cannot take part in acts of destruction...I believe sincerely that I can help my fellow human beings best, by continuing...the creation or propagation of music.

Statement sent to tribunal for the registration of Conscientous Objectors by Benjamin Britten in May 1942. Britten's War Requiem was first performed on May 30th 1962 in Coventry Cathedral.

Now read how men will go content with what we spoiled and we shall overcome.
Image credit from Prometheus, shows a rehearsal for the War Requiem in Coventry Cathedral. Britten to the right of the podium is talking to the principal conductor Meredith Davies. 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

A little less boy please ...

'A bit more Mann and a little less boy, please' demands the Guardian headline over its review of English National Opera's new production of Benjamin Britten's Death in Venice. A line of thinking that reminds me that the opera was banned from being shown to schoolchildren in Kent, England in 1989

In that year Conservative councillors forced Glynebourne Touring Opera to cancel performances planned for a school's festival. At the time the chair of Kent school's sub-committee said the decision was made because: 'It was felt that the question of homosexuality was not appropriate for all the schoolchildren who would attend.'

Elsewhere the ban was described as 'unbelievable', 'pernicious', and 'scandalous', and it was believed to be the first time any concern had been expressed about the opera since its 1973 premiere. Donald Mitchell of the Britten-Pears Foundation said the decision had been influenced by the controversial Section 28 legislation which prevented local authorities from promoting homosexuality. 'It is appalling that councils should ban a work of this stature by a composer who did so much for children. They have covered themselves in shame', he said."

A spokesperson for Kent County Council said children as young as ten would have seen the opera, and it was felt that its contents were just not suitable. The Section 28 legislation was repealed in 2003, but Kent County Council retained elements of it in their schools curriculum by teaching that heterosexual marriage and family relationships are the firm foundations for society.

Now let's celebrate not one, but two new productions of Death in Venice with Britten's champagne moment.
Sorry, my photo isn't the new ENO production, it's from the Opera Company of Philadelphia, image credit Stevenrickards.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

Super Size Me

While Lucretia was still on tour, Britten left for a brief visit to America - his first transatlantic journey by air - where Peter Grimes was at last to be staged at Koussevitzky's Berkshire Festival at Tanglewood, a vast event involving hundreds of music students, past and present. Three performances were given in early August by a young and enormous cast - enormous in every sense, for Eric Crozier, who had flown over to produce, recalls that in overfed America it was impossible to find a thin child to play the appentice.

The 1946 US premiere of Britten's Peter Grimes recalled in Humphrey Carpenter's book Benjamin Britten, A Biography (Faber ISBN 0571143253). The conductor was the twenty-eight-year-old Leonard Bernstein, his assistant was another musician who has featured here recently, Peter Paul Fuchs.

In 1945 Joan Cross had sung the role of Ellen Orford in the UK premiere of Peter Grimes conducted by Reginald Goodall, read more about Joan Cross here.
In my photo Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts’s holds a definitely not-overfed Apprentice in Opera North's 2006 production of Peter Grimes. Super Size Me is, of course, the title of Morgan Spurlock's 2004 feature film. 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

Holiday weekend - Aldeburgh

Mstislav Rostropovich relaxes against Benjamin Britten's Alvis in Aldeburg. The photo is undated but was probably taken in summer 1961. Now take a drive through Britten's Aldeburgh, but be careful, the composer was a notoriously speedy driver. Which prompts the question - is classical music too fast?
Photo from Humphrey Carpenter's book Benjamin Britten, A Biography (Faber ISBN 0571143253). 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

Jet set maestro's swan-song

A reader in Paris tells me that Valery Gergiev (left) failed to conduct a performance of Lohengrin at the Opéra National de Paris at the Bastille last night due to travel problems. Dresden born Michael Güttler deputised at the last minute and made a big impact. Güttler is a very talented young conductor who is making a career out of picking up the ball in Wagner after Gergiev has dropped it - he first came to prominence when he deputised for Gergiev in the Ring and Parsifal at the Marinsky in 2003.

An apocryphal story tells how Herbert von Karajan gets into a waiting limousine in Vienna during his time with the State Opera there, and the driver asks him where he wants to go. "It does not matter", he responds, "I'm wanted everywhere." What a shame that forty years on maestros are still admired for the tempi of their travel arrangements rather than the tempi of their performances.

There is now legal protection which gives passengers a refund when a plane is late or cancelled in the EU. How about a similar refund to concert-goers for no-show conductors and soloists to focus attention on travel planning? Other examples from readers of jet-set musicians finding the boarding gate closed will be published here. Meanwhile I suspect Michael Güttler will be getting a lot more career opportunities courtesy of galloping Gergiev.

Now see Karajan's private jet and motor-bike
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Holiday weekend - upstate New York

Benjamin Britten, Aaron Copland and Peter Pears in upstate New York during the summer of 1939. Peter Pears (right) is obviously thinking 'tis the gift to be free.
Photo from Humphrey Carpenter's excellent Benjamin Britten, A Biography (Faber ISBN 0571143253). 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

Naughty but nice

What are your musical equivalents of chocolate cake? - the performances you know you really shouldn't be enjoying, but do. Here is my menu of 'naughty but nice' music dishes:

Uri Caine's Wagner E Venezia - yes, I know it is a serious taste crime to admit to enjoying the Prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg played in the Piazza San Marco by an ensemble that includes accordion, piano and acoustic bass. But I do. Quite appropriately the recording was made live at the Gran Caffé Quadri, Piazza San Marco, Venice, and is complete with authentic background café sounds which provide a splendid counterpoint to the Tristan Liebestod. If you've never sampled this lovingly crafted, and packaged, chocolate torte from Uri Caine (photo above) I warmly recommend ordering a portion.

Karl Münchinger's Art of Fugue and Musical Offering with the Stuttgarter Kammerorchester reminds us of how Bach used to be performed before musical scholarship moved on. As one reviewer said: "This lush performance of Bach's complex Art of Fugue is as emotional as Barber's Adagio for Strings." But these 1976 recordings still blow me away. Stunning playing recorded in classic Decca sound in the Liederhalle, Stuttgart by the legendary team of producers Ray Minshull and James Mallinson, and recording engineers James Lock and Martin Fouqué.

Wagner makes his second appearance on my ultimate 'naughty but nice' disc. This is Glenn Gould playing his own transcriptions of Dawn and Siegfried's Rhine Journey and the Prelude to Die Meistersinger. This reissue is worth the price for these two transcriptions alone. The disc also includes Gould conducting members of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in a painfully slow Siegfried Idyll, which at almost twenty-five minutes outstays even Knappertsbusch's interpretation by several minutes. This conducting debut was the last thing Gould recorded before he went on tour with Bach, and it leaves us thankful that he didn't give up the day job. (Photo above shows a young Gould with one of his first teachers).

Bach sung in English may well be considered 'naughty.' But not only is my next nomination 'nice', but it is high up in my list of the greatest recordings ever made. Benjamin Britten set down his account of Bach's St John Passion in April 1971. With performers including Peter Pears, Gwynne Howell, John Shirley-Quirk, HeatherHarper, Alfreda Hodgson, Robert Tear, and the Wandsworth School Boys' Choir you know this is going to be something special. The English Chamber Orchestra reads like a Who's Who of instrumentalists. Kenneth Sillitoe is leader, Richard Adeney (flute), Cecil Aronowitz (viola) and Adrian Beers (double bass). Philip Ledger plays the harpsichord continuo originally prepared by Britten and Imogen Holst. And the 'naughty' English translation is made by none other than Peter Pears and Imogen Holst.

This recording of the St John Passion was made by Decca in Snape Maltings. It has to be said that if there is a weakness it is the engineering which falls somewhat short of Decca's signature Snape sound. Also watch out for the intrusive low frequency 'thumps' in the opening chorus which producer David Harvey really should have covered from alternative takes. But one factor places this performance in that stellar group of the greatest ever made - Britten's interpretation. Some of the tempi are surprisingly brisk, but this is one of those rare performances where musicality and humanity meet as equal partners. Naughty, but simply sublime.

Purists will consider any Bach transcription 'naughty but nice.' But my third Bach nomination comes just about as close to the spirit of the original as it is possible to get with a transcription. Paolo Pandolfo (right) was a founder member of early music group La Stravaganza, and is recognised as one of the leading exponents of the viola de gamba. His transcription of Bach's six Cello Suites (BWV 1007-12) on the enterprising Spanish Glossa label is really more of a re-interpretaion that a transcription. Four of the six keys are transposed, the well known G major Suite No. 1 is played in C major, the C minor Suite No. 5 is played in D minor, and so on. But this is done simply to make the most of the range of the viola de gamba, and it works beautifully allowing the warm tone of the gamba to really ring out. These are personal interpretations, and Pandolfo's reshaping of some of the lines will not be to everyone's taste, but this is wonderful music making.

To conclude with a 'naughty but nice' piece that I always find inexplicably moving - the finale to Bernstein's Candide, 'Make Our Garden Grow'. This is classic Lenny, over the top, superbly written, and absolutely heart on sleeve. One reviewer wrote of "its soaring sentimentality". I find it absolutely irresistible - just like chocolate cake. And if you want the recipe for the example seen in my header photo here it is.

Now read about my first classical record
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It is viewed as dumbing down ...

The BBC has suffered from lapses in impartiality in its coverage of business by seeking to popularise corporate stories and take the consumer's point of view, according to an independent report published yesterday. The Money Programme, Radio Five Live and the 10 O'Clock News are among the programmes singled out for criticism in the report on the impartiality of BBC business coverage. The study was commissioned by the BBC Trust from a panel chaired by the economist Sir Alan Budd.

Critics have accused the BBC of "dumbing down" its business coverage and failing to represent the shareholders' and employees' perspective on corporate stories. The report said that if companies record large profits, stories tend to focus on the negative aspects, rather than "examining the benefits to staff and society of a British company doing well".

"The need to attract and maintain an audience has led to some changes in the approach taken by business programmes towards a more popular style. In some quarters this is welcomed but in others it is viewed as 'dumbing down'. "We particularly noted this trend in the Money Programme. " Five Live was also singled out for focusing on consumer interests in business stories, and for presenters and reporters giving personal views.

The BBC is considering its response to the report. It was also warned to be careful over blogs. "We noted that the business editor made a scathing attack in his blog on the newly launched Microsoft Vista operating system. This appeared to be against the BBC's guidelines which state that blogs are subject to the same level of editorial care as other content," the report said.

Report from today's Guardian, full report via this link. Now will the BBC Trust commission a similar report on Radio 3?

For more on this read You are looking at the future of radio.
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My reputation is safe in your hands

Today's Lebrecht-style attack by Sakari Oramo - or was it his orchestra's spin-doctor? - on Sir Adrian Boult cannot pass unremarked. In the Guardian Oramo writes about the 'stoic stodginess' of Boult's Elgar. This is a surprising comment from the current principal conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra as Sir Adrian Boult was both chief conductor of the orchestra from 1924 to 1930 and an acclaimed interpreter of Elgar's music. After a 1920 performance of the Second Symphony conducted by Boult the composer wrote to him saying: 'I feel that my reputation in the future is safe in your hands. It was a wonderful series of sounds. Bless you!'

I have not had the pleasure of hearing Sakari Oramo's performances of Elgar, but I am sure they are very fine. But I can assure him that I heard many live performances of Elgar conducted by Boult and 'stoic stodginess' are the last words I would use to describe them. But then I don't think Oramo would know about his live performances. The last time Sir Adrian conducted in the concert hall was on October 12 1977, when Oramo was 12.

After his last concert appearance in London Sir Adrian conducted several more ballet performances of Elgar's music (The Sanguine Fan and Enigma Variations). He also continued to record, and on December 20 1978 completed the sessions at EMI's Abbey Road Studios for an LP of Sir Hubert Parry's Symphonic Variations, Fifth Symphony and Lament for Brahms. We knew this was to be the last ever recording session for the 89 year-old conductor, and he kindly signed and dated my copy of his autobiography, seen above, after the session on that historic day.

