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'Orchestral concerts must become like football games, accessible, desirable and different' suggests the principal of the Royal Academy of Music, Curtis Price. His advice comes in a Guardian Comment feature by Simon Jenkins who has caught the Gustavo Dudamel and Hugh Masekela bug. Jenkins goes on to explain that in the coming 'revolution in appeal' classical music must include 'added value in congregation'.
Simon Jenkins is better known as a writer on church architecture than classical music. So we can forgive him for not knowing that there has been 'added value in congregation' (which when translated from Gordon Brown speak means, I think, audience participation) in classical music for a long time. From the chorales in Bach's Passions, through the Radetzky March at the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Day concerts, to the congregation hymns in Britten's St. Nicholas.
But why does every performance today have to include audience participation? Why do the BBC Proms audience have to be part of the action by contributing meaningless dribbles of applause between movements? Why do our future performers need to be selected on TV reality shows? Why do we need to condense Benjamin Britten's holy triangle of composer, performer and listener down to a single point where the listener is king? Why do we need, to quote Simon Jenkins, to make concerts 'a shared experience of laughing and dancing'?
Why don't we study that football analogy more closely? In football the laughing and dancing often ruins the performance. The major teams are controlled by power brokers with connections to the oil industry. Our much-hyped national team failed even to qualify at an international level. Ever younger stars are heaped with cash and adulation, and fail to deliver. And the media's darling, who was proclaimed as the saviour of the sport, has fled to Los Angeles with a lucrative contract in his pocket.
The revolution isn't about making concerts like football matches. The revolution is about finding shared musical languages and shared media that together reinforce, not undermine, Britten's holy triangle. The revolution is already happening, with many of the new composers and performing groups featured on this, and many other blogs, creating desirable and different music. The revolution is already happening by making their music more accessible through MP3 downloads, internet radio, a few old-fashioned CDs, and innovative live performances.
I don't pretend to have any influence over the future of classical music. But I was in the Future Radio studios the other day checking levels on Alvin Curran's Inner Cities for our forthcoming 'all-night vigil' webcast. A young DJ came off-air after presenting her hip hop show, and caught a few measures of Inner Cities. 'Wow, she exclaimed 'what is that? It is really cool.' That is the future of classical music, not conga lines.
Now playing - Techno Parade by Guillaume Connesson shown in my header image. Music from a leading French contemporary composer that is accessible, desirable and different, and not a football game in sight. Take your choice from the tracks, Disco-toccata, Jurassic Trip, and more. It even uses shared media; the eye-catching double disc pack (priced as a single) contains an audio CD and video DVD. That is the future of classical music.
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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
'Meaningful dialogues between religions is no doubt one of the most pressing challenges of the modern world. Developments over the past few years clearly confirm what a significant role this aspect of human communication represents. Despite breathtaking technological breakthroughs and the related trend of rational scepticism, man still remains a religous creature. Ignoring this sphere of human personality not only leads to an impoverishment of the spiritual culture of a nation, but also to mutual estrangement of nations. And so what a wonderfully enriching experience it is when two cultures meet in mutual dialogue rather than confrontation.'
These words introduce the inspiring new CD Close Voices from Far-away released by Sony in the Czech Republic. The mutual dialogue is provided by the Buddhist monks of Gyosan-ryu Tendai Shomyo from Japan and the Schola Gregoriana Pragensis from Prague, who are seen together in my footer image. The CD was recorded in a former Augustian monastery in České Lípě in November 2006, and was the brainchild of the Schola's founder David Eben.
Close Voices from Far-away is both a moving musical experience and a remarkable work of scholarship. Sources and editions are listed, and the comprehensive documentation includes short essays on the Shomyo Chants, the Buddhist Liturgy, the Tendai school of chant (Gyosan-ry Tendai Shomyo) as well as Gregorian Chant.
Hearing the two vocal groups individually is a privilege. But hearing the two ensembles singing together and layering Buddhist and Greorian Chant on two of the tracks takes us into a unique sound-world that is more contemporary than medieval. Read a fuller appreciation of this remarkable release here. Close Voices from Far-away is not easily found outside the Czech Republic. I bought my copy online from cdMusic.cz who provided a very fast and problem free service. Here is a link to the CD on their site.
I will be playing music from Close Voices from Far-away on my Future Radio programme this Sunday December 2 at 5.00pm UK time. The Buddhist and Gregorian Chants will be interleaved with music from Philip Glass' score for Kundun. This film by Martin Scorsese depicts the exile of the 14th Dalai Lama from Tibet. Both Close Voices from Far-away and Kundun are vivid reminders of the Buddhist culture that is under continued threat from the Chinese occupation of Tibet.
Now follow the Buddhist way with Lou Harrison. And remember that at 12.01am UK time Wednesday December 5 Future Radio is giving the world broadcast premiere of Alvin Curran's complete Inner Cities, with an introduction from pianist Daan Vandewalle. Full details of this webcast here.
Listen by launching the Radeo internet player from the right side-bar, or via the audio stream. Convert broadcast times to your local time zone using this link. Windows Media Player doesn't like the audio stream very much and takes ages to buffer. WinAmp or iTunes handle it best. Unfortunately the royalty license doesn't permit on-demand replay, so you have to listen in real time. If you are in the Norwich, UK area tune to 96.9FM. 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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
'Folksingers, jazz artists and classical musicians made LPs, long-playing records with heaps of songs in the grooves - they forged identities and tipped the scales, gave more of the big picture. LPs were like the force of gravity. They had covers front and back, that you could stare at for hours.' - Bob Dylan writes in his Chronicles Volume One.
'Hi, I wanted to let you know some exciting news today from Deutsche Grammophon (DG), a division of Universal Music Group, who will become the first major classical record label to make the majority of its huge catalogue available online for download with the launch of its new DG Web Shop. (http://www.dgwebshop.com/
As the world’s leading classical music recording company, Deutsche Grammophon will launch its DG Web Shop on Wednesday, November 28th, enabling consumers in 42 countries to download music at the highest technical and artistic standards. This global penetration includes markets where the major e-business retailers, such as iTunes, are not yet available: Southeast Asia including China, India, Latin America, South Africa, and Central and Eastern Europe including Russia. Almost 2,400 DG albums will be available for download in maximum MP3 quality.
Best, Kristina Weise at Cohn & Wolfe' - who are "a strategic marketing public relations firm dedicated to creating, building and protecting the world's most prolific brands."
Call me old fashioned. I like the tangible. You could certainly stare at the LP sleeve above. or the record label here, for hours. Which is more than can be said for the new DG Web Shop logo. The photographer of the Hanson LP sleeve is Christian Steiner, who has photographed many of the world's great musicians. Steiner is an accomplished performer himself as his biography recounts:
'Steiner, after graduating from the Berlin Hochschule fur Musik, won several national competitions in Germany and it was one of these awards which first brought him to New York to further his piano studies. He comes from a long line of musicians. His father was a member of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, and his brothers were members of the Berlin Philharmonic.
Steiner made piano recording with RCA-Reader’s Digest, and was a guest soloist with orchestras in Berlin and New York; more recent engagements at the keyboard include performances with the Berkeley Symphony under Kent Nagano, and with the National Symphony or Mexico. He also performed chamber music with members of the Berlin Philharmonic Octet and recitals with his late brother Peter in Europe and the USA.
Among the singers he has collaborated in recital are Jessye Norman and Carol Vaness. In addition, Steiner is the artistic director of The Tannery Pond Concerts, a summer chamber music festival in the Berkshires.'
Less happy images here, from another celebrated photographer.
Again thanks to our son for the 'joiner' on the record sleeve. 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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Coverage elsewhere of Pope Benedict's musical tastes prompts a couple of back links. This one is about the Pope's visits to the wartime Salzburg Festival. While this one suggests the Holy Father could learn something from a green hill in France.
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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
"Stereotypes persist though - a lot of the women I spoke to are still very aware that they're considered a novelty, and most have heard jokes that women can't play ..." - another piece on gender discrimination in classical music? Actually, no. It's a Guardian report on the growth of women DJs.
Anyone for a classical music club night?
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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Winter sky over North Norfolk this afternoon.
Now playing - Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1 by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Sir Adrian Boult conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra on EMI LP ASD 2847. The Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1 was based on tunes collected from King's Lynn fisherfolk. The town is about 20 miles from where I took this photograph today. In the sleeve notes for the LP Michael Kennedy writes that the Rhapsody "begins and ends with a musical description of the Fens landscape, misty and mysterious ..."