Sir Adrian Boult was both a wonderful musican and one of the greatest-ever interpreters of Elgar's music. He was a conductor who built his reputation in the concert hall and on record, not by making silly comments in newspaper articles.

Now read an exclusive on the mystery of Elgar's Violin Concerto.
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Let's hear it for the advertorial

It's goodbye great music journalism and hallo 'advertorial'. For confirmation look no further than today's Guardian film and music supplement which devotes its front page and a full inside page to two Elgar stories. The main article is a reheating of the familiar story about Elgar not being appreciated outside England spiced-up with a few snide comments about authoritative Elgar interpreters.

The byline of this page 3 lead story is Sakari Oramo, principal conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO). But the copy, which plugs CBSO performances of the Dream of Gerontius and makes the case for a biennial Elgar festival (hosted by the CBSO perhaps?) is all too obviously written by the orchestra's PR department. At least the 'advertorial' source is transparent, the piece ends with the footer - The CBSO plays The Dream of Gerontius at Symphony Hall, Birmingham (0121-780 3333) on June 1.

Below the CBSO puff is yet another Elgar 'reappraisal', this time by David Pownall, which reheats the critical rejection of the composer's Second Symphony. Again the advertorial source is obvious from the footer - David Pownall's Elgar Rondo is broadcast on Radio 3 on June 3 at 8.30pm. Details of Radio 3's Elgar programming are at bbc.co.uk/radio3/classical/elgar.

It's a pity that Guardian Arts Editor Charlotte Higgins didn't spend the money saved from journalists fees on copy checkers. The previous day's Guardian story about the newly published photos of Hitler at Bayreuth said: The photographer was hosted by the chairman of the Bayreuth chamber of commerce, who was a member of Hitler's inner circle - as was British-born Winifred Wagner, the composer's widow. Readers of my recent article Phantom of the Opera will know, of course, that Winifred was not Richard Wagner's widow, she was the wife of the composer's son Siegfried.

Elsewhere in today's Guardian Andrew Clements shows that music journalism can be more than toothless advertorials. In his review of ECM's new recording of Valentin Silvestrov's Sixth Symphony Clements writes -

Though the ECM catalogue embraces a huge range of contemporary composers, from Lachenmann and Kurtag to Steve Reich and Meredith Monk, it has a weakness for the composers of the post-Shostakovich generation from the former Soviet Union. One of those is the Ukraine-born (in 1937) Valentin Silvestrov, who in the 1970s seems to have flirted with compositional techniques imported from the western European avant garde before settling upon the limply anecdotal style of his later works. One of those is the achingly empty Sixth Symphony, completed in 1995, which takes up this disc. It's built in an arch form, with linked pairs of movements flanking the central 25-minute one that begins with a reminiscence of the Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony. Unfortunately, Silvestrov lacks Mahler's gifts as a melodist or as a musical architect, and like the other movements this lapses into posturing gestures. The over-heated essays in the CD booklet do Silvestrov few favours either.

Great music journalism from Andrew Clements, but the over-heated essays elsewhere in the Guardian do Elgar few favours either. Why not let the music critics write the features and the orchestras play the concerts?

Now read more about Guardian advertorials
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Glenn Gould's love affair with the microphone

One Sunday morning in December 1950, I wandered into a living-room-sized radio-studio, placed my services at the disposal of a single microphone belonging to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and proceeded to broadcast "live" - tape was already a fact of life in the recording industry but, in those days, radio broadcasting still observed the first-note-to-last-and-damn-the-consequences synodrome of the concert-hall - two sonatas, one by Mozart [K.281], one by Hindemith [No. 3]. It was my first network broadcast...a memorable one...that moment in my life when I first caught a vague impression of the direction it would take, when I realised that the collected wisdom of my peers and elders to the effect that technology represented a compromising, dehumanising intrusion into art was nonsense, when my love affair with the microphone began.

Glenn Gould describes the start of his love affair with the microphone. My source is Kevin Bazzana's highly recommended Wondrous Strange, The Life and Art of Glenn Gould (Yale University Press ISBN 0300103743). The header image shows a page from Gould's score of Hindemith's song cycle Das Marienlebenwhich he recorded with the Ukrainian born soprano Roxolana Roslak in 1977. As is usual for Gould there are very few interpretive markings, but the page is covered in editing notes - left click on the images to enlarge them.

The graphic below is very interesting, and it is not a score for a contemporary music composition. It shows CBC technician Lorne Tulk's plan for the epilogue of Gould's radio documentary The Latecomers (1969). The documentary was commissioned to promote CBC's new FM stereo service, and the central line shows the movement of the narrator from right to left of the soundstage. Much attention has been given to Gould's work in the music studio, but his pioneering and innovative "contrapuntal radio documentaries" are sadly neglected. Time for reconsideration perhaps?


Gould was in love with the microphone, now read about the best damn record he ever made, and follow this link for audio recordings from the official Glenn Gould archive.
Both images from Glenn Gould Estate with full acknowledgements. 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

A good friend of the house of Wagner

BBC News reports ~ Photographs of Adolf Hitler - taken by a Nottinghamshire spy weeks before the start of World War II - have been made public for the first time. Charles Turner took the images at the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth, Germany in July 1939. He was given unprecedented access to the Nazi leader, and toured the festival as part of his entourage.

The photographs have been released by Mr Turner's son David, 64, after he began researching his family history. Mr Turner, of West Bridgford, told the Nottingham Evening Post that his father had chatted to the German leader and other members of the Third Reich - including Joseph Goebbels and Rudolf Hess - as the party toured the festival. They assumed Mr Turner - a guest of a member of Hitler's inner circle - was merely a fellow music fan.

Mr Turner said: "My father regarded these photos as an extraordinary souvenir of a remarkable and fortuitous event. "They are very, very important to me and my family and for all this period of time - my father died in 1977 - I have regarded the possession of these photos as an intimate family matter. "My father never spoke to me about it. Only he could answer why. That's not to say I didn't know what happened but as a child your perception and awareness of things are very different," he said.

He said he made the decision to release the images to the newspaper, which were taken on a Kodak Eastman folding camera, when he began to trace his family's roots. Charles Turner sent a detailed report of his meet back to London. His son has been told by the Home Office that the document is still classified and may never be released.

From BBC News. My header photo is not one of the spy photos, but comes from Winifred Wagner, A Life at the Heart of Hitler’s Bayreuth by Brigitte Hamann which I reviewed in my article The Phantom of the Opera, and which also supplies my headline quote. Elsewhere read how Hitler said Wagner - I don't get to hear anything else. And view more extraordinary photos from the Third Reich discovered via An Overgrown Path.
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You are looking at the future of radio

Xfm, a UK alternative music station broadcasting in London, Scotland and Manchester to an audience of more than one million, is axing its daytime presenters in a radical move to a computerised playlist decided by listeners. The six-hour DJ-free "all music" daytime schedule is being marketed as "Radio to the Power of U", and will play songs programmed by listeners via text, phone and the Xfm website.

Human presenters are the latest casualty of the inexorable rise of the computerised playlist, and it is a trend that is affecting classical broadcasting as well as rock. In the UK computerised playlists were pioneered for classical stations by Classic FM who use GSelector playlist software originally developed for rock stations, and seen in my header image. The working of this software was described in a 1988 copyright court action:

"A detailed categorisation of each track of music in [Classic FM's] library fed as a data base into Selector enabled Selector to select the individual track for any hour of the day in accordance with any choice of programme made by reference to a combination of categories by a programme director. The particular advantage of the Selector system was that it enabled [Classic FM] to provide a balanced rotation of music, composers and performers and to reflect in the frequency of choice of track and in the choice of time when it was played its popularity and mood, and to avoid repetition or the personal preference of the presenter influencing the selection of the music played on the air." (Robin Ray v Classic FM Plc [1998] FSR 622)

Classic FM's use of the computerised playlist has been devastatingly successful in the ratings war. In the first three months of 2007 Classic FM reached an audience of 6.03m listeners, up from 5.71m the previous year, while during the same period BBC Radio 3's audience dropped below the important 2.0 million threshold, declining from 2.1m to 1.9m (source Rajar via BBC).

Ratings, and not quality, are now the primary focus of BBC management, and the success of Classic FM has been the driver for successive changes in Radio 3 in recent years. One of many knee-jerk reactions was the recruitment of Classic FM presenter Petroc Trelawny who has contributed to the BBC station's 9.5% audience decline by alienating most of Radio 3's core audience with his folky presentation style. Trelawny has been joined by a swathe of similar primetime presenters such as Sara Mohr-Pietsch and Sean Rafferty (photo below) whose role is simply to provide the aural laxative that maintains the flow of ratings-friendly programmes.


Radio 3's attempts to counter Classic FM have become increasingly desperate, ranging from 24/7 'Diana moments' such as the Beethoven Experience and Bach Christmas to giving away unrestricted downloads of complete symphonies to the horror of the music industry. But as the ratings show none of these worked, and the biggest blow to the BBC has been that its massive investment in new technology has failed to translate into increased audiences. As reported here the BBC Trust recently blocked on-demand replaying of classical music, and questions are now being asked about the lack of return on the BBC's massive investment in new technologies .

The core problem is that the Radio 3 can't do ratings, and now very rarely does great radio. The ratings war is lost because Classic FM is a commercial station and can do ratings better than a public broadcaster. To do great radio you need to be distinctive, inclusive and personal, and Radio 3's strategy of chasing down Classic FM means it has lost its distinctiveness. Its bland ratings-driven schedules have no place for diverse music so it is no longer inclusive, and the challenging output created by visionary personalities such as William Glock and John Drummond has been replaced by ratings-chasing mediocrity devised by BBC apparatchik's such as Roger Wright and Nicholas Kenyon.

All this doomsaying about BBC Radio 3 gives me no pleasure at all. I once worked for the BBC, and Radio 3 and the Proms were a central part of my music education. Radio 3 can still do great radio, and I have praised here the work of Michael Berkeley and Iain Burnside and others, and this week there are live evening concerts from the Bath Festival including a recital by oud virtuoso Dhafer Youssef - albeit presented by the ubiquitous and egregious Petroc Trelawny.

But Radio 3 is now between a rock and a hard place. Classic FM is the rock against which ratings are judged, and new media is emerging as a hardplace on the other side of the network. The BBC bet the farm on new technology and lost. But the very new media which the BBC failed to leverage may well be the undoing of its classical music network. Webcasting, podcasting and the new third-tier of low power community stations in the UK will bring a new generation of boutique broadcasters that can ignore ratings and focus on being distinctive, inclusive and personal. Where does that then leave Radio 3?

* A great example of the new wave of boutique radio is Amsterdam based Radio MonaLisa, which I have written about previously. Each Thursday from 6.00 to 7.00pm Central European time presenter Patricia Werner Leanse proves that radio can be distinctive, inclusive and personal. Tomorrow (May 24) she broadcasts sixty minutes of vocal music from a composer featured here recently, Elisabeth Lutyens. On May 31 Patricia showcases Out of the Dark (1998) by Texan born Pauline Oliveros, who has already made one appearance on the path this week. Follow this link for Radio Monalisa. Across the Atlantic San Francisco based Other Minds also does great boutique radio via radiOM.org, their current podcasts include John Cage and David Tudor in concert in 1965, and Stravinsky in rehearsal in 1947.


Now read about what happens when BBC Radio 3 gets it right
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Charles pushes the new music envelope

Prince Charles has commissioned a piano concerto in memory of the Queen Mother. It is a great time to commission new music in the UK with Mark-Anthony Turnage, Thomas Adès, Judith Weir, the Queen's own Master of the Music Peter Maxwell Davies and many other contemporary composers just waiting for the royal command. So who did our future king choose? Well .... Nigel Hess actually.

Here, from his publisher's website, is an extract from Hess' resumé: He has worked extensively as a composer and conductor in television, theatre and film. His numerous credits include A Woman of Substance, Vanity Fair, Campion, Testament (Ivor Novello Award for Best TV Theme), Summer’s Lease (Television & Radio Industries Club Award for Best TV Theme), Maigret, Classic Adventure (‘Music from the Movies’ Award for Best BBC Theme), Dangerfield, Just William, Stick With Me Kid for Disney, Wycliffe for HTV (Royal Television Society Nomination for Best TV Theme and ‘Music from the Movies’ Award for Best ITV Theme), and the BBC’s Hetty Wainthropp Investigates starring Patricia Routledge (Ivor Novello Award for Best TV Theme and Royal Television Society Nomination for Best TV Theme).

If my friends from Sequenza21 want to book their transatlantic flights for the royal premiere it is in July with Lang Lang at the well-prepared piano. Quite appropriately Lang Lang was inspired to become a pianist by seeing a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

Now read how Charles said Alban Berg - you can't call that music
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Going Buddhist with Lou Harrison

'That Pope John Paul II took the trouble in his books to attack Buddhism suggests that there might be something valuable here. Why else would he see it as a dangerous rival belief system? It offers hope to those of us who are hurt by the speed and aggression of the modern world, willing to look within to try to moderate our own aggressive pace and notice that we often run the gauntlet of purely imaginary dangers; or inhabit a fog of no-feeling' ~ from Going Buddhist by Peter J Conradi (Short Books ISBN 1904977014). I've just returned from a few days at the Padmaloka Buddhist retreat centre here in rural Norfolk. The accompanying photos were taken by me at Padmaloka, and, believe it or not, the shrine room below is a converted Norfolk barn!


Now playing is Joanna MacGregor's recording of the piano concerto by a composer with a deep commitment to Buddhism. Lou Harrison was born ninety years ago, on May 14 1917, and died in 2003. Here is an interview with him by Dr Geoff Smith, Head of Music, Bath Spa University which explores some of the Eastern influences on the composer's music. The interview is republished from Joanna MacGregor's excellent SoundCircus website.

I'd like to start by asking you about living and composing on the West Coast of America as opposed to the East. What are the differences between the two, and why have you chosen the West?
Well, why would anyone choose the East? The division in the United States is no longer between North and South, it's the Rockies. As I like to point out, starlings and Lyme Disease (a very dangerous disease first found in East Lyme, Connecticut) have both made it to California from the East. The Rockies are the great divide. California is a very different part of the United States - it's a very special civilization. In between the East and California is, from my point of view, the real America, that is to say the four states of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. That to me is America, the rest is peripheral - shore stuff.

How would you describe 'West Coast' music? What would you say is its essence?
Well, there's no one 'is' about it. I have defined it as being freer. We're not bound up with industrial 'twelve-tone-ism' quite so much as the East seaboard is, and also we're not afraid out here if something sounds pretty. I don't see that increased complexity is any solution at all. We also have a very strong connection with Asia. People in New York commute to Europe all the time, and that feels strange to me. I habitually go to Asia. This is Pacifica, that's Atlantica. They're different orientations. I don't think that there is a composer in the West who is not aware of that. We're all aware, from Seattle and Vancouver down to San Diego, that we're part of Pacifica. For some of us it feels more natural than for others. I came to my legal maturity (I've never really grown up) in San Francisco, where every week I went to the Cantonese Opera. I constantly heard Asian music. I heard my first gamelan in the middle of San Francisco Bay, and half of my friends go back and forth to Indonesia and Japan all the time. I mean, gee whizz, yesterday morning I finished one of my boxes of Kellogg's Ken Mai flakes. You can't get them in this country - my Japanese friends send them to me. So we have a regular transit across the
Pacific.


Going back to West versus East, how is your relationship with European tradition changed? Was it always so clear to you that you were looking East?
Well, I lived in Manhattan for ten years and had a breakdown at the end of it, which revealed to me that I was not a true New Yorker. So I moved back here, with an intermission of a couple of years at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, which was very pleasant. After I got back, my parents wanted to give me a little place to work in. Just a couple of doors from here was a place they had looked at. I looked at it, and it was just like my studio at Black Mountain College, so I said, 'That's it.' That was I954, and that's why I'm here. Also, Harry Partch was in San Francisco at that time, and we stayed friends till he died in San Diego. John [Cage] was here for a long time too, but that was early on, in the late 1930's. But there's a tradition in California. For example, Mills College, the Centre for Contemporary Music has been going for a long time- Pauline Oliveros, Morton Subotnick, Ramon Sender, Terry Riley. Cal Arts has been a lively place, as has La Jolla in San Diego. There's a centre in Portland, Oregon, and Seattle is a hotbed. But it also goes along the whole coast and includes Mexico and Vancouver too.

What is it about living in the country that appeals to you?
Well, as I said, I 'did' ten years in Manhattan and finally had a breakdown. Three days in a city now and I'm quite flipped. There's too much noise. I just can't do with it. But these days a fax can come in from anywhere in the world, books and records can be ordered from anywhere. When I first moved here, to Aptos, there was very little: no real bookstores, the university was not here, neither was Cabrillo College. It was really rural. Then it gradually piled up, and now it's a classy metropolitan area. I used to go to San Francisco almost monthly, not only for sex but for books and galleries. Now there are lots of bookstores, galleries, craftsmen and intellectuals. There's a Shakespeare festival and the Cabrillo music festival every year. I see no reason why anybody has to live in depraved surroundings, in deteriorated air etc. Be yourself. If you want a calmer life then take it, for heaven's sake. The mind doesn't stop.


You studied with Henry Cowell first, then Schoenberg. What did they give you?
Lots. Cowell gave me an enormous amount of 'how to' knowledge, including how to write a serial piece before I went to Schoenberg. Also an immense stimulation about world music. He was an absolutely fascinating man, because of his knowledge not only of world music but also of how to do different things. His book New Musical Resources continues to be very stimulating, as does the symposium that he put out years ago, American Composers on American Music. From Schoenberg, oddly enough, I learned simplicity. I got myself into a corner one day, so I took the problem to him. He extricated me by saying, 'Only the salient. Only the important. Don't go any further. Just do what is going ahead and in its most salient form.' In short, no complications - strip it. I've sometimes wondered whether, when I write a Balungan for a Javanese gamelan for only five or seven notes, it might have something to do with Schoenberg's admonition. When I left he said that I was not to study with anybody, that I didn't need that. He said, 'Study only Mozart'. That was his admonition - simplicity. He was a wonderful man, incidentally, quite unlike the image a lot of people seem to have of him as some sort of German militarist. I mean, he was Viennese! His liquor bills were very high and he smoked too much. His fingers were iodine-coloured. But he also had a good sense of his own virtues and faults.

Could you tell us something about the American gamelan, and how it differs from the Indonesian gamelan?
Firstly, the shapes and forms are different, because for the most part we do not do bronze, which is a very difficult metal to deal with. We use aluminium and/or iron. On the West Coast, Bill Colvig pioneered the use of aluminium (he's built two very large gamelans) and on the East Coast, Dennis Murphy and his pupil Barbara Benary used iron in a more or less traditional way. This country is flooded with gamelans - about one hundred and fifty or so - and a fair proportion of them are American-built. Bill's first gamelan was pipes and slabs, and it was his discovery that an aluminium slab resonated with cans soldered together that first stirred the enthusiasm for building, both in Berkeley and San Jose.

So the main difference is in the material they're made of?
Also the tunings and the range. Some gamelans in the United States have wider ranges than the Balungan instruments; instead of six or seven tones, they have maybe two octaves. All Bill's gamelans have two octaves. They run from five to five in both pelog and slendro. Predictably, there are melodies that will not work unless you have those extra tones. That's why they're there and, sure enough, some of my best music requires them. So it's range and tuning- some of us use just intonation of various sorts. In fact, the slendro part of the gamelan C Betty (which is one of the gamelans that Bill made, dedicated to Betty Freeman) is, to our great surprise, tuned to a schema attributed to Claudius Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD in Alexandria. I thought I'd invented it, but it's hard to invent anything these days.


Was there a point in your career or a particular piece where you felt you'd found your own voice?
Well, some day I probably will!

Is your music performed in Indonesia?
Yes. As a matter of fact, I'm astonished to find that there may be a retrospective of my work in Jakarta. Well, what Western composer would have a retrospective in Jakarta?! So yes, I'm well-known. In fact, I am told that my Double Concerto for Violin, Cello and Javanese Gamelan is required listening in the state conservatories.

How did Harry Partch inspire you?
When the first printing of Harry's book came out, Virgil Thomson was sent a review copy because he was writing for the New York Herald Tribune. He gave it to me the following day and said, 'See what you can make of this.' Of course I was utterly fascinated and within the week I'd bought a tuning wrench for the piano, and I've been doing it ever since. The piano in here, which used to be a favourite of Percy Grainger's and was given to me by the Cowells, is tuned in Kirnberger Number Two, as is my Piano Concerto, and I keep it that way. Harry and I had a very close relationship which went on for years. Betty Freeman was his patron. She set him up in houses, underwrote his work, and gave him money if he wanted to do a big thing, which he often did. There was a movement to make copies of Harry's work and put the original instruments in the Smithsonian Institute. That's been going on for ever. When I last saw Danlee Mitchell, a few years ago, he and some friends had reconstructed some of the dilapidated instruments but with new and more durable materials. They sounded better, as a matter of fact. Harry wasn't a luthière, you know. He was, as he said, a musician seduced into carpentry. So some of them could profitably be rebuilt in more resonant and more durable materials. He accepted a large psaltery I had built - it's part of that instrumental collection and he gave me a set of instruments too, bamboo things. So yes, we exchanged instruments, ideas, and pleasantries- and he made wonderful mint juleps too!

You're written some of your texts recently in Esperanto.
Yes, a few. It's a language I like. And I'm having the astonishing discovery that when I practise sign language now, occasionally in my head I slip into the Esperanto version. This morning I had an insight from reading this month's Scientific American, which is devoted to the brain and the linguistic centres. I suddenly realized that my recent interest in sign language is not only because Bill and George (a close friend) are getting deaf, but also because I had heart surgery three or four years ago and the first thing I noticed afterwards was that my linguistic centres were screwed up. I'd been doing spoonerisms like 'I don't want to work and work and die in my salad' instead of 'saddle'. Clearly, my interest in sign language is partly in getting into my linguistic centres again to try to remedy that.


Do you use European models for the structures of your pieces?
I'm mad for one European form, the medieval estampie. I've written too many of them, in fact; my latest symphony is the last one, and I'm not going to go any further. I like ABAs and rondos too. I'm particularly fond of the French rondo with no variation - not the Viennese rondo with its transposition of the subject, as in Mozart and Haydn. I also like some of the contrapuntal forms - passacaglias and things like that - though I use them less. I have quite a good historical background in European music.

Did your studies of Indonesian forms throw up whole new ways of working?
Indonesian forms are different from European forms. It knocks you numb when you first realize what the formal range is in Indonesian music. ABA would be simple-minded in Indonesia. There are forms whose first line lasts, say, eight counts and there are forms whose first line lasts, say, 385 counts. Then they go through a process known as irama, which is tempo layers. If you take a form of ten lines of 385 counts, for example, take one ten times that, and then shift it to the fifth irama - which means that it would expand by five geometric times - you get some idea where you're going. There's also the practice of using certain instruments to mark off where you are. It's a little bit like the chords: you know that you're not at the tonic when you're on V or IV- those are subsidiary cadences. Similarly, you know when you come to the great song, which is the equivalent of the tonic. So the shape, tonally, is very controlled, and it's instrumentally indicated. Its size, its interconnections and what you can do are breath-taking, that's all I can say. I will never, for the rest of my life, be bored as long as there are gamelans and players around. And writing too. If I write now, just out of my head, there are only two things I really like to do. One of them is harps and other tuned instruments playing modes, usually from the antique world but sometimes made up. And the other is gamelan compositions. I instinctively write Balungans now, which is the skeleton line for a gamelan piece. Up on Mount Hamilton, we just premiered my Gending in honour of Max Beckmann. It eliminates the pitch two in pelog, which makes a fascinating mode. The next one is in honour of Munakata Shiko - the other great artist of the century, I think.