Now read about November woods from a brazen romantic.
Photograph (c) On An Overgrown Path 2007. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Alex Ross turns to the Venezuela problem, and quotes Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer: "Art within the constraints of a system is political action in favor of that system, regardless of content." I can only agree and re-run this post:
The role of the artist in a society where human rights are denied is a recurring theme On An Overgrown Path. As I write Maria Farandouri sings To Yelasto Pedi from Mikis Theodorakis’ sound track for the 1969 film Z (poster above). This legendary film was a barely fictionalised account of the assassination in 1963 of the Greek socialist politician Gregoris Lambrakis MP, and the film and its soundtrack, became an international symbol of opposition to the Greek military junta. This dictatorship savagely suppressed human rights until its overthrow in 1974, and brought tanks onto the streets of Athens, as is shown below.
The junta was established in April 1967 when right wing army colonels led by George Papadopoulos seized power under the pretence of preventing a communist takeover. The dictatorship received the initial support of King Constantine II, although the King went into exile in December 1967 following the failure of a counter-coup. The King had failed to win support from the US who regarded the military junta as an ally against the nearby Eastern European Soviet bloc. With the Colonels firmly in power human rights were denied, political parties were outlawed, and opponents imprisoned, with Amnesty International estimating that more than 2000 prisoners were tortured. Symbols of western youth culture were banned including rock music, long-hair and atheism.
Mikis Theodorakis was no stranger to opposition and the political left. He had worked in the resistance against the occupying Italian and German forces in World War 2, and was exiled in the subsequent Greek Civil War. After these conflicts he studied music at the Athens Conservatoire, and in Paris with Olivier Messiaen. Following the military junta in 1967 
Theodorakis (below) went underground, and his music was banned by military decree. He was imprisoned for five months until an international pressure group including Dmitri Shostakovich, Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Miller, and Harry Belafonte achieved his release, and he went into exile in April 1970. Theodorakis continued his opposition in exile through concerts and by enlisting the support of international leaders, and his sound-track for Z became a rallying call for opponents of the military regime. The film, which was directed by Constantin Costa-Gravas, was hugely important in drawing attention to the junta’s denial of human rights, and I remember it as one of the cult films of my post-university years.
Following the suppression by tanks of a student uprising at Athens Polytechnic in November 1973 (seen in the photo above) popular opposition to the junta gathered momentum. Papadopoulos was overthrown by General Dimitrios Ioannides, who then unsuccessfully attempted to depose the President of Cyprus. This debacle triggered the collapse of the Greek military junta, and democracy was restored with elections in November 1974.
Greece lies on the edge of the Middle Eastern political fault line, and the cataclysmic upheavals in the region since 1974 mean that the dark days of the Colonel’s rule are now largely forgotten. The CBS LP of Theodorakis’ music played by John Williams and sung by Maria Farandouri, and including the Theme from Z, was part of the soundtrack of my life in the 1970s. Seven of the songs are settings of Greek translations of poems by Federico Garcia Lorca, while the Theme from Z sets words from the verse-drama 'The Hostage' by the Irish writer Brendan Behan. Maria Farandouri left Greece in 1967 when the junta banned Theodorakis' music, and she sung in more than 300 protest concerts around the world. The recording was made by legendary CBS staff producer Paul Myers, and my vinyl copy still sounds quite wonderful today. But by the time the LP catalogues were being transferred to 
CD in the late 1980s communism was collapsing and the Greek junta was ancient history, so Songs of Freedom didn’t make it onto CD in the major territories. But Theodorakis remains a folk hero in Greece. He was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2000, and opposed NATO’s involvement in Kosovo and the invasion of Iraq, and has been very critical of George W. Bush. More controversially he was also been critical of Israeli Government policies under Ariel Sharon, and this led to accusations of anti-Semitism.
Mikis Theodorakis’ continuing high profile in Greece thankfully means that Songs of Freedom remains in the Sony catalogue in that country, albeit sadly without the original beautiful sleeve art which is reproduced above. But in a chilling timewarp the original English sleeve notes are retained for the CD version, so they read as though the Colonels are still in power! It is available online from the splendid Studio52 in Thessalonika; my copy arrived speedily and cost €12.50 plus shipping. Songs of Freedom is a classic of the gramophone. It contains very moving performances by two very fine musicians. But more importantly, it is living proof that creative artists have an important role to play when human rights are denied.
Now read about Mikis Theodorakis' Requiem.
Image credits; That wonderful poster for Z from Filmpostersdownunder.com, tank on Athens street from Wikipedia. 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
Inner Cities are where you go to get debriefed, to watch Trisha Brown levitate on Bach in San Francisco; to help Cage squeeze lemons into his fresh taboule on 18th Street and watch David Tudor mix chili peppers and lasers at the Grand Hotel des Palmes; to play the Sydney Harbour like a bandoneon; to teach advanced-orchestration in the Greek Theater at Mills College with Pauline Oliveros and the ghost of Harry Partch; to shake Stravinsky's hand in the American Sector-Berlin and Varese’s in New Haven; to watch Kosugi dance his electric violin around Marcus Aurelius; to get thrown off stage in London as a warmup act for the Pink Floyd; to meet Stockhausen at a strobe-light show in Düsseldorf; to open windows on Cage’s cue for adding real cold air to his Winter Music; to camp out with Teitelbaum and Rzewski for Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point; to hear Terry and LaMonte’s landmark concerts at the Attico in Rome ...
Inner Cities is a twelve part cycle for solo piano that lasts for four hours twenty-four minutes and twenty-two seconds. Its composer Alvin Curran studied with Elliott Carter, and founded Musica Elettronica Viva with Frederic Rzewski and Richard Teitelbaum. The notes above and below are by Alvin Curran.
Inner Cities 10 is dedicated to the Belgian pianist Daan Vandewalle. His repertoire includes Ives, Ligeti, Lutoslawski, Cage and Clarence Barlow, and he has had works written for him by Fred Frith, Chris Newman, and Frederic Rzewski as well as Alvin Curran. Daan has played Inner Cities complete in concert, and has recorded it on the Long Distance label.
Inner Cities has never been broadcast complete to our knowledge. But on December 5th Future Radio is letting me go where others fear to tread. The four and a half hour cycle will be broadcast complete on that day without any announcements or advertisements, and Daan Vanderwalle will be introducing the performance with me. The programme starts at 12.01am on Wednesday December 5th, which is afternoon or evening the previous day in North and South America. Convert to your local time zone here.
Inner Cities described by Daan Vandewalle can be heard as a podcast from iTunes. If you do not have iTunes installed click here to download it. With iTunes you can subscribe to future On An Overgrown Path podcasts.
Inner Cities photographs are by me, and show the Cité du Livre and the Pavillon Noir in the Avenue Mozart in that most musical of cities, Aix en Provence. Alvin Curran has the last words ...
Inner Cities contain no "drive-by" anything; there’s merely back alleys, empty lots full of stubborn weeds and clear sky, trails of memory which may or may not lead anywhere or even have relevance to the music at hand. The bottom line: these pieces are a set of contradictory etudes - studies in liberation and attachment, cryptic itineraries to the old fountain on the town square whence flows all artistic divination and groping for meaning in the dark.
Inner Cities complete continues the proud tradition established by WHRB's classical music 0rgies. Yet more confirmation of the importance of the long tail of radio
Photos (c) On An Overgrown Path 2007. Listen by launching the Radeo internet player from the right side-bar, or via the audio stream, on Wednesday December 5 at 12.01am UK time. Convert time to your local time zone using this link. Windows Media Player doesn't like the audio stream very much and takes ages to buffer. WinAmp or iTunes handle it best. Unfortunately the royalty license doesn't permit on-demand replay, so you have to listen in real time. If you are in the Norwich, UK area tune to 96.9FM. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Dear Pliable. Just to put things right: The reader who told you that Henri Pousseur's birthplace Malmédy was German speaking, is not quite correct. While Malmédy is part of the so-called East Cantons (which were originally German, but became Belgian after the First World War), and which are now part of Wallonia, it is officially a French speaking town with language facilities for the German speaking minority there.
I promise this will be the last time I bother you with the Belgian situation. ;-) Great blog, by the way.