Do you have any specific way of working, like so many hours per day or certain times?
They don't let me. The phone or the fax or visitors or whatever are happening all the time, and I do well if I get a half an hour in during the day. I have a load of work that I can never really accomplish. I've also been designing my own type fonts - I made four last year and my book of poems uses two of them. I now have a subsidiary career as a poet! I'm also sending slides of my paintings and drawings to the Los Angeles County Museum of Contemporary Art, which is originating an exhibition that's perhaps going around the world.


Many thanks to SoundCircus and Dr Geoff Smith for the Lou Harrison (photo above) interview. Now read about Lou Harrison's straw-bale studio
Photographs of Padmaloka Centre taken by Pliable May 19 2007 and (c) On An Overgown Path. And yes, I know that Padmaloka is run by the Friends of Western Buddhism, and I'm aware of the baggage. 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

What exactly is a contemporary classic?

'Peter Sellars doesn't think the age of genius - of great classical music - is dead. At all. When I last met him, wandering the streets of Vienna, he was raving about John Adams's latest opera A Flowering Tree - 'You can put his recent pieces up against anything of Verdi' - and the new Kaija Saariaho oratorio La Passion De Simone, which he called 'breathtaking'.

Sellars could be right. This is the most interesting time in classical music for at least a generation. It's safe to get back in the water after the chilly era of the over-intellectual avant-garde (the legacy of Arnold Schoenberg's 12-tone technique) or the initially exciting but occasionally facile repetitions of the Philip Glass and Steve Reich generation (cited as an influence by pop acts as different as Giorgio Moroder and Sonic Youth). Some of the most inspiring, moving and challenging - and also some of the most daft and insane - music of this century has been written by contemporary composers.

10 contemporary classics

1. El Nino - John Adams (2000)
2. Tevot - Thomas Ades (2007)
3. St Mark Passion - Osvaldo Golijov (2003)
4. L'Amour de Loin - Kaija Saariaho (2000)
5. 3rd String Quartet - Gorecki (2007)
6. Neruda Songs - Peter Lieberson (2007)
7. You Are (Variations) - Steve Reich (2006)
8. A Flowering Tree- John Adams (2006)
9. Nuevo - Kronos Quartet (2001)
10. The Tempest - Thomas Ades (2003)'

From a major feature in today's Observer Music Monthly. Great to see contemporary music getting the exposure it serves. But the article rather misses the point that there is a lot of exciting new music, and even some contemporary classics, beyond the corporate bandwagons of Adams, Ades, Glass, Gorecki, Golijov, Reich et al.

Now read about inspiring, moving and challenging new music from a host of other contemporary composers.
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Domino effect boosts music industry

A splendid piece of music trivia in yesterday's Guardian Financial section about Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL), the organisation that collects music licensing revenues in the UK ~ 'PPL was formed by EMI and Decca in 1934 after a test case brought against a Bristol coffee shop for playing a record of French composer Auber's Overture, The Black Domino, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, without consent. The case set a precedent that the owners of sound recordings should be paid for the broadcasting and public performance of their copyrights'.

Daniel Auber was a French composer who lived from 1782 to 1871, and his opéra comique The Black Domino (Le domino noir) was his most successful work. There was a fine recording conducted by Richard Bonynge, which is now deleted. Daniel Auber and those shellac 78s of The Black Domino overture may now be long forgotten, but their impact isn't. Today PPL collects almost £100m annually on behalf of record companies and performers.

Now read about the French Eric Whitacre.
Image sampled from Domino Effect II by Susan Gillette. 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

Contemporary composer's missing notes

The manager of the Queen's composer has been arrested in connection with a fraud complaint. Sir Peter Maxwell Davies called in police after as much as £500,000 reportedly went missing from his business account. Officers from Metropolitan Police and Northern Constabulary launched an investigation, and the composer's manager and long-time friend Michael Arnold was arrested last month. He has been bailed pending further enquiries ~ reports Dumfries.co.uk.

Sadly, not a good year for the musician with teeth, in January he also had his gay Orkney wedding was derailed.
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The most interesting thing in life ...

'In art what is interesting is the structure of evolution, the direction things take. You can talk about beginning, development and end in many ways but in my view the idea of development is the most interesting thing in life' ~ Elliott Carter, Literary works. Italian. [le traduzioni dei saggi di questo volume sono di] autori vari ; a cura di Enzo Restagno. Torino, EDT/Musica 1989.

Now read about a standing ovation for Elliott Carter
Sorry, the score isn't Elliott Carter, the painting is Le Violin rouge, vers 1948 by the Fauvist Raoul Dufy. 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

Harvard was decidedly conservative

Harvard's political culture in the early 1920s was decidedly conservative. Soon after Robert Oppenheimer's arrival, the university imposed a quota to restrict the number of Jewish student. (By 1922, the Jewish student population had risen to twenty-one percent.) In 1924, the Harvard Crimson reported on its front age that the university's former president Charles W. Eliot had publicly declared it "unfortunate" that growing numbers of the "Jewish race" were intermarrying with Christians. Few such marriages, he said, turned out well, and because biologists had determined that Jews are "prepotent" the children of such marriages "will look like Jews only." While Harvard accepted a few Negroes, President A. Lawrence Lowell staunchly refused to allow them to reside in the freshman dormitories with whites.

From American Prometheus, the Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. Now read about a Harvard alumni with musical connections, who had strong views on Jews.
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Twentieth century music on an overgrown path

My article on the Berlin Philharmonic's darkest hour told how the 23 year old violinist Gerhard Taschner (photo above) played in the orchestra's final concert before the surrender of Berlin in 1945. DG Archiv has just released a CD of Taschner's playing which combines the Bruch Concerto with two lesser known 20th century violin concertos by Hans Pfitzner (1869-1949) and Wolfgang Fortner (1907-1987).

Elsewhere my centenary tribute to Elizabeth Maconchy lamented that two important Lyrita CDs of her orchestral music had not been transferred to CD. Well, forget the complaint, the new owners of Lyrita have now combined the music from the two CDs onto a single CD which includes Maconchy's gorgeous Symphony for Double String Orchestra, and Manoug Parikian playing the Serenata Concertante for Violin and Orchestra. No excuse now not to get to know the music of this scandalously neglected composer.

Another outstanding CD of twentieth century music from the path is the BBC Legends release of Bruno Maderna conducting Mahler's Ninth Symphony. This recording dates from 1971, and I was fortunate to hear Maderna conduct this work at a Promenade Concert shortly before his untimely death in 1973. That evening was one of the most profound musical, and emotional, experiences of my life. This CD of Mahler Nine is one that I will return to repeatedly; a reviewer described it as 'an incandescent performance of a masterpiece'. I can add nothing more to that other than to express the hope that we may see a revival of interest in Maderna the composer as well as Maderna the conductor.

For more musical memories read The Year is '72
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The Eyes of Van Gogh

Genius on the edge of madness has been a destination of the path several times, including my article I am a camera - Vincent van Gogh. So I was interested to receive this email from Alexander Barnett:

I am the writer director of the just released film, 'The Eyes of Van Gogh." The film shows the horrific year that Vincent spent at the insane asylum of St. Remy. In the article 'I Am A Camera' there are some major discrepancies which I must point out. 'His period of intense creativity there changed the course of western art.' Vincent did indeed do some excellent work there but in spite of brilliant exceptions, his greatest work, by far, was that of his Arlesian period, Feb. 1888 to May 1889.

'During his confinement this remarkable institution encouraged his painting and gave him the facilities and space to work...The far sighted Doctor Peyron was practicing an early form of art therapy...Saint Paul de Mausole is an inspirational establishment that pioneered the treatment of psychiatric illness and it still continues today the therapies that fanned the flames of Van Gogh's creativity.' The institution of St Remy never encouraged Vincent to work, on the contrary, Dr. Peyron opposed the idea from the very beginning and with the greatest reluctance allowed him to paint.

I am very glad to hear that they now offer workshops in art therapy, etc. but this was definitely not the case when Vincent was there. The sole treatment was hydrotherapy-hot baths, twice a week. The idea of any kind of work was anathema. There were no books in the asylum, no distractions except bowls and draughts. Vincent found it loathsome that they were given nothing to do. As he said, they were like vegetables, sitting around all day eating, digesting and waiting for their next meal. If the authorities today claim otherwise they're lying. Vincent's letters prove it. Vincent suffered four attacks at St. Remy. After the final one Dr. Peyron forbid him to paint in spite of his pleading. It was then that he left St.Remy. For those who would like to see what really happened at St Remy check out my film, 'The Eyes of Van Gogh - Alexander Barnett.


Discussion and exploration is what On An Overgrown Path is all about, so I'm more than happy to publish this email; but I would politely disagree with claims of 'lying' and 'major discrepancies'. My article was based on a visit to Saint Paul de Mausole (which is when I took the photo above and the others in my article). The institution's own account was then checked against several independent sources. David Sweetman's The Love of Many Things - A Life of Vincent Van Gogh (Hodder & Stoughton ISBN 03405037260) corroborates the official version with passages such as the following:

'Peyron arranged for Vincent's studio room to overlook the garden and was happy that the patient should occupy himself with painting, provided he did not exert himself too much.'

Elsewhere Jean Leymarie's Van Gogh (Skira ISBN 0333242203) explains that Dr Peyron's reasons for stopping van Gogh from painting was due to fear that the artist would self-harm by swallowing the poisonous pigments. Jean Leymarie explains how ...

... during his attacks Van Gogh did no painting. He acted like one possessed, trying to swallow raw paint from the tubes and rolling in the coal bin.

As for the relative creative importance of Van Gogh's output in Arles and St Rémy the authority on Van Gogh, Jean Leymarie, writes:

Over a hundred and fifty paintings and a hundred drawings in one year betoken, not illness, but a heroic victory over illness and make Saint-Rémy, for all the interruptions he suffered, one of the highpoints of his career. "Never perhaps," said Emile Bernard, "did he paint so well and so boldly." ... After Arles there was no falling off in the intensity of his art, but it changed poles, it passed from color to form or rather to the movement of form, from the exaltation of color to linear dynamism."

The same picture seen through different eyes I guess. And here, to remind us of his genius, are the olive trees at Saint-Rémy seen through the eyes of Vincent Van Gogh.


Now read about an opera set in a mental hospital.
Header photo is still from The Eyes of Van Gogh, the middle photo is by Pliable and copyright On An Overgrown Path. The painting above, Olive Trees with Yellow Sky and Sun, is exhibited at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. 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

Clearing Chicago's poisoned atmosphere

Reblogged with much pleasure from Michael Hovnanian, double bassist for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra ~ About an hour into the first rehearsal of the Bruckner 7th under Bernard Haitink I had a disquieting thought. The Bruckner symphonies were a staple of our former music director so I have spent many hours rehearsing them, hours I will unfortunately never get back. After finishing the first movement I realized I had been holding myself in a kind of cringe that was just beginning to relax. Where was the browbeating? Where were the condescending lectures? What happened to the tedium? And yet the orchestra sounded fabulous, better than we have in a while. How was that possible?

For years around here ‘artistry’ has been so firmly linked to negativity that it is almost impossible for any conductor to clear away the poisoned atmosphere. Somehow Haitink managed to do it this week. He is a quiet, self-effacing conductor, and the orchestra really seems to admire and respect him. Rehearsals were eerily quiet when he stopped us to make minor corrections here and there. His remarks were consistently both tactful and effective.

As everyone knows, orchestra musicians are feckless and lazy. Naturally we would prefer any conductor who treated us nicely over one who might attempt to lead us to a higher level of artistry. That in mind, I tried to keep a critical ear on Haitink’s concerts to see if my sense of contentment vanished during the performance or the musical standards had slipped in any way. The concert is after all the time when all conductors are equal in the sense that the lecturers have to shut up and conduct while the nice guys have to show they have enough backbone to actually lead the orchestra.

Bruckner’s symphonies are like massive cathedrals built from thousands of notes. Conductors can become so enamored with superficial features, pausing to admire every gargoyle and arabesque, that they lose sight of the thing as a whole. Haitink’s approach to the 7th was a success I thought because he focused on the structure rather than every single (or arbitrarily selected) bricks. The music actually flowed along – even at about 70 minutes the symphony seemed refreshingly brief.

Finally, another conductor mistake is fall victim to the episodic nature of Bruckner’s writing and build every climax to maximum dynamic, pummeling the audience (and orchestra) with bruising fortissimos when the composer has actually carefully structured the dynamics. Haitink was somewhat successful at getting the orchestra to observe the dynamics and restored some sense of balance to the sound. The thing that amazed me and inspired this post was that he was able to do it all in a professional and respectful way. And the orchestra responded with (so far) three very fine performances.

For more from Michael Hovnanian follow this link, and now read about another conductor who is a delight to orchestral players
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Orchestras and human rights

It is difficult to believe that we are in the 21st century after reading about the alleged anti-gay discrimination at the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra (seen in photo above). A statement by dismissed Buffalo Philharmonic oboist J Bud Roach alleges both homophobic remarks by an orchestra principal, and a lack of remedial action by music director JoAnn Falletta whose credits include being inducted into the Western New York Women’s Hall of Fame, and receiving the Human Relations Award from the Buffalo/Niagra Chapter of the American Jewish Committee.

The Buffalo discrimation case will be high profile as it is being handled by The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), an organisation that has done remarkable work eliminating homophobia and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation by championing fair, accurate and inclusive media representation.

GLAAD's press release states: The Division of Human Rights on March 22, 2005 in J. Bud Roach v Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra Society, Inc. ruled that there was “probable cause to believe that the respondent [the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra] has engaged in or is in engaging in the unlawful discriminatory practice complained of. Pursuant to the Human Rights Law, this matter is recommended for public hearing.” On June 18, 2007, there will be a public hearing before the New York State Division of Human Rights in the case of J. Bud Roach v Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra Society, Inc.

Now read about an extraordinarily powerful statement of gay rights by a young American composer
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David Munrow - more than early music

'David Munrow and the Early Music Consort of London transformed our view of medieval music. The impact of their performances far surparssed any that had gone before: by demonstrating how medieval music could sound normal, they created a niche for it in the concert hall and on record that it has never lost' ~ From Daniel Leech-Wilkinson's notes for Music of the Gothic era

May 15 2007 is the thirty-first anniversary of the death of David Munrow. His contribution to the acceptance, understanding and performance of early music almost defies summary. He was born in 1942, and learnt the bassoon and recorder as a child. Between school and university he travelled and taught in South America , and started the collection of ethnic instruments that were to give him, and the world, a new perspective on early music making. He read English at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and was encouraged by Thurston Dart to take an active role in the music-making of that most musical of cities. It was at Cambridge that he started giving his unique combination of lectures and recitals on woodwind instruments that set him on a career as an evangeliser and performer of early music.

In 1966 he joined the wind band of the Royal Shakespeare Company and performed incidental music for the Bard's plays in Stratford and London. Shortly after he formed the Early Music Consort, an ensemble that was to challenge and change the performance style of early music. Among the original members of the consort were James Bowman and Christopher Hogwood (photo above).

Munrow is best known for bringing little known medieval and Renaissance music to a wide audience. But his activities were not confined to concerts and recordings. He used early instruments in the film and television scores which he composed, including The Six Wives of Henry VIII, A Man for All Seasons, and The Devils (with Peter Maxwell Davies). He also worked with folk musicians including Dolly Cousins and The Young Tradition. And he was actively involved in new music, among the first performances he gave were Elisabeth Lutyens' The Tears of Night (1972), and Peter Dickinson's Translations (1971) and Recorder Music for recorder Player and Tape (1973). He was a natural communicator, his BBC Radio 3 programme the Pied Piper was broadcast four times a week for five years and introduced a huge audience to the riches of early music, and he also devised and presented the TV series Ancestral Voices.

David Munrow's recorded legacy is considered so important that one of his recordings was included on the Voyager space craft's 'golden disc' that was sent to Mars a year after his death. The following is a brief guide to three 'essential' recordings, all of which are available in the UK for around just £10 ($18) for each double CD. No serious music collection should be without them.

* The Art of Courtly Love - a collection of French secular music from Guillaume de Machaut to Guillaume Dufay. Although the time span is little more than a hundred years it covers one of the most astonishingly rich and varied periods in medieval music, including not only the development of polyphonic song, but also the summit of the song writer's art. Recorded by EMI in Studio 1 Abbey Road in late 1972 and early 1973 this is relatively early Munrow, and the musicians include Early Music Consort founders James Bowman, James Tyler and Christopher Hogwood.

* The Art of the Netherlands - a collection of early Renaissance secular and sacred vocal music. When this recording was made by EMI in 1975 many of the Flemish composers on it, including Brumel, Josquin, Ockeghem and Obrecht were unfamiliar to listeners. Now thanks to Munrow's pioneering work they are well represented both in the catalogue and in live performance. The first CD is devoted to secular songs, while the second is made up of Mass movements and motets. The singers include Sally Dunkley who went on to perform with the Tallis Scholars, The Sixteen and the William Byrd Choir. To purists Munrow's presentation of 'bleeding chunks' of Renaissance masses may appear anachronistic, but this is wonderful music presented with commitment and inspiration. The variety is a strength not a weakness, and the result is a persuasive overview of the music of this period. As well as being an important recording in its own right this budget priced two CD set is an invaluable 'sampler' for anyone wanting an introduction to Renaissance polyphony.

* Music of the Gothic Era is a remarkable survey of vocal music from the 12th to 15th century, progressing from the Notre Dame School, through Ars Antiuqa to Ars Nova. The composers include Léonin, Pérotin, and Machaut, and the singers include James Bowman and Roger Covey-Crump. Music of the Gothic Era was made in 1975,predating by thirteen years the Hilliard Ensemble's recording of Pérotin on ECM, a recording which used two of the same singers. Munrow's performance was pioneering in every way, and it pointed to a new direction with a revised consort exploring sacred repertoire, which alas he did not live to realise. Some of the realisations may be out of step with today's concepts of 'authentic performance', but Munrow's scholarship, vision, enthusiasm and sheer exuberance result in compelling music-making that it is still outstanding in every way after thirty years.

The Archiv division of Deutsche Grammophon recorded Music of the Gothic Era in the Chapel of Charter House School. David Munrow no longer had an exclusive EMI contract. Like Herbert von Karajan, who was also an EMI artist at that time, he signed contracts with both Deutsche Grammophon and EMI to maximise his commercial leverage. Munrow was ambitious, but he never lost his sheer enthusiasm and exuberant delight in music making. His irrepressible personality and talent meant he was now a media figure, and a career as a conductor and broadcaster outside the early music world was predicted.

But it was not to be. David Munrow completed the sessions for Music of the Gothic Era in October 1975, and followed by recording the LP Monteverdi's Contemporaries for EMI in November 1975. These were his last recordings. He took his own life on 15th May 1976, aged thirty- three.

Other David Munrow resources On An Overgrown Path include:
* David Munrow and the Voyager golden record
* Exclusive - a little piece of recording history,
* Monteverdi in Cambridge
* Follow this link for a discography
Article first published On An Overgrown Path in Feb 2006. Image credits: Header - Castle Classics, Early Music Consort - Musicteachers.co.uk, The Art of the Netherlands - www.amazon.com , recording session - Nigelnorth.net
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New music for bells

An exciting new audio installation at this year’s Norfolk and Norwich Festival proves, once again, that some really creative things are happening at the summer music festivals if you know where to look. The Norwich Festival has built quite a reputation with its audio installations; two years ago I featured Janet Cardiff’s 40 Part Motet which went on to New York's Museum of Modern Art, and last year Helen Ottoway’s Thin Air featured on the path.

This year’s installation features the work of contemporary composer Terry Mann whose previous post-minimalist compositions include an interlude for gamelan orchestra written for Joanna MacGregor to play in a concert of John Cage’s prepared piano pieces, and No Ordinary Piano Suite for Prepared Piano. Follow this link to hear samples of Terry Mann’s past work.

His new commission, The Bells of Paradise, is a complex hour work score for church bells, with seven scored sections linked by intervals of urban ambient sounds. Bells from twenty-two churches and cathedrals in East Anglia and London were used to give a wide range of voices. The recording is made in 5.1 multi-channel format, and was performed in Norwich in the church of St John Maddermarket during the 2007 Norfolk and Norwich Festival. The installation is a joint commission by Norwich and three other festivals at which it will be performed, Spitalfields London, Bury St Edmunds and Lichfield.

Terry Mann’s new work is the second electronic composition for church bells in recent years. Jonathan Harvey’s 1980 Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco was commissioned by the Centre George Pompidou in Paris and created at IRCAM by sampling the sound of the great tenor bell at Winchester Cathedral. Appropriately The Bells of Paradise and Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco are being performed together on June 16 at a Spitalfields Festival concert in London. Also on the programme, which is a celebration of bells, is Chris Dench's work for solo piano passing bells: night. At the Lichfield concert Bells Of Paradise is being previewed before Philip Glass' opening concert of solo piano music.

The Spitalfields concert will be recorded by the BBC for later broadcast, but On An Overgrown Path has scooped Radio 3 for the first opportunity to hear The Bells of Paradise online. Terry Mann has agreed to the complete opening section ‘Birth’ (3’ 18”) being made available on the path, and if your speakers are live you will have heard it, with those gamelan echoes, as you read this post.

And talking of IRCAM and the Norwich Festival …
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Bach and the art of noise

To the Goldberg Variations this morning played by up and coming young harpsichordist Matthew Halls (above) as part of the ever stimulating Norfolk and Norwich Festival. That most magical of all musical journies managed to survive separate interruptions from a mobile phone and a serial cougher. Matthew Hall proved why he is a professional musician and I am not. He cooly played through the ringing of the mobile phone. If it had been me at the keyboard I would either have asked the offender to leave, or left myself.

I witnessed one of the more imaginative responses to intrusive coughing at a concert conducted by Bernard Haitink at the Festival Hall in the 1970s. A serial cougher decided to accompany the posthorn solo in the third movement of Mahler's monumental Third Symphony. Maestro Haitink continued to beat time with his baton while using his left hand to extract a white handkerchief from his pocket and hold it high over his head.

Talking of phones read about an unexpected Steve Reich premiere
Photo credit Clarion Seven Muses. 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 music for a new building

Went to Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 last Sunday. The performance was in St Stephen's Church, Norwich. The stained glass in the east window above the performers, seen in the photo here, records the date when the remodelling of the medieval church was completed. The date was 1610.

Now visit another of Norwich's historic churches to learn about medieval mystics with musical connections.
Image credit - the excellent Norfolkchurches.co.uk - do visit it. 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

Great Britten

Interesting to read today's Guardian leader invoking Benjamin Britten (and George Crabbe) in its assesment of the departing Tony Blair ~ 'Christianity underpinned so much about his prime ministership, from his 1997 identification of the act of voting Labour with spiritual redemption - "one cross on the ballot paper, one nation was reborn" - to his attempts to persuade the public of absolute truths. The effect could be brilliant. But it produced a strange sort of defiance, especially after Iraq and in the response to terrorism, a leader who came to believe, like Peter Grimes, that he could see the shoals to which the rest of Britain was blind.'