Cordially, Ivo Swinnen, As, Belgium
Ivo, please don't apologise. All this helps explain why Belgium hasn't been able to form a government for nearly six months. And this path took me to some wonderful graphics connected to Henri Pousseur. That's where my header image comes from, it's part of a portrait of Henri Pousseur by Maxime Godard. Thank you for helping us explore the labyrinth of serial music.
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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Keith has left a new comment on your post "Music and chance":
Another B composer, York Bowen. On Sunday 18th Nov, I got up early and went to the newly re-furbished Birmingham Town Hall complete with lighting gantry with perspex sound diffusers and a restored organ for a Sunday Morning Coffee Concert.
I heard the Trio Chausson, a French trio, performing Haydn, Brahms and a trio by York Bowen (left). The piano player in the trio, Boris De Larochelambert, had seen some of Bowen's music, and had researched and found the manuscript of the Piano Trio in E minor, Op118 in an archive in London. He has produced a performing score, and we heard it played during this morning concert.
I'm not musically trained, and what I heard that morning left a strong feeling of expressive music with a wide dynamic range, with the piano leading and the violin and cello floating above and often playing against each other. There were plenty of rhythmic changes, light and shade, but I can't recall any strong tunes as such - it was music about feeling, dark skies with streaks of sun, and not for whistling. I think it sounded 20th century - certainly not classical - but there was no trace of 12 tone or atonal sound, which chimes with the biography below.
Lyndon Jenkins did express surprise that such music remained unpublished and unrecorded - perhaps one for Naxos?
The concert formed part of the ECHO rising stars series, and I could get used to an hour and a quarter or so of music at 11 am on a Sunday. The main floor of the hall was about 60 to 70% full, so I am not alone. Alas, most of us were on the mature side of 40.
"Following his death in 1961, Bowen's music is now largely out of print, very few works appear in concert programmes and his chamber music is hardly played. However, there is a revival underway and thanks to recent recordings and Monica Watson's book "York Bowen - A Centenary Tribute" (1984), (Thames Publishing), listeners and performers are becoming aware of a wonderful musician and some truly extraordinary music."
Thanks Keith. There is a fine recording of York Bowens' Viola Concerto on Hyperion. The soloist is Lawrence Power, and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra is conducted by Martyn Brabbins, who featured here recently in Snape Skyscape. It is also worth noting that York Bowen makes it into the Gramophone Good Classical CD Guide, whereas Karlheinz Stockhausen doesn't!
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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
I think this is what is known as a 'heads down' for my story.
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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
My Future Radio programme at 5.00pm UK time on Sunday November 25 has an all American theme for the Thanksgiving Holiday, but with an East Anglian twist. Aaron Copland’s first set of Old American Songs was commissioned by Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears for the 1951 Aldeburgh Festival here in East Anglia. There are five songs in the set, and the fourth is the traditional Shaker tune Simple Gifts, and that melody appears in different guises in all the works in the programme. I am playing Susan Chilcott's performance of the Old American Songs accompanied pianist Iain Burnside. Tragically Susan Chilcott died of cancer at the age of 40 just a year after this recording was made.
Simple Gifts has appeared in many different versions over the years, including one by Wilson Picket. But for the central sequence of the programme I'm going back to the song in its original version. It is sung by the Shakers of Sabbathday Lake in Maine augmented by the Schola Cantorum, Boston in a sequence of five Shaker chants and spirituals. The recording I am playing is a real find, read about it here.
For the final music in the programme I turn to one of the most celebrated re-imaginings of Simple Gifts. Aaron Copland's ballet Appalachian Spring was commissioned by the Martha Graham Dance Company, and uses the Shaker melody in the scene where the newly-weds are blessed. The ballet was first performed in Washington DC in 1944, and my header photo is from the original production.
Listen by launching the Radeo internet player from the right side-bar, or direct from the audio stream at 5.00pm on Sunday November 25. Convert to local time zones here. My programme of Simple Gifts is dedicated to Maurice Béjart who died on November 22, 2007, aged 80.
Now read how Aaron Copland found 'tis the gift to be free. No photo credit, just who owns Martha Graham? Windows Media Player doesn't like the audio stream very much and takes ages to buffer. WinAmp or iTunes handle it best. Unfortunately the royalty license doesn't permit on-demand replay, so you have to listen in real time. If you are in the Norwich, UK area tune to 96.9FM. 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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Kyle has left a new comment on your post "New music from the old world":
I see that Belgian serialist Henri Pousseur is not mentioned. Or, perhaps, he has already been forgotten.
Not forgotten Kyle. Just wating for someone to fill in the details. Henri Pousseur was born in Malmédy in French speaking Wallonia in 1929. In the 1950s he was active in the international avant-garde music scene (dodecaphonic, serial, electronic, aleatoric music), together with Boulez, Stockhausen, Berio, and others, and like Boulez he was heavily influenced by Webern. The image above is a page from Pousseur's score for Electre (credit Universal Editions, Vienna).
After 1960 Pousseur rejected the narrow viewpoint of the avant-garde, and, in collabaration with the French writer Michel Butor, he adopted an inclusive approach which embraced a range of styles and viewpoints. Their 1962 opera Votre Faust forged a connection between contemporary music and history by casting the audience as performers. The influential Centre de recherches et de formation musicales de Wallonie (CRFMW) in Liège was founded by Pousseur in the 1970s. He also established the Institut de Pédagogie musicale de Paris in the 1980s, which is now integrated into Paris' Cité de la Musique.
Among Henri Pousseur's prolific output are the electro-acoustic music sequences for the 1961 production of Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels. The choreography for this opera was created by the great Maurice Béjart, who died yesterday (Nov 22, 2007) aged 80.
The English website of Henri Pousseur's publisher is here, his own French website is here. And read about yet another serialist from the old world here.
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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Today is the big one. America is celebrating Thanksgiving, and we are all remembering the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. And in the musical world not only is today the nameday of St. Cecilia, the patron saint of musicians. It is also the day when Jacob Obrecht was born in 1450, Wilhelm Friedmann Bach in 1710, Joaquin Rodrigo in 1901, and Benjamin Britten in 1913. Follow the links for related articles.
Now playing - Gerald Finzi's For St. Cecilia on the 1979 Argo LP ZRG 896 seen above. Finzi's Ode for tenor, chorus and orchestra also has a birthday today. It was first performed exactly sixty years ago, on November 22, 1947, by René Soames, the Luton Choral Society and BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boult. Another fine choral work that deserves to be heard more often.
Do you mind if I leave you now with these birthday links? You see, I'm off to celebrate my own birthday.
Header image (c) On An Overgrown Path 2007. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Nice to see On An Overgrown Path, and several other fine music blogs, mentioned in the Gramophone's November e-newsletter. This is written by the magazine's editor James Jolly, who is also a BBC Radio 3 presenter. A warm welcome to new readers arriving at this "provocative and informed" blog from the Gramophone. You can check today's top stories in the right side-bar.
See the rest of my header photo here, and take a look at the Chinese equivalent of the Gramophone here.
Photo (c) On An Overgrown Path 2007. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Mention music and chance and John Cage comes to mind. But there are some other interesting examples of music and chance. If, like me, you arrange your CDs (or LPs even) in alphabetical order you will have experienced another example of music and chance. Why do so many composers' surnames begin with the letter B? Only last week my heart sunk when I ordered a CD by another composer involved with music and chance, Gavin Bryars' Oi Me Lasso. How would I find space on the shelf for the CD when it arrived?
This week brings yet another example of music and chance. Why do so many composer anniversaries fall within a few days? Tomorrow, November 22, is the big one. But yesterday I marked the death of Wilhelm Stenhammar, and today, among other anniversaries, we note the deaths of Henry Purcell (1695), Frank Martin (1974) and Robert Simpson ( 1997).
Henry Purcell should need no introduction; although the anniversary of his death falling the day before Benjamin Britten's birthday is another fascinating example of music and chance. Perhaps chance also dictated that Robert Simpson was born at the wrong time? The last of his eleven symphonies was composed in 1990, and takes the soundworld of his beloved Nielsen and Bruckner into the late-twentieth century. His music found little favour with BBC programmers of the time. Some may have judged his music to be written too late, but time has shown his thinking was well ahead of its time. Robert Simpson resigned from the BBC in 1980 because, and I quote, he could 'no longer work for an institution whose views he no longer respected'. More on an under-rated composer and thinker here.