I wonder which operatic character the Guardian will use in their assesment of George W. Bush? And talking of political failings, now read the story of Peter Grimes' first conductor.
Photo is the 1995 Royal Opera House production of Peter Grimes. 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

Max Reger - more conspicuous than Schoenberg

'In the very early years of the twentieth century Max Reger held a more conspicuous place in Austro-German music than Schoenberg; certainly he was far more productive, especially of instrumental music. Several of his works are sets of variations culminating in a fugue, but contrapuntal energy is almost omnipresent, driving through dense harmonic textures. He acknowledged his source in making piano arrangements of Bach’s music, as indeed did Busoni, a musician of mixed German-Italian background best known at this period as a virtuoso pianist' ~ from A Concise History of Western Music by Paul Griffiths (Cambridge University Press ISBN 139780521842945).

Max Reger, seen in the photo above playing the organ in 1913, died on May 11 1916 aged 43

Now Playing ~ Variations and Fugue on a theme of J S Bach played Marc-André Hamelin piano. This excellent Hyperion disc of Reger’s piano music also includes his Variations and Fugue on a theme of Georg Philipp Telemann, and Five Humoreques. Wonderful sound from the beautiful acoustics of St George’s, Brandon Hill, Bristol.

For another view on Reger’s status read music history rewritten.
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Boston concert delivers real punch

'BOSTON — Concert-goers, and even Boston Pops conductor Keith Lockhart, were caught off-guard when a fight broke out on opening night at usually sedate Symphony Hall. Television video of the fight Wednesday night showed two men struggling in the balcony — one with his shirt pulled off — as several people stood around them - see news photo above and TV video link below.

Lockhart briefly halted the performance, which featured singer-songwriter Ben Folds, while the men were escorted out.Witnesses said they heard a scream from the balcony, and the sound of chairs falling, then a second scream as the fight escalated.

“The first time there was a scream, Keith looked up that way but he kept going,” audience member June MacIndoe told Boston's WHDH-TV. “Then about a minute and a half later ... there was a big scream and you could hear chairs falling over and you could see them up there, fists going.”

At that point, Lockhart stopped the performance for a couple of minutes, she said. “He just stood there, you know, quiet.” Boston police spokesman David Estrada said police officers on security detail at the hall escorted the men off the property, and no charges were filed. No injuries were reported, he said.

A Boston Symphony spokeswoman did not immediately return a call for comment.'

From Globeand mail.com, now watch the video.

For more audience participation try Bark's St Matthew Passion.
With thanks to my Fairhaven Friend for the heads-up, or should that be fists 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

Opera's other ring

Opera at the big houses is a circus with acts that include £10million donations, vanity productions and shuffle maestros. My photo above was taken last night at an opera as far away from £170 ticket prices as you can get, but it was still a circus.

Great Yarmouth Hippodrome is one of the oldest surviving circus buildings in Europe still used for circus performances. The survival of the remarkable building, which dates from 1904, is almost certainly due to the circular arena, or ring, which very unusually doesn't have a stage. This meant it was unsuitable for conversion into a theatre or cinema, and the structure has survived for more than a century virtually unchanged, although the original audience capacity of three thousand has been reduced to today's Health and Safety friendly nine hudred.

The historic photo below, showing the interior, is the first of two kindly supplied by the current owner Peter Jay, and was taken soon after the Hippodrome was opened. One of the remarkable features of the building is the water feature created when the floor of the circus ring sinks and is flooded with 60,000 gallons of water. The feature is still in regular use, but not for last night's opera!


When the Hippodrome was opened Great Yarmouth was a fashionable seaside resort, and the second historic photo below shows the circus building in its heyday. In the hundred years since then the town's fortunes have declined, with the collapse of both the tourist industry and commercial fishing leaving the area economically blighted, a stark contrast to fashionable Aldeburgh which is just 25 miles to the south.

Today Yarmouth is a bleak place dominated by amusement arcades, fast-food joints, and cheap hotels for migrant workers. The Hippodrome's front lot has been sold as a slot arcade, but, by a miracle, the building remains intact behind it, and is still a working circus due to the heroic efforts of former rock star Peter Jay who now owns and actively manages it (does anyone out there remember Peter Jay and the Jaywalkers?). For details of circus performances follow this link.


Norfolk and Norwich Festival took the inspired decision to bring opera to the Hippodrome in 2007 for the first time ever, with Armonico Consort Touring Opera bringing their much praised production of Purcell's Fairy Queen for just one night. Bringing an innovative production to a new venue in a town that never sees live opera is what music festivals are all about. This adventurous approach simply underlines how the BBC, and other corporations, have hijacked the word 'festival' to give credibility to events such as the BBC Proms that are now little more than cynical exercises in massmarket entertainment and commercialism.

Purcell's Fairy Queen is a musical fantasy (or 'semi-opera') based on the ideas and characters in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Designer Thomas Guthrie took his inspiration for the Armonico Consort production from the 19th century painter of Shakespearian fantasies Richard Dadd. The artist established a reputation in that extraordinary genre, the Victorian fairy painting. But he changed career direction when he was committed to a mental institution in 1843 after killing his father. In echoes of Vincent Van Gogh, an enlightened doctor in Bedlam encouraged Dadd to paint without commercial constraints , and the results inspired last night's production which, as my photos show, was set in an old-style mental hospital.


The production used comedy, music, song, dance, puppetry and circus skill, but was also musically completely authentic and extremely well sung. What an evening! - live music-making of the highest order, imaginative staging that gave real meaning to those tired words 'music theatre', an inspired choice of venue, and a vision from the Norfolk and Norwich Festival that redefined inclusiveness. But above all an evening that challenged our preconceptions of what opera is, what a music festival is, and even what we are. Here are director Thomas Guthrie's wise words:

For me both Dadd and Fairy Queen represent the need for marriage within us all, whether we are actually 'married' at all, or even inclined to it. The marriage in the Fairy Queen is a union not between characters we have come to know and feel for, as it is in Midsummer Night's Dream, but at a deeper level a marriage of mind and heart, of heaven and earth, fairy and mortal, lost and found, inward feeling and the outward expression of that feeling. It concerns us all because we are in a relationship with ourselves as well as with the world around us. A marriage that none of us can escape.


Now read about how another artist was encouraged to paint by an enlightened doctor
Three production photos taken by Pliable at Hippodrome performance on May 9 2007 using available light with Casio EX-Z120 digital camera. 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

Royal victory over spin

Good to see Kate Royal winning the category for Young Artists at the Royal Philharmonic Society Awards last night. Kate (above) featured here for her performance in Britten's Turn of the Screw last year when I described her as a 'startling new soprano', and in the chamber version of Mahler's Fourth Symphony back in 2005 when I described her as a 'rising star'. Gustavo Dudamel was runner-up.

Also good to see On An Overgrown Path featured artists and local band the Britten Sinfonia win the Ensemble category. Even better to see the Royal Philharmonic Society getting it right for a change, because usually industry awards are a sore point.

A composer of outsize ambition and ability

Perhaps first at Reincken's Hamburg apartment, Bach came under the influence of the great Dietrich Buxtehude, organist at St. Mary's in Lübeck and a composer of outsize ambition and ability who was working with all the styles and traditions of Europe. Buxtehude would have a more than musical influence on Sebastian in his first job, and it was in him perhaps more than anywhere else that Sebastian would find the inspiration for what was perhaps his greatest gift to Western culture: forging from a multinational babel a single language of European music ~ from Evening in the Palace of Reason by James Gaines.

Dietrich Buxtehude, born circa 1637, died 9 May 1707.

* For an excellent overview of his music look no further than Pièces Pour Orgue - Dietrich Buxtehude played by Francis Jacob (Zig-Zag Territoires ZZT 030901) which very effectively alternates the solo organ with harmonisations of the chorales for three voices. Francis Jacobs plays the Bernard Aubertin organ in the church of St Martin de Vertus.

* My header picture is the only one known portrait of Dieterich Buxtehude. The painting is Allegory on friendship by Johannes Voorhout, and it shows Buxtehude with a score in his hand, and the Hamburg organist Johann Reincken, who is mentioned above, sitting at a harpsichord. The painting is dated 1674.

And for more from James Gaines take the path to Gentlemen, old Bach is here ...
The extract above is from Evening in the Palace of Reason by James Gaines published by Fourth Estate ISBN 0007153929. 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

Another donor - another name

The Royal Opera House is to receive a £10m donation from the foundation of late philanthropist Lord Hamlyn. The Covent Garden venue's Floral Hall (left) will be renamed the Paul Hamlyn Hall in honour of the publisher and arts patron, who died in 2001. It is one of the largest donations ever received by the Royal Opera House ~ reports BBC News. Last time round it was called the Vilar Floral Hall in honour of another donor, but that all ended in tears.

Conductor in court on assault charge

The Daily Mail has coverage of the Robert King court case.

Update June 4 2007, court verdict via this link

Reginald Goodall – the holy fool

Goodall showed that as a Wagner conductor he has no equal. His control of the musical architecture is absolute. The huge span of the score was shaped as if in a single phrase. At the same time the music seemed to move spontaneously, by its own inner force, and with a glowing beauty of sound, an inevitability of rise and fall and a kind of natural momentousness of expression that will remain ideal.

These were the words of David Cairns writing in the Sunday Times in August 1987. The occasion was Reginald Goodall’s last ever conducting engagement, the Proms concert performance of Act 3 of Parsifal shown in the rehearsal photo above. Wagner’s saga of the holy fool somehow sums up Goodall; as David Cairns wrote he was a Wagner conductor without equal, he was also a champion of Britten’s music who conducted the first performance of Peter Grimes, yet he flirted with fascism and alienated himself from many who tried to help him during a career that lasted more than sixty-five years.

Goodall was born on 13 July 1901 in the cathedral city of Lincoln. At the age of 9 he entered Lincoln Cathedral choir school where he received the classic choral training that was central to English church music, and was also introduced to Wagner’s music by his visionary teacher, Dr G.J. Bennett, who had studied in Berlin and Munich. But scandal interrupted the English cathedral idyll. Goodall’s father, a solicitor’s clerk, was charged with forgery and sentenced to eight months in prison. The scandal meant that the young Reginald and his brother were taken by their mother to live with relatives in Springfield, Massachusetts.


Goodall left school in Springfield aged 15, and became a machinist in an engineering works. Relief from this tedium came from concerts by the Boston Symphony and Philadelphia Orchestras, the latter conducted by Leopold Stokowski whose approach to orchestral balance was an influence on Goodall in later years. In 1917 Goodall moved to Burlington on the western end of Lake Ontario in Canada, where his father had settled after leaving prison, and the young Reginald entered Hamilton Conservatory to study music. He graduated with first-class honours and aged 19 started his career as a professional musician as church organist and choirmaster in Dundas, near Hamilton. While there he was introduced to Renaissance polyphony and Gregorian Chant by the influential Toronto musician Healey Willan.

Goodall would probably have stayed in Canada for the rest of his career had he not met the visiting Sir Hugh Allen, who was director of the Royal College of Music in London and professor of music at Oxford University. The chance meeting resulted in Goodall returning to England to study at the Royal Academy, but his period there was not particularly productive, and it was his appointment as organist at the Anglo-Catholic church of St Alban’s, Holborn that was more important. The photo above shows Goodall with members of the choir, and during his time at St Alban’s he built the reputation of the choir in repertoire ranging from renaissance masterpieces including Byrd’s Mass for Three Voices, through Bruckner to Stravinsky and contemporary composers such as Jan Mul from the Netherlands. Goodall was also a virtuoso organist and his repertoire included Tournemire, Widor, Vierne and Dupré.