Chance dictated that Frank Martin was born in Switzerland in 1890. Frank Martin's musical language, like the culture of Switzerland, steers a middle course. He assimilated elements of serialism into his own unique musical language, but retained firm links with tonality. Martin is remembered today mainly as a choral composer, and his magnificent Mass for double choir is probably his most enduring work. But there is also fine orchestral music, including a Violin Concerto and Passacaglia for String Orchestra. A recommended budget priced Decca double CD contains five of his orchestral works plus the oratorio In terra pax.
For some reason chance has meant that a late masterpiece by Frank Martin remains unknown. His Requiem for choir, soloists, organ, harpsichord and oboe d'amore was completed in 1972. It sets the Latin Mass using a finely honed and mature version of his unique musical language. Although concert performances are rarer than the proverbial hen's teeth there is a CD available. It is on the Musikszene Schwieitz label, and is difficult to get hold of. But if you find a copy you will realise that chance is a fine thing.
More chance when the audience composes the music.
Image credit CindyKroth. 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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Serendipitous reporting in today's Guardian. The story is about mass hysteria. It happened at the William Byrd high school in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.
Mass of hysteria?
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The 32-year-old French-Canadian Yannick Nézet-Séguin (above) has been appointed principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. In a press release Timothy Walker, chief executive of the LPO, says - 'Taking outstanding musicality, knowledge and technique as a given Yannick's brilliance lies in his ability to move players to exceptional performance and to communicate a strength and vitality of vision to the listener that is totally engrossing'.
Reports elsewhere suggest Yannick Nézet-Séguin is a promising young conductor.
Health warning - test spins can end in tears.
Photo of Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Bryn Terfel from NewsConcordia . 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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Portrait of Erik Satie by Santiago Rusiñol
'There is also one curiosity on this CD: a short quotation from Vexations - its "motif", made up of a theme and two variations - which Satie required to be played 840 times in a row; depending on the tempo chosen, this would take between twelve and twenty-four hours.
Without entirely playing the composer's game, for obvious reasons, Jean-Yves Thibaudet here simply reveals the different elements of the task, by playing the theme alternately with the two variations, as requested by the composer, then the theme again, this time followed by the two variations, one after the other.'
That is how Jean-Yves Thibaudet avoids the Vexations issue on his 5 CD set Satie - The Complete Solo Piano Music, and his performance of the work lasts for just 3 minutes 38 seconds. But at Cambridge University the pianists of Sidney Sussex College Musical Society are made of tougher stuff. On Saturday November 24th at 7.00pm UK time they are performing Vexations the way Satie intended, and the performance (poster below), in the College's Mong Hall, should last around 20 hours - non-stop.
This rare performance of Vexations is much more than an interesting curiosity. Today Satie is remembered for his Gymnopedies and Gnossiennes, and little more. But his piano music was a major influence on minimalist composers such as Philip Glass. Glass' early Piece in the Shape of a Square for two flutes is a homage to Satie, while Alvin Curran followed Satie in the adoption of epic time scales. Curran's Inner Cities for solo piano lasts for four and a half hours, and it is a work you will, literally, being hearing a lot more of On An Overgrown Path in the next few weeks.
Erik Satie's Vexations has an important place in the history of twentieth-century music. You can experience it in full via a live stream of the performance over the internet starting at 7.00pm on Saturday November 24th UK time - time zone convertor here.
Congratulations to Sidney Sussex College Musical Society for going where others dare not tread, and for putting Vexations on the web. The pianists deserve a credit. They are Kim Ashton, Thomas Athorne, Will Buchanan, Jesper Carlson, James Freeman, Paul Kilbey, Sarah Latto, Joe Scott, Lydia Slobodian, Emily Smith, Jamal Sutton, and Matthew Tait. The photo below shows the quadrangle in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. There are worse places to experience twenty hours of Vexations.
Back story on music in Cambridge here.
Header image is part of one of the portraits of Eric Satie by Santiago Rusiñol. 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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Wilhelm Stenhammar died eighty years ago today, on November 20, 1927. At the beginning of the twentieth century Swedish born Stenhammar was the pre-eminent Scandinavian composer and pianist. He played his own First Piano Concerto with the Berlin Opera Orchestra conducted by Richard Strauss and with the Hallé conducted by Hans Richter, and the Berlin Philharmonic under Arthur Nikisch performed his concert overture Excelsior! which is on the LP shown above.
From 1907 to 1922 Stenhammar was artistic leader of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra. As well as playing his own works Stenhammar performed new compositions by Strauss, Reger, Debussy, Sibelius, and Mahler in Gothenburg, and became a close friend of Carl Nielsen after programming his music. The Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra has continued to perform Stenhammar's music, and in the 1980s they recorded his two symphonies and Excelsior! under their, then, principal conductor Neeme Järvi. The recordings were made in the Gothenburg Concert Hall which is seen below, and were originally issued on the two BIS LPs seen in my header and footer images.
Gothenburg Concert Hall was built in the decade after Stenhammar's death to a modern design by architect Nils Einar Ericsson, who used red maple for the interior surfaces. This resulted in exceptional acoustics which both BIS and Deutsche Grammophon have captured on some fine recordings including Järvi's cycle of the Berwald symphonies on DG.
The sound from the BIS LPs of the Stenhammar symphonies is quite outstanding, helped by heavyweight Teldec vinyl pressings. Both recordings used just five Neumann microphones routed through a Swedish radio mixer. The First Symphony was recorded in 1982 using analogue tape and no Dolby, the Second in 1983 used an early Sony PCM-F1 digital recorder. The classic BIS album designs are by the label's founder Robert von Bahr, and the typography is by Marianne von Bahr.
These magnificent BIS recordings live on in CD format. Given the vogue for Mahler and Nielsen today it is difficult to understand why Wilhelm Stenhammar's music is not better know.
BIS has also done very fine things for the music of Antal Dorati.
Thanks to our son, who lovingly created the sleeve images using an A4 scanner! Header and footer images (c) On An Overgrown Path. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Hello -- You wrote a nice review in August of the Radio Symphony Orchestra Frankfurt (now called the HR Symphonie Orchester [HR = Hessischer Rundfunk]) recording of Schoenberg's Gurrelieder in the Alte Oper, Frankfurt (above).
As it happens, Detlev Kittler, the engineer for the recording lives at the other end of our five-house row here in Frankfurt Praunheim. He's 75 now, and long retired from HR, but was delighted to receive a copy of your article. He also volunteered that he had previously recorded the RSO Frankfurt in the Gurrelieder under Erich Leinsdorf. It's a concert recording, not a studio recording, but Hr. Kittler said that he preferred the recording by "the Austrian". (I can imagine that Leinsdorf captures the Wiener Espressivo elements well.)
He has promised to share a copy of that recording with me, and I"ll let you know about it, if you're interested. Perhaps HR could be persuaded to re-release it in some format?
Best regards,
Daniel Wolf Frankfurt
I notice that among many fine recordings, Detlev Kittler engineered one close to Daniel's heart -Ensemble Modern's 1991 sessions for Morton Feldman's For Samuel Beckett. And more on recordings of Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School here.
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Important article about the Bauhaus design school in yesterday's Guardian . The Bauhaus in Dessau was closed by the Nazis in 1932. Four years earlier the architect Walter Gropius had resigned, choosing to work outside Germany. In 1935 Gropius designed the building in East Anglia seen in my header photo. It is Impington Village College in Cambridgeshire, which was a design collabaration between Gropius and Maxwell Fry. It was Gropius' only major UK commission, and the Village College is still in use today. Gropius married Alma Mahler, widow of Gustav Mahler, in 1915. Their daughter Manon died of polio aged eighteen, and composer Alban Berg wrote his Violin Concerto in memory of her. Gropius and Alma Mahler were divorced in 1920.
The Bauhaus zeitgeist also found refuge in Dartington in Devon. Here the headmaster's house for the progrssive Dartington Hall School, seen in the lower photo, was designed by William Lescaze in the Bauhaus style, and the Ballets Joos from Essen performed in Dartington after they were banished from Germany in 1934. The Bauhaus vision of a creative community working for the greater good lived on in Dartington after the Second World War. The music summer school at Dartington was run by William Glock in the 1950s and attracted great creative spirits ranging from Igor Stravinsky, through Bruno Maderna to Elisabeth Lutyens. The header photo in my recent article Walking with Stravinky, shows Lutyens and Stravinsky together at Dartington.