The reputation of the St Alban’s Choir rapidly spread, and in December 1934 the boys sang in the first public performance of A Boy Was Born by an up and coming young composer called Benjamin Britten. The occasion was one of the contemporary music concerts promoted by a trio of women, Iris Lemare, the violinist Anne Mcnaghten, and the composer Elisabeth Lutyens who featured herself in an article here recently. This early collaboration was the start of a working relationship between 'Ben' and 'Reggie' which was to bear important fruits.

Goodall’s pioneering work was not confined to choral music. He also worked with the amateur Bishopsgate orchestra where just one of his concerts included the first British performances of two works by German composers, a neo-classical divertimento by Max Trapp who was featured in my article Furtwängler and the forgotten new music, and Die Jahreszeiten from another composer featured here, Ernst Krenek. And that path takes us to Goodall the fool.

During the 1930s Goodall made several visits to Germany, the last in 1935 when the Nazis were in full control. On his return he extolled the virtues of Germany under the Nazis, and was vocal both in his concerns over the influx of refugee Jewish musicians, and in his criticism of the BBC for employing them. Goodall’s views may have been influenced by his wife who was a strict Roman Catholic, at a time when the Catholic press was taking an anti-Bolshevik and pro-Mussolini position. In September 1939 three important events occurred. On Sept 1 Hitler invaded Poland, two days later Britain declared war on Germany, and on Sept 8 Reginald Goodall joined the British Union of Fascists.

The outbreak of war had profound effects on musical life in Britain. Orchestra budgets were cut and musicians were made redundant. The Bournemouth Municipal (now Symphony) Orchestra was one of the casualties, with twenty-six players axed. The redundant players formed the core of the newly formed Wessex Symphony Orchestra, and Goodall was appointed principal conductor. The orchestra and its conductor went on to do some remarkable things including giving early performances of Britten’s Les lluminations and Violin Concerto.

At a time when concerts were few the Wessex Orchestra attracted leading conductors and soloists, including, in a remarkable crossing of overgrown paths, a young black conductor called Rudolph Dunbar. But even though Britain was at war with Germany Goodall continued to support the fascist cause. He campaigned for the British Union of Fascist, called the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck ‘disgusting’, and was actually arrested briefly for expressing pro-German views in public. Even after the war Goodall was unrepentant. He was recruited by Walter Legge to take part in a tour of to Germany in 1946. Some of the performers visited the site of the Belsen concentration camp, only to be told by Goodall, who did not make the visit, that Belsen was British fiction manufactured in a leading movie studio.


It is almost impossible to believe, but just one month after Germany surrendered the pro-fascist Goodall conducted the triumphant first performance of Peter Grimes, an opera composed by pacifist Benjamin Britten and with another pacifist Peter Pears singing the title role. Through the war Goodall had maintained the contacts with Britten started at St Alban’s, Holborn. In fact Goodall had conducted a remarkable chamber concert of works by Les Six in September 1942 when, in addition to Denis Brain playing the horn, Britten had played the celesta in works by Louis Durey, and by Germaine Tailleferre, the only female member of Les Six. The first of the two Britten photos above shows the composer with Rudolf Bing and the baritone Edmund Donlevy who sung the role of Ned Keene in the first performance of Peter Grimes, while the lower shows Britten at a 1945 rehearsal of the opera with Goodall, the producer Eric Crozier and the designer Kenneth Green.

In 1944 Goodall joined Sadler Wells Opera, and this company inherited the first performance of Britten’s Peter Grimes when the Tanglewood premiere (it was commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky in memory of his wife) was cancelled due to wartime transport difficulties. Britten specifically requested that Goodall conduct the first performance in preference to several other more experienced conductors, and the premiere on 7 June 1945 was a triumph, with both Britten and Goodall being lavishly praised by the critics.

Goodall went on to conduct The Rape of Lucretia for Britten’s English Opera Group. But the most definitely heterosexual Goodall found Britten’s next opera, Albert Herring, ‘prissy’ and the composer himself ‘East Anglican’, and their working relationship cooled. In 1946 Goodall joined Covent Garden as assistant conductor to music director Karl Rankl, and Goodall conducted Britten’s Gloriana in, of all places, Bulawayo in Southern Rhodesia in 1953. Later the same year Goodall replaced Britten as conductor for Peter Grimes at Covent Garden, and the excellent reviews he received set him on a path that took him from a footnote in musical history to legendary Wagnerian.


Based on the success of Peter Grimes Goodall was given four performances of Walkure on tour. The first was in the suburbs of London, and a glowing review from a young Andrew Porter in Opera magazine started Goodall on the path to being recognised as a Wagner specialist. But despite this acclaim he languished at Covent Garden for more than a decade coaching and occasionally conducting, and spending his holidays at the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth .

It was not until 1968 that Goodall really achieved recognition as a conductor of Wagner. The breakthrough came when a centenary production of The Mastersingers in English by Sadlers Wells Opera was rapturously received by the critics. The legendary English National Opera Ring Cycle of 1973, together with the EMI recordings completed in 1977, finally confirmed Goodall’s reputation as one of the greatest living interpreters of Wagner. Tristan followed in 1979 with Welsh National Opera, and with English National Opera in 1981. My photo above shows Goodall taking a curtain call at the 1973 Ring with Rita Hunter (Brunnhilde) and Alberto Remedios (Siegfried). Goodall's stature was recognised in 1985 when he was knighted for services to music.

On 4 April 1986 Sir Reginald conducted Parsifal for English National Opera. Earlier in the day he had been upset by the news of the death of Peter Pears, and the last act of Goodall's life started to unfold. That Coliseum Parsifal was the last full length opera that Goodall conducted. As described at the beginning of this article he went on perform Act 3 of Parsifal at the Proms the following year, a concert staging that marked the end of Goodall’s career. He lived for four more years in declining health, and Reginald Goodall, the holy fool, died on 5 May 1990 at the age of eighty-eight.

Conductor's are notorious for their political naivety. But hopefully Goodall will be remembered not for his foolish politics, but for a recorded legacy which is infused with humanity. His Wagner discs are best known, but his Bruckner and Britten are also essential listening.

* We are very fortunate to have an excellent biography of Goodall, from which this articles draws with full acknowledgement, and from which the accompanying photos are reproduced for review purposes. Reggie, the Life of Reginald Goodall by John Lucas (Julia MacRae Books ISBN 1856810518) is a model musical biography - well researched, objective, and very readable. The 1993 book is now, sadly, out of print, but is relatively easy to find from book dealers.

Now read Wagner - I don't get to hear anything else
All photos are reproduced with full acknowlegements from Reggie, the life of Reginald Goodall by John Lucas. Source credits, when known, are in descending order photos 1 Clive Barda, 3 and 4 Hulton Deutsch and 5 The Observer. 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 Radio 3 - live and let die

In February I ran the story that the new BBC Radio 3 schedules meant there would be no live music in the important 7.00pm programme slot, other than during the Proms and other special seasons. My concerns over this development were echoed in The Times and by fellow bloggers.

Since I published the story the new Radio 3 schedules have been introduced, and all the weekday evening music is now broadcast from recordings. As I wrote at the time, this will affect the commissioning and performance of contemporary music from around the world, and will put the livelihood of many fine musicians at risk.

This week the Royal Philharmonic Society presents its annual awards which the Society's website says: 'honour a broad sweep of live music making including categories for performers, composers, inspirational arts organisations and education'.

The awards are being made in London tomorrow (Tuesday 8th May). The Society's 'media partner' is BBC Radio 3, and they are using the evening slot from which they banished live music to broadcast an awards ceremony which 'honour(s) a broad sweep of live music '. And just to underline their policy of 'live and let die' the BBC are recording the live music awards and putting the programme out the following evening (Wednesday 9th May).

Now read how a BBC Radio 3 historic recording was a fraud
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Sarkozy - a minor change to Europe's borders

'I want an integrated Europe, in other words, a Europe that has borders ... Turkey is in Asia Minor' ~ Nicolas Sarkozy, French President-elect.

'The selection panel for the 2010 European Capital of Culture have recommended that the German town Essen and the Hungarian city of Pécs should share this title together with a third one, Turkey's Istanbul' ~ UNESCO World Heritage website

Identikit jazz trios

Went to hear the Bobo Stenson Trio (left) in Norwich last night. Technically wonderful but curiously uninvolving music. They are one of a growing number of identikit jazz piano trios. They all come from Scandinavia, are all squeaky-clean superb musicians, all have ECM recording contracts, all play somewhere on a continuum between Bill Evans and free jazz, and all drink the same brand of mineral water between numbers.

France's right in retreat

Today's Guardian reports: 'Nicolas Sarkozy is not one to shut himself away. But he is planning to go on a three-day post-victory retreat to an isolated corner of France, perhaps a monastery'.

This would continue the interesting association between the Catholic Church and right-wing parties in France that I have written about here before. And, yes, I have been on retreat at a French monastery reportedly frequented by far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen. Which should give The Agonist something else to get wrong.

Norman conquest

I see that Norman Lebrecht has been in New York. Couldn't you have kept him over there?

Estonian chamber choir - small is beautiful

'Man is small, and, therefore, small is beautiful' famously wrote E. F. Schumacher. Friday night's opening concert of the 2007 Norwich and Norfolk Festival by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and Paul Hillier was small, both in forces and duration, and it certainly was beautiful. This was one of those rare evenings when the planets align. The programme of Nikolai Kedrov, Arvo Pärt, Tchaikovsky, Cyrillus Kreek and excerpts from Rachmaninov's All-Night Vigil was sublime. The choir demonstrated their peerless authority in the Baltic repertoire, and Paul Hillier demonstrated why he has built such a reputation as a musician's conductor.

The venue was Norwich's far from small Norman cathedral, but despite the towering architecture this was very much a chamber performance where, refreshingly, individual lines did not take second place to overall effect. We had bought top price seats in the second row as we know from experience that separate lines become confused in the reverberant cathedral when heard from further down the nave. As a bonus our front seats also allowed us to observe Paul Hillier's unique taste in conducting footwear, he has certainly found a schumacher with style.

In his provaocative book, What We Really Do (The Musical Times ISBN 0954577701), another fine choral conductor, Tallis Scholars founder Peter Philips, argues that sacred choral music is best performed in modern concert halls because both the sound and the amenities are better. Despite this view the Estonian Choir hedged their bets on this current tour. Two of their four concerts are in modern halls, Manchester's Bridgewater Hall, and the superb new 1200 seater Perth Concert Hall in Scotland. Incidentally, both these magnificent looking and sounding concert halls were built in the last fifteen years, which is enduring evidence that, despite the gloom merchants, classical music is very much alive and kicking today.

The other two concerts by the Esonian visitors and their English conductor are in traditional churches in, Norwich and Edinburgh . At Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh it must have been a surprise for the choir to find themselves swapping the turbulent politics of 21st century Estonia for the turbulent politics of 21st century Scotland.

Performance venues are an essential part of live music-making, so are commissions for new music. I have already written here how Arvo Pärt's I am the true vine was commissioned by Norwich Cathedral in 1996. Credit should be given to the patrons of two more works by Pärt performed by the Estonian choir in the cathedral on Friday evening. Da pacem Domine was commissioned by that musical life-force Jordi Savall, while Bogoroditse dyevo (Mother of God and Virgin) was written for King's College Choir, Cambridge in 1990.

Those mentions of King's College Choir, Cambridge and the Mother of God and Virgin bring this overgrown path full circle. On Friday evening we were privileged to hear the Estonian choir in Norwich. The following afternoon we viewed the Balkan (not Baltic!) Icons exhibition at the Michaelhouse Centre in Cambridge, and the icon above of the Virgin Mary with infant Christ painted by the Serbian artist Todor Mitrovic in 2002 is from that exhibition. Do explore the images via this link, they are simply stunning. And from the immensely moving icons exhibition it was just a few steps to choral evensong in King's College Chapel.