First performances in the UK, and sometimes in the world, given at Dartington included Elliott Carter's First and Second String Quartets, Boulez's Le Marteau sans maître, Sonatina for flute and piano, and Improvisation on 'Une dentelle s'abolit', Peter Maxwell Davies' Sextet, Luigi Nono's Polifonica-monodia-ritmica, Stefan Wolfe's Quartet for oboe, cello, percussion and piano, and Stockhausen's Zeitmasse and Kontapunkte. And those last works remind us that Dartington ran parallel to that other great music summer school, Darmstadt.
Wliiliam Glock's policy of embracing, rather than fearing, the new continued when he became Controller of Music at the BBC in 1959. His work with Pierre Boulez and others proved that new music has as much to say to audiences as the music of Beethoven et al. This thinking was continued at the BBC by Sir Robert Ponsonby. But, alas, in the years after Ponsonby reactionary forces came to the fore in musical Britain, just as they did in Dessau in 1932.
More unlikely cultural migration here.
The exhibition Bauhaus 1919-1933 is at Mima, Middlesborough to Feb 17 2007. Header photo credit Cambridge2000, but the non-Bauhaus rubbish bin was removed by me. Lower photo from HughPearman.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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Thoughtfully planned and beautifully sung concert by the Cathedral Consort directed by David McKee in Norwich Cathedral last night. Here is the programme:
Kontakion of the Dead - Traditional Kiev Hymn
Crossing the bar - Hubert Parry
A Prayer of St Thomas Aquinas - David McKee
Elegy (organ solo) - George Thomas Thalben-Ball
The Souls of the Righteous - Geraint Lewis
For the Fallen - Mark Blatchley
Greater Love - John Ireland
***
Requiem - Herbert Howells
Sleep - Eric Whitacre
Photo taken by me in Hagia Sophia, Istanbul. See more of that wonderful church, and read about Russian Orthodox music here.
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Many interesting recommendations added to my Requiem article this week. But we all overlooked one that is worth remembering - Howard Hanson's Symphony No. 4 "Requiem" (in memory of my beloved father). This 1943 orchestral work is in four movements, each of which are referenced to the Liturgy for the Dead. My article about Howard Hanson a while back also mentioned Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and he currently has a festival in his honour in London. Header photo shows Hanson standing with John LaMontaine. (Credit Fredonia Press).
Now playing - Howard Hanson Symphony No. 4 with the composer conducting the Eastman Rochester Orchestra on Mercury LP SRI75107. The coupling is Walter Piston's Symphony No. 3. I also have the Arte Nova CD of Hanson's Fourth with David Montgomery conducting. But the composer captured on vinyl in inimitable Mercury sound wins on every count.
Now read how precious this human life is.
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I'm playing John Sheppard's beautiful Western Wind Mass in my Future Radio programme this Sunday, November 18. The CD was recorded by the Tallis Scholars in Salle Church here in Norfolk, and my header photo shows the interior of the magnificent Anglican church.
The music in this Sunday's programme is a catholic selection. Sheppard's Western Wind Mass was probably composed in the reign of Queen Mary who briefly returned England to Catholicism. Edmund Rubbra, whose Fifth Symphony is the second work in the programme, was a mid-life Catholic convert. Like Thomas Merton, he went to explore Buddhism, but unlike Merton he also became interested in Taoism.
My catholic selection is on Future Radio at 5.00pm this Sunday, November 18. And remember, you can help shape the future of internet radio later that evening.
* Listen via the audio stream on Sunday Nov 18 at 5.00pm UK time. Convert Overgrown Path radio on-air times to your local time zone using this link. Windows Media Player doesn't like the audio stream very much and takes ages to buffer. WinAmp or iTunes handle it best. Unfortunately the royalty license doesn't permit on-demand replay, so you have to listen in real time. If you are in the Norwich, UK area tune to 96.9FM. Photograph (c) On An Overgrown Path 2007. Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
After Harry Potter comes this.
My header photo is from Brain Music. Or you could try Britten's musical mind map.
Photo (c) On An Overgrown Path 2007. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Technology's relentless advance has finally invaded the timeless world of the cello, bassoon and other orchestral instruments, with the debut of the largest digital orchestra in the world. Fifty music students at York University staged a hi-tech twist on the traditional symphony last night by sitting on a concert hall floor and playing nothing but laptop computers - breathlessly reports today's Guardian. Now if the paper had read An Overgrown Path they would have known it has all been done before in the States.
Talking of which, in New York Simon Rattle used a handkerchief to demonstrate the correct way to muffle a cough. Something he obviously learnt from Maestro Haitink.
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"Futile to await your letter my decision is final. I have only one way of thinking and acting. I hate compromise. I walk and I shall always walk on the straight path that I have traced for myself in life. Cordial greetings." - Cable from Arturo Toscanini to Bruno Walter about Toscanini's refusal to conduct in Salzburg in 1938 because of the links between the German and Austrian Governments.
Photograph from Berlin 1932 is an interesting case study in compromise. Follow the links to find out how they stood the test. From left to right Bruno Walter, Arturo Toscanini, Erich Kleiber, Otto Klemperer and Wilhelm Furtwängler.
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Interesting article in French over on ConcertoNet.com about twentieth century music in general and Alex Ross' new book in particular. (Flaky machine translation here.) The writer is sometime Overgrown Path contributor Antoine Leboyer who highlights some overlooked contemporary European composers, and particularly recommends exploring Philippe Boesmans (above right), Guillaume Connesson, and Pascal Dusapin.
Connesson and Dusapin are both French, but Boesmans is Belgian. Today, Belgium has been without a government for 157 days, and as time ticks by the possibility of a permanent split between the country's Dutch and French speaking communities comes closer. It is a story that has attracted surprisingly little international media coverage, and that is not because Belgium is of little importance. It was the German invasion of the country in 1914 that caused Britain to enter the First World War, a conflict that changed the world political landscape for ever.
Since 1831, when the country was created by the Catholic Flemings and Walloons separating from the Protestant Netherlands, Belgium has had an identity crisis. This is shown by the following list of Belgium born figures from the arts who are commonly thought to be French, César Frank, Georges Simeon, Jacques Brel, and Renée Magritte, whose Ceci n'est pas une pipe (below) connects him with Simeon's Parisian detective Maigret.
Composer Philippe Boesmans was born in 1936 in Tongeren, in French speaking Wallonia. He worked as a producer of Radio-Télévision Belge de la Communauté Française (RTBF), and since 1985 has been resident composer at the Théâtre Royal de La Monnaie in Brussels. The 1993 premiere of Boesmans' opera Reigen was given at La Monnaie. This performance took place against a back-drop of possible federalisation, as this article from the New York Times recounts.
My header photo shows Boesmans (right) talking to director Luc Bondy during the production of the composer's new opera Julie at La Monnaie in 2005, and the lower photo is from that production. Julie is a one-act chamber opera is based Strindberg's play, Miss Julie, as is William Alwyn's eponymous opera from 1976. If you want to sample new music from the old world, Philippe Boesmans' Julie is available on Cypres Records in a live recording from La Monnaie.
More on new music in Europe here. And as Christmas is approaching why not visit Le village de Noël in César Frank's birthplace, Liège?
Image credits. Header and footer La Mediateque. Magritte from Wikipedia. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
'I've lit shows at the Bastille opera house (above) for 17 years. Paris Opera's special pension deal dates back to Louis XIV in 1698. It was put in place for the king's dancers - it's a historical monument. So why change it? We're only around 1,500 backstage employees. Our salaries are low, between €1,500 and €2,000 a month for stagehands and lighting technicians. Sarkozy's catchphrase is "work more to earn more". But he's asking us to work for an extra two and a half years and lose up to 25% of our pensions. Already Paris Opera has had to cancel 10 shows due to strikes, including Wednesday night's opening of the Nutcracker. That's never a pleasure. But the mood is tense and it will worsen if the government doesn't agree to full negotiations' - Gilles Cortesi, 49, striking lighting operator, Paris Opera in today's Guardian.
And here is presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy speaking in April 2007 - 'The music we call 'classical' is the most popular since it has transcended time, fashion, and society to become contemporary. The music of Mozart and Beethoven was perhaps revolutionary, even elitist at the time, but how we can claim it's not popular?'
Read about another time when music and market forces collided. Could this mean the disappearance of classical music in Paris?
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I need some critical ears to quality test an internet radio project I'm working on. All you need to do is listen to an audio stream of contemporary music for around 15 minutes at 12.01am UK time this Monday, November 19, and email me a brief report on the sound quality. If you are able to help please email your name and geographic location to overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk. The test time should be Sunday afternoon or evening for US readers, convert 12.01am UK to your exact local time here.
Find the back-story on internet radio here.
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'Marcuse has shown how mass culture tends to be anticulture - to stifle creative work by the sheer volume of what is "produced," or reproduced. In which case poetry, for example, must start with an awareness of this contradiction and use it - as anti-poetry - which freely draws on the material of superabundant nonsense at its disposal. One no longer has to parody, it is enough to quote - and feed back quotations into the mass consumption of pseudoculture' - The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton (New Directions ISBN 0811205703)
More Thomas Merton here.
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Harry Potter really did pass me by. But now all is explained...
"Instead, this was something like Dumbledore talking about opening Hogwarts franchises all over the world -- while He Who Must Not Be Named simply wasn't."
Basically, all I meant was that Abreu came off as a kindly aged wizard who spoke with enthusiasm of spreading his magical franchise throughout the Americas, while not addressing (or being asked) about the troubling notion of being used as a P.R. ambassador for what appears to be an increasingly despotic, dangerous regime. The link to your blog was intended to take readers directly to your important post, while not mentioning Chavez by name a la Ms. Rowling's books.
That's all. Hope you didn't get the sense that I was referring to you as "he who must not be named."
Yours, Steve Smith
Associate Music Editor & Editor, Classical & Opera
Time Out New York
Many thanks Steve. I get it now. I think I probably typed Dane Rudhyar once too often today.
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Babel Fish doesn't yet offer American to English translations. So can someone help me with the last paragraph of this article? It isn't helped by the fact that I left school before Harry Potter was around.
Image credit Picture This. 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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
This week's John Foulds moment has uncovered a hidden appetite for obscure and mystical early twentieth century music with Theosophical connections. Which pretty well sums up the music of Dane Rudhyar.
Rudhyar was born Daniel Chenneviere in Paris in 1895, and changed his name when he emigrated to America in 1916. During his first two decades in the US he wrote extraordinary piano music. It uses Scriabin and Debussy as a launchpad into a unique post-Romantic musical universe that embraces dissonant counterpoint. Rudhyar's music is little known today, and was not a major influence on other twentieth-century composers. But his work outside music had considerable influence.
In the 1920s Rudhyar was a central figure in the Halcyon Theosophical community in Southern California. Among those influenced by the community was Henry Cowell, who went on to teach John Cage. After 1934 Rudhyar stopped composing and became a leading advocate of astrology. He wrote more than thirty books on the subject. The Astrology of Personality (1936) is the best known, and remains in print today. In 1976 Rudhyar returned to composing, and his late output included two string quartets.
You can sample Dane Rudhyar's music played by pianist, and sometime composer, Steffen Schleiermacher on an excellent Hat Hut CD. The exemplary sleeve notes are by Kyle Gann, and have been used as one of the sources for this short article. Visit the Dane Rudhyar archival project here.
Now read about what has been described as the best music of any late-twentieth century composer.
Image credit Wikipedia. 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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Today's Koan.
Now playing - music by an American composer, James Tenney's 1971 Koan for violin and piano.
Photo is one of a sequence by me which you can view here, (c) On An Overgrown Path 2007. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Patrick J. Smith writes - 'Pliable's On An Overgrown Path deserves the attention of almost any serious reader and lover of music, and it deserves whatever accolades can be given for his coverage of Hugo Chavez' "Bolivarian Revolution," especially as the musical world swoons over Gustavo Dudamel.
Perhaps my love of Wilhelm Furtwängler should be tempered for this reason, and - as I have said here - some recordings, like that 1943 Bayreuth Meistersinger, are problematic for me - maybe that's right; however, I cannot help but think that Dudamel is a servant of a state verging ever nearer to totalitarianism and repression. Supporting Dudamel, his youth orchestra, and other Venezuelan cultural products is akin to saying that we love the produce of a nascent dictatorship, even if we don't so much care for the dictator.
While Mr. Dudamel should not be made to suffer for being the product and superstar of the music-education program of Venezuela, we should not get in the business of supporting Chavez or the end-results of his projects until it becomes clear the Chavez is committed to democracy and human rights.'
Thank you Patrick for those wise words. The two photos show Venezuelan riot police facing university students during protests against Chavez’s decision to shut down opposition-aligned television station RCTV in May 2007. (Image credits FullosseousFlap). Perhaps DG will use them on the next Dudamel CD sleeve? Meanwhile, many readers have contacted me from Venezuela echoeing Patrick's words. For obvious reasons it is best if I don't give their names. This is typical of the messages though - 'Music will prevail... Chávez will eventually cease ... I hope sooner... We are working to see how...'
Good to see that the music is prevailing, and my article on Venezuelan music beyond the youth orchestras has attracted a lot of attention. One reader from Venezuela writes to point out my omission of Aldemaro Romero, and say 'all the rest have to learn from him'. Romero died on September 15 2007. As well as working in the classical field and founding the the Caracas Philarmonic Orchestra he was the creator of a new form of popular Venezuelan music, known as "New Wave" (Onda Nueva), derived from the joropo and influenced by Brazilian Bossa Nova. You can sample Romero's music on YouTube. The photo below shows happier Venzuelan music making, Aldemaro Romero with guitarist Saul Vera.
Strange how having an opinion is so unfashionable in some parts these days. It didn't use to be that way.
Aldemaro Romero image from Wikipedia.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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
A poorly Jessica Duchen writes this morning about John Fould's World Requiem - Tragic but true: after all that fuss, the piece didn't float my boat. It wouldn't, of course - I am allergic to much of the English choral tradition and to most concert requiems, and it possessed the qualities I'm least comfortable with in both. Still, it seemed worth giving the poor thing a chance. Perhaps it was bound to disappoint after the massive build-up we all gave it (except for Pliable, who saw this coming a mile off. Chapeau, mon ami. I stand by my insistence that it should be heard before being slagged off, but now it's fair game).
Jessica, thank you. You are a lady, and I value debate above everything else. Incidentally, I had heard the choir rehearsal sequences before posting the Peter J. Pirie quote. But having listened to the BBC Radio 3 broadcast last night I fear that the critics will be less kind than you or Peter Pirie. Get well soon.
Image is not Fould's World Requiem, but it is the Albert Hall. Credit Cornish Federation of Male Choirs. 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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Today is Remembrance Sunday in the UK, when we remember all those who lost their lives in the struggle for peace and freedom. Remembrance Sunday has many musical connections, ranging from Benjamin Britten through Arvo Pärt, to George Lloyd, who was himself traumatised in action.
Next Saturday I will be at a performance in Norwich Cathedral of Herbert Howell's 1936 Requiem. This is an economic, intense and moving work that lasts for little more than fifteen minutes, and is scored for SSAATTBB and organ. There is an excellent recording of it on Naxos by the Choir of St Johns' College, Cambridge directed by Christopher Robinson. The CD also includes Take him, earth, for cherishing, the motet composed by Howells to mark the assasination of President John F. Kennedy. We will be remembering that sad event just five days after the Norwich Cathedral performance of Howell's Requiem.
My footer photo is a reminder of one of the more obscure musical connections to Remembrance Sunday. It shows the Cenotaph in Whitehall where the nation remembers the war dead today. The stark monument was designed by the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, whose daughter we caught recently walking with Stravinsky. And that mention of 'Twelve-tone Lizzie' brings me to an important question that lies behind my scepticism about the current media hype surrounding John Foulds' World Requiem. Why does our public music of remembrance have to be 'accessible' and not too challenging? Why does it have to be so 'Classic FM'?
If you must have your Nimrod, but you like to be tonally challenged, why not try Thomas Adès' first string quartet Arcadiana? This was first performed at the Cambridge Elgar Festival in 1994. It is quintessential Adès, and you definitely won't hear it on Classic FM. But the sixth movement is titled O Albion, and for seventeen devotissimo bars in E flat, the key of Nimrod, it movingly pay homage to the time of Elgar and those that died in the trenches of the Somme. But if you come from the World Requiem 'big is beautiful' school why not try Geoffrey Burgon's 1976 Requiem, and give your loudspeakers a real workout? More on Geoffrey Burgon here.
In his peerless War Requiem Benjamin Britten stressed reconciliation as well as remembrance by specifying (but not obtaining) a British, German and Russian soloist for the work's first performance in Coventry Cathedral, the preserved ruins of which are seen below. If, like me, you value reconciliation as well as remembrance, and are uncomfortable with the jingoism associated with the Albert Hall, I give you two personal choices of music for Remembrance Sunday.