E.F. Schumacher also wrote ~ 'Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology towards the organic, the gentle, the non-violent, the elegant and beautiful '. Amen to that.

We are now off to Monteverdi's 1610 Vespers followed by jazz from the Bobo Stenson Trio. If you can't be there why not read about Monteverdi in Cambridge?
My header image is from the Balkan Icons exhibition which is touring internationally. I will be featuring more images from this wonderful exhibition in the future. 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 music and the disco from hell

Anthony Holden writes in today's Observer ~ 'Alpha-gamma is a grade given by Oxford dons to bright but 'wayward' students, according to Professor Vernon Bogdanor, Michael Berkeley's guest on Radio 3's Private Passions last weekend. The prof was speaking of the hit-and-miss output of Delius. But it struck me as the perfect grade for too much contemporary music, the best and worst of which was on display in a London Sinfonietta concert conducted by the meticulous Diego Masson.

What wonderful players make up the Sinfonietta, a band of individual virtuosos blending into an ensemble of thrilling panache. How dispiriting, therefore, that they choose to play such vacuous music so much of the time. Few living composers can hold their own beside the late Luciano Berio when it comes to musical bravura, inventiveness and character, but some are barely fit to grace the same programme.

Berio's dazzling Laborintus II, a model of musical architecture, construction and diversity, was the nourishing red meat in a sandwich otherwise staled by the arid austerity of Simon Bainbridge and the garish monotony of Anna Meredith. Bainbridge's Music Space Reflection was inspired by the buildings in which it was written to be performed, the Imperial War Museum North and Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum. Shards of glass drifting down a giant screen were no substitute for the ingenious spaces created by Daniel Libeskind as the sound bounced around giant speakers in the work's London premiere.

As with his Diptych, recently premiered by the BBC Symphony, Bainbridge is composing 'vertically', with minimal linear flow. As important as his clusters of bleakly meditative chords are the conspicuous silences between them, creating a mood as sombre as the Jewish Museum in Berlin (photo above), which first fired his response to Libeskind's architecture. To perform this work outside the spaces for which it was written seems, on reflection, an emptily academic exercise.

The hall was packed with excited young people, all there, apparently, for the gaudy electronic confections of Anna Meredith, whose flak was rendered no more interesting by the smoke filtered into the coloured spotlights as the QEH turned into the disco from hell. The filament of the light-bulb projected on to its giant screen became ever more fascinating as the work's 20 minutes ground very slowly by.'

Now take the path to Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum in Berlin.
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New music from the East

Hello Pliable, I read your article "Philip Glass - World Music Is The New Classical". I thought you might find this interesting - www.biswabratachakrabarti.com/composition/
Kind regards, Manuel

Nice cue for Classic misunderstandings - Eastern tunings
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More to summer than the BBC Proms

The BBC’s privileged position as broadcaster, promoter, orchestra manager and new music commissioner guarantees maximum media coverage for their Promenade Concerts. The Proms may be the biggest music festival in the world, but it is not the only show in town. Some of the other festivals can teach the BBC a thing or two about innovative programme planning – here’s a taster of the events I will be attending, and writing about, in the coming month:

Norfolk & Norwich Festival
May 4 ~ Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir conducted by Paul Hillier, Kedrov, Pärt, Kreek and Rachmaninov (All-night Vigil excerpts), at Norwich Cathedral.
May 6 ~ afternoon, Monteverdi: 1610 Vespers, Eastern Early Music Forum conducted by Philip Thorby (not part of the official festival), evening, Bobo Stenson Trio at Norwich Playhouse
May 13 ~ Matthew Halls harpsichord, Bach Goldberg Variations at King of Hearts

Aldeburgh Festival
June 12 ~ morning, Luigi Nono portrait, a performance of Hay que camino’ soñando for two violins, Vive a Venezia - film about Nono, and a talk by the composer’s widow Nuria Schoenberg Nono, at Jubilee Hall and Aldeburgh Cinema.
June 12 ~ evening, Death in Venice, Benjamin Britten. New staged production of the only Britten opera written for Snape, directed by Yoshi Oida, at Snape Maltings.
June 13 ~ afternoon, Jakob Kullberg cello, Per Nørgård, Bach, Bent Sørensen, and Britten at Jubilee Hall.
June 13 ~ evening, Monteverdi Il Sesto Libro de Madrigali, Concerto italiano directed by Rinaldo Alessandrini at Snape Maltings
June 21 ~ morning, Masaaki Suzuki organ, Guilain, Byrd, Purcell, and Bach, at Framlingham Church
June 21 ~ afternoon, film: Gesulado, Death for Five Voices directed by Werner Herzog, Aldeburgh Cinema.
June 21 ~ evening, Elephant and Castle, a new opera using film, digital sounds, installations and live performance. Music from classical composer Tansy Davies and DJ/electronica artist Mira Calix. It’s at Snape Maltings but our tickets say ‘outdoor promenade, come dressed for the weather’.

Artistic Director Thomas Adès has certainly created an innovative programme for the Sixtieth Aldeburgh Festival. But it’s interesting that the first two events to sell out were Masaaki Suzuki’s Bach B minor Mass, and a showing of Visconti’s film Death in Venice. If you can't be there, be here On An Overgrown Path.

Now read how music rose from the wreckage at Snape
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Paul Hillier and mystery of missing movements

Hard on the heels of my post about concerts getting shorter comes the mystery of the missing movements in Rachmaninov’s All-night Vigil. On Friday (May 4) the 2007 Norwich & Norfolk Festival opens with a concert in Norwich Cathedral by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir conducted by Paul Hillier (pictured above).

The first half of the concert is a treasure-trove of Orthodox church music, Kedrov, Pärt, Tchaikovsky and Kreek, although at 28 minutes it is not the most generous of programmes. But then comes the mystery. The second half is the Rachmaninov All-night Vigil Op. 37 with the first two sections of the Matins service (The Six Psalms and Praise the Name of the Lord) omitted. This cut removes just over four minutes of music from a 55 minute work.

The reason for the cut completely escapes me, and a call to the festival organisers came up with no explanation. The newly released recording of the All-night Vigil by the same forces on Harmonia Mundi is, of course, complete. Can any reader solve the mystery of the missing movements?

Stop press: just as I was about to upload this post the following email was received - I'll keep you posted:

Hi Bob, I’m chasing Paul Hillier, the Estonians’ conductor, for the answer to your question about the Rachmaninov.

Meanwhile, I’m delighted that you remain such an avid supporter and follower of the Festival! When I see articles like the one in the Guardian a few weeks ago bemoaning Norwich’s lack of arts festival – despite the fact that we are now one of the dozen largest city festivals in the uk – it takes the support of people like you to remind me why we do it. Thank you.

Best, Jonathan
Jonathan Holloway
Festival Director
Norfolk & Norwich Festival

* On the same path I offer you the ultimate time travel. After the Norwich concert Paul Hillier and the Estonian choir travel to the superb new Perth concert hall in Scotland. On Monday they give a lunchtime concert, the programme is the All-night Vigil!

Now read about another unorthodox take by Paul Hillier on a familiar work
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Berlin Philharmonic investigates its Nazi past

One of the world’s most renowned orchestras, the Berlin Philharmonic, said Tuesday it plans an investigation into its role during the Nazi era. "We’ve never really come to terms with the history of the Philharmonic Orchestra under National Socialism," general manager Pamela Rosenberg said.

A book is to be published this year by Mischa Aster with the cooperation of the 125-year-old orchestra on the period between 1933 and 1945 and above all on the complex relationship that legendary conductor Wilhelm Furtwaengler (photo above) had with top Nazis. An exhibition and a film for public television are also planned.

Furtwaengler was the chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic from 1922 until 1945 and again from 1952 until his death in 1954. During the Nazi years, he was able to retain his position with an often deferential attitude toward the regime, which used him as a propaganda tool, while still working to protect his Jewish musicians.

Hungarian director Istvan Szabo adapted the play "Taking Sides" about Fuertwaengler’s denazification trial into a film in 2002 starring Harvey Keitel as a US military officer who interrogates him about his relationship with Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party. The conductor was cleared on all charges but his reputation remained tainted by his proximity to the regime.

From today's European Jewish Press. Now read about the Berlin Philharmonic's darkest hour, the story of Furtwangler and the forgotten new music, and the mystery of the orchestra's first black conductor.
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Turkey – politics and music at the crossroads

In March we were in Turkey and were held spellbound by the country’s unique cultural and religious mix. But in recent weeks we have watched with increasing alarm as the country’s religious and secular factions have moved on a collision force, culminating in this week's massive demonstrations in Istanbul.

Taksim Square is the political nerve centre of Istanbul. Today's violent May Day demonstration took place there, and I took the photo below of a small demonstration in the square in March. Taksim is the Turkish word for division, and was the rallying cry of Turkish Cypriots who supported the partition of Cyprus into Turkish and Greek enclaves. As I write Turkey is under threat of a military coup, and, in a frightening reminder that tyranny is never far away in the Balkans, it was an abortive coup in Cyprus in 1974 that ended the military dictatorship in neighbouring Greece. If anyone needs reminding of the political and cultural horrors that accompany Balkan military coups they should read my recent article on Mikis Theodorakis.


In these trying times we must not forget Turkey’s flourishing arts and music scene, and that Istanbul will be the European City of Culture in 2010. Today I’m featuring two contemporary music CDs to remind us of the flourishing creative life that is at risk from the current political developments. The first CD, Maziden, features the bouzouki, the instrument made famous in Mikis Theodorakis’ celebrated score for Zorba the Greek. Bouzouki player Orhan Osman’s background truly celebrates Turkey’s unique cultural mix, he was born in Germany, raised in Greece, and now lives in Turkey. There is a long history of conflict between Greece and Turkey, including the dispute over Cyprus mentioned above, but the upbeat Maziden well and truly bridges the divide between the two countries.

The cosmopolitan influences on the music of Orhan Osman (photo below) range from the Balkans, India, and France to the Caribbean, and support comes from musicians playing everything from traditional Turkish instruments to pad effects. Dancing is a way of life in the Balkans, and this is as close to party music as you are likely to find On an Overgrown Path. It is on the Turkish Double Moon label which has some other very interesting musicians, including Mercan Dede who featured in my first post on Turkey. There’s more to the bouzouki than Zorba’s Dance, and Maziden is well worth exploring. Just follow this link for audio samples of all the tracks.

The header photo, with Hagia Sophia in the background, was taken by me from a ferry crossing the Bosphorous between Europe and Asia, a journey that sums up the crossroads on which Turkey is located. The ferry departs from from Kadikoy Quay in Istanbul, and the cover of my second featured CD, ECM’s The Wind, carries an image of the same quay. The Wind is a series of improvisations on Turkish and Persian themes arranged by Iranian kamancheh (spike-fiddle) player Kayhan Kalhor (photo left & audio samples via previous link) and baglama (long-necked lute) player Erdal Erzincan, and they are supported by Ulas Özdemir on bass baglama. The improvisations flow into each other, with the two lead instruments reworking and repeating different phrases. Recorded in a studio in Istanbul, The Wind is straight out of ECM’s top-drawer; the overall mood is mellow, but there are also some harder driven passages that are on the jazz side of World Music.

These two CDs remind us how Turkey stands at a cross-roads of continents, cultures, religions and politics. The priority for the country today is to maintain political stability. This can only be achieved if the Turkish army doesn't meddle in politics and the Kemalist principle of laiklik, with religion staying out of government in return for government staying out of religion, is retained. In return the EU members, and France, Germany and Austria in particular, need to abandon their view that the EU is an exclusively Christian club, and must take a more broadminded view of Turkish membership.

* YouTube links for Kayhan Kalor and Orhan Osman and follow this link to see my other articles about Turkey at the crossroads
First two photographs (c) On An Overgrown Path 2007. 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