Toru Takemitsu's Requiem (for string orchestra) was written in 1957 in memory of the Japanese film composer Fumio Hayasaka. It is a slow, elegiac work lasting a little over ten minutes. The three movements are marked Lento, Modére and Moins lent. Disarmingly the composer later explained "I was never able to write an Allegro ..."
I write this waiting for the start of the BBC broadcast from the Cenotaph. A CD is playing that moves me even more than the Nimrod that will be played in a few minutes. Eleven young choristers from the famous Kreuzchor were among more the 25,000 killed in the British and American bombing of Dresden on February 13th 1945. As well as the terrible loss of its choristers, the famous choir also lost its its neogothic choir school on the Georgplatz, its library of sheet music and archive, and its very raison d'être, the beautiful Kreuzkirche (Church of the Holy Cross) which dated from the 13th century.
The cantor of the Kreuzkirche, Rudolf Mauersberger, completed his Dresden Requiem in 1961. It is a profoundly moving memorial to the victims of the bombing of Dresden. But it was also a living symbol of Dresden's resistance to the repressive political regime in the GDR until Die Wende in 1989. There is an excellent recording of the Dresden Requiem by the Kreuzchor on the German Carus label. My header image is a session photo from the recording in Dresden's Lukaskirche in 1994. This has been the venue for many famous recordings, including Herbert von Karajan's 1970 Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
Rudolf Mauersberger's Dresden Requiem was written for the boy's voices of the Kreuzchor. Much of the singing is a capella, but the score also uses a small ensemble of organ, celeste, trombones, double basses and percussion. It is certainly not atonal, but neither is it 'Classic FM'. And it has been performed in Dresden every year since its premiere more than fifty years ago.
You can read the full story of the Dresden Requiem, and listen to samples, here. To my knowledge it has never been performed in London. Let us remember the dead of the bombing of Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki today, as well as all other victims of war. And let us hope for a London performance of Rudolf Mauersberger's Dresden Requiem in the future.
* Update - read here how the World Requiem un-Foulded.
Follow this path to see Dresden restored from the ruins.
Image credits. Header Carus, middle Wikipedia, footer Ministry of Defense 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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
That's Marin Alsop with Leonard Bernstein in the photos I've just added to the right hand side-bar. And the New York Times are thinking Alsop as well. They have an excellent feature on her today.
Cue link to the New York Philharmonic's first woman conductor.
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Tens of thousands of students are expected to march through Caracas and other cities today in protest at Hugo Chávez's move to amend Venezuela's constitution, despite violence which has injured at least eight students.
Masked gunmen opened fire on a university campus in clashes between pro- and anti-Chávez groups in Caracas on Wednesday. The university said the government used thugs to intimidate protesters but Mr Chávez blamed the marchers. "They generally take the path of fascist violence and confront the laws and the people, and they are always looking to the Pentagon, high-ranking generals," he told a summit in Chile yesterday.
Campuses are the focus of opposition to Mr Chávez's referendum on December 2 to permit him to run indefinitely and accelerate what he terms a socialist revolution. Raul Isaias Baduel, a retired army commander and long-time Chávez ally, has joined the opposition to the draft constitution, saying it amounts to a coup.
Today's Guardian reports it. I wonder how many music blogs will even mention it?
Now playing - Deutsche Grammophon's great recording of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. This is what the Gramophone Good CD Guide said - It has become utterly impossible to 
keep track of all recordings of Beethoven's music ... So who would predict that anything new could possibly be added to what has so often been done, and done well? Thus we might have reasoned in the mid-1970s, but then the seemingly impossible came to pass. When Carlos Kleiber's recording of Beethoven's Fifth was issued in 1975 ... the great clock of Beethovenian interpretation struck the hour.
Carlos Kleiber's father, Erich, resigned his post as director of Berlin's Staatsoper in December 1934 in protest against the policies of the Nazis. He continued to work in Europe outside Germany, but the spread of Fascism forced him to leave the continent in 1939. Ironically it was to South America that Kleiber fled. He spent the years between 1939 and 1946 conducting less than world class orchestras in Argentina, Peru and Chile, and willingly accepted this as the price of his political beliefs.
In 1951 Erich Kleiber returned to Berlin and to the Staatsoper which was now in the communist sector of the city. The opera house itself had been destroyed in the 
last months of the war, and performances took place in the Admiralspalast, a former dance hall. Kleiber found post-war East Berlin politically brittle, and the working conditions in the still ruined city were extremely difficult. He resigned in March 1955 on principle after a dispute with the authorities over the removal of an inscription to Frederick the Great on the newly renovated Staatsoper building.
Carlos Kleiber was born in 1930 in pre-Nazi Berlin. In that year the highlights at the Staatsoper included its director, Erich Kleiber, conducting Darius Milhaud's new opera Christophe Colomb, Hans Pfitzner conducting his own Palestrina, and Richard Strauss conducting Intermezzo. So when Beethoven's Fifth finished on the CD player I switched to another DG disc, Christian Thielemann conducting the Orchester Der Deutsche Oper Berlin in three of the preludes from Palestrina and the prelude to Capriccio. Sadly the CD seems to be deleted, but recommended if you can find a copy.
Now read how the East Germans rewrote music history.
Do find a copy of Erich Kleiber, A Memoir by John Russell (Andé Deutsch 1957) if you can. 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
After the fiasco of Kismet and Carmen today's Guardian reports on the triumphal farce of English National Opera's new Aida:
Imported from Houston, it's directed by Jo Davies, while sets and costumes are the work of fashion designer Zandra Rhodes. Such is the palaver surrounding Rhodes's contribution - you can even get an e-card with a doll (see above) of one of the characters you can dress up - that the uninitiated might reach the conclusion that Aida is about frocks and bling rather than an examination of how political and religious authority can rot the lives of those who are close to the seats of temporal power yet unable to wield it. Neither director Jo Davies nor Rhodes has taken the piece seriously, and what we are presented with is a gaudy, insubstantial spectacle, and a messy one at that.
What next from ENO? - 'Classical Star the Opera' as a co-production with BBC TV?
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Regular readers will know I am not a fan of the infernal combustion engine. Which is why I photographed the car currently standing on our drive. It doesn't use an internal combustion engine. This little orange number goes from 0 to 60mph in under 4 seconds, its energy consumption is the equivalent to 135mpg, and it is electric powered. It is a Tesla Roadster, and it is the brain-child of a Silicon Valley start-up backed by A-list names including Sergey Brin and Larry Page. There is a waiting list for the Roadster which goes on sale in the States next year, and George Clooney and Matt Damon are among the names down for the $98,000 car of the future.
Once you are on the road two things strike you. It is very fast, and it is very quiet. In fact it is so quiet that there have been problems with pedestrians stepping in front of it because they couldn't hear a car coming. The Tesla Roadster comes from a Californian company, and will go on sale on the West Coast - if you look carefully this UK registered pre-production model is left-hand drive, wrong side for us. But the development and building of the car takes place at Hethel, a mile and a half from our house here in rural Norfolk, and one of our family is working on the technology in it.
The only downsides I can see are the 245 miles range per battery charge and the absence of a CD autochanger. Now that would cause problems on our annual one thousand mile pilgrimage to Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer.
None of which will stop the Tesla becoming the de rigeur Hollywood fashion accessory of 2008. Electric cars are the big thing there, as today's Guardian report on the current screenwriter's strike confirms - The police are threatening to hand out tickets for "contributing to noise pollution" if the pickets continue to hold up their "honk" signs to passing motorists - "There are a lot of Priuses honking," says Andy McElfresh, another Jay Leno writer, "a lot of non-writing Priuses".
And creative people going on strike takes us back to when market forces and music collided.
Interesting background here on the Tesla name. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
This tympanum crowns the restored west front of the Romanesque abbey church of Vézelay in Burgundy, France, which we visited in September. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Vézelay was an important monastic and pilgrimage centre, and today it is still one of the four starting points for the Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage route. The Abbey is one of the great architectural achievements of the Romanesqe period, although a major fire in 1120 and other disasters forced extensive renovation in the nineteenth century.
The nave, seen above, dates from the third decade of the twelth century. Although it is Romaneque at its most glorious there are some other interesting influences. See my article on the Rüstem Pasa Camii in Istanbul to understand how the alternating patterns in the stones of the arches echo Islamic architecture, an influence that probably found its way to Burgundy from Muslim Spain to the south-west. The view below is from the apse looking back through the choir to the nave. The apse and choir are Gothic additions dating from the end of the twelth century, and the change of styles is clearly evident at the transept.
The abbey of Vézelay is a wonderful performing space, and you can hear a unique recording made there in my Future Radio programme this Sunday, November 11 at 5.00pm UK time. Takafumi Harada studied in Tokyo and Rome, and was professor of musicology at the University of Kochi in Japan. He has composed for radio, television, the cinema and rock bands. In 1993 he took monastic vows and joined les Fraternités Monastiques de Jérusalem based in Vézelay, and became Brother Damien. He has applied his musical talents to the celebration of the liturgy at Vézelay, and in particular he has worked to rehabilitate the kithara into liturgical music.
The kithara (cithare in French) was an ancient Greek member of the zither family, and in modern Greek a kithara is a guitar. It was used to accompany worship in Biblical times, but subsequently fell out of use. Brother Damien's revival of the instrument is not a dry musicological exercise. He has composed contemporary works for the kithara and monastic choir, and I will be playing some of these on my radio programme from recordings made in the abbey church at Vézelay. His compositions use Japanese and Buddhist themes as well as setting the Psalms, and his work has been supported by L'Association des Amis de la Cithare japonais who have sponsored a CD of his compositions Eveille-toi, cithre! (Arise, kithara!). It can be bought from the website of les Fraternités Monastiques de Jérusalem, where short audio samples are also available.
Takafumi Harada's compositions for the kithara will be coupled with an apposite work, Toru Takemitsu's From me flows what you call Time. This concerto for five piece percussion group and orchestra is built around a five note theme, and its preoccupation with the number five reflects the numbers symbolism in Tibetan Buddhism. This will be a fascinating programme, and I am almost certain that the four pieces for kithara that I am playing are broadcast premieres. Do join me at 5.00pm UK time on Sunday November 11 if you can.
Now read about columns of plainsong soaring upwards.
* Listen via the audio stream on Sunday Nov 11 at 5.00pm UK time. Convert Overgrown Path radio on-air times to your local time zone using this link. Windows Media Player doesn't like the audio stream very much and takes ages to buffer. WinAmp or iTunes handle it best. Unfortunately the royalty license doesn't permit on-demand replay, so you have to listen in real time. If you are in the Norwich, UK area tune to 96.9FM. All photographs (c) On An Overgrown Path 2007. Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Today, November 9, is the Hindu festival of Diwali. This is the "Festival of Light," when lamps are used to signify the victory of good over evil. At midnight on November 9 1989 good was victorious over evil in Europe, and East Germany's communist rulers opened the gates along the Berlin Wall after hundreds of people converged on crossing points.
The header photo was taken by me outside the Nicolai Church in Leipzig. It was here that a candle-lit vigil on October 9 1989 precipitated Die Wende. This was the peaceful revolution that brought down the East German communist regime, breached the Berlin Wall and redrew the political map of Europe. The Nicolai Church was also the venue for another great triumph of good over evil, the first performance of Bach's St John Passion in 1723.
Now playing - Olivier Messiaen's Turangalîla Symphony (Chailly, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Decca 4366262). Light was important to Messiaen (left), and he described his Catholic faith as a 'theological rainbow'. His music was influenced by Hindu rhythms, and the title of the epic, and erotic, Turangalîla Symphony is a compound of two Sanskrit words. These can be broadly translated as 'rhythms of life and love'. Elsewhere David Derrick has written 'conscious musical syntheses of East and West tend to fail'. But Turangalîla certainly doesn't fail, and that's because Messiaen truly defined the over-used word genius.
More on Wende and Nicolai Church here, and a world exclusive picture of the Berlin Wall here. See post-Wende Berlin here.
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Thousands of people in East Anglia have been advised to evacuate their homes amid fears a storm surge from the North Sea will cause severe flooding. The Environment Agency has warned flood defences in Norfolk and Suffolk may not be able to cope. The storm surge is expected to peak there at 0700 GMT today. Norfolk Police are advising people in 7,500 Great Yarmouth homes to leave and hundreds of Suffolk homes are at risk - from BBC News.
For back story see East Anglia 1953 - New Orleans 2005, and for playlist see Britten and Stravinsky - After the Flood. Photo of north Norfolk coast by Pliable (c) On An Overgrown Path 2007.
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The music world loves mysteries. This week it is why did John Foulds' World Requiem disappear from the repertoire four years after its first performance in 1923? The Independent proclaims proclaims Foulds (left) a 'genius', and suggests suitably exotic reasons for its disappearance. These range from resistance to the composers' socialist views to an establishment cabal that banned his music because of its mystical powers. Meanwhile Leon Botstein has been on Radio 3 ranking Foulds alongside Elgar, Vaughan Williams and somewhat puzzlingly Philip Glass.
So why did Fould's World Requiem drop out of the repertoire? Here is a reason that none of the experts seem to have thought of. It is an unremarkable and commonplace work.
That judgement comes from Peter J. Pirie writing in his 1979 book The English Musical Renaissance which I recommended last week. He says - 'A similar figure was John Foulds (1880-1939), whose World Requiem used to be performed at Armistice Day celebrations for a few years after the First World War. This is a curious genre, compound of the over-sweet taste of England in the 1920s, a megalomania that expressed itself in common chords and commonplaces, and a preoccupation with Wardour-Street Orientalism or vaguely Celtic mysticism'.
But don't take Peter Pirie's word, listen to the World Requiem on BBC Radio 3 on Sunday. Or buy the Chandos recording of the performance when it is released next year.
Just another case of the excruciating boredom of pure fact?
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Is there too much hammering of the BBC On An Overgrown Path?
A reader in an interesting position inside the walls doesn't seem to think so.
Neither do posters on the BBC Radio 3 messageboard.
Now find the hidden hammers here and here.
Sweet picture from Creative Chocolates of Vermont. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
I am a great fan of the late John Drummond, and have quoted him, here, many times. But, I blame Drummond for the present decline in presentation standards on BBC Radio 3. In 1987, when he became controller of the network, Drummond changed the role of the presentation team from 'neutral' announcers to presenters who, in his own words, could "communicate enthusiasm and knowledge".
Drummond's change was well intentioned, but terribly misguided. It has been responsible for a disastrous sequence of presenters from Paul 'music for lovers' Gambaccini in the 1990s to Petroc Trelawny and his colleagues today, whose idea of communicating enthusiasm and knowledge is to regurgitate half-digested chunks from a children's encyclopedia of music. The disease isn't just confined to the radio. BBC TV's Classical Star, which is fronted by Radio 3 presenters Charles Hazlewood and Chi-chi Nwanoku, has been described by an eminent musician as 'an obscene pantomime that plays games with the feelings of young, talented and vulnerable people'.
What John Drummond failed to see was that presenters who can communicate enthusiasm and knowledge for classical music without turning it into 'an obscene pantomine' can't be trained. They are born with the skill, and they are very few and far between. 'Presenter' is an inadequate and devalued word for describing such a rare person. Instead I suggest the French word 'animateur' - someone who really brings their subject to life.
Radio 3 should abandon its present crop of 'classical jocks'. It should return to an enthusiastic but neutral presentation style. It should learn from Radio 4, which has avoided the 'chummy' presenter trap, and by so doing has retained its integrity, and its audience. Radio 3 should allow the music to speak for itself. Which is something it has forgotten how to do. And it should search for a few great animateurs to bring classical music back to life, both on radio and television.
The BBC need look no further than their own archives to identify the DNA of a great animateur. David Munrow's Pied Piper radio programme was broadcast four times a week for five years in the 1970s. Munrow (above) delivered enthusiasm and knowlege in huge quantities without compromising scholarship or integrity. Pied Piper brought early music to life for a generation, and I, and many others, are indebted to him for that. Munrow also branched out into television with his very successful Ancestral Voices programme, and he started to develop a career as a conductor. Munrow did so much as an animateur of classical music, and he promised so much more. Alas, he took his own life in 1976, aged just thirty-three.
Television was the medium of choice of another great animateur, André Previn, whose BBC TV programmes reached millions without sinking to the depths of Classical Star. The photo below shows Previn with Carlo Maria Giulini on the set of the television programme 'Who needs a conductor?' Previn also animated classical music in the States with his 'Previn and the Pittsburgh' TV series.
Leopold Stokowski pioneered the role of the animateur in the States, and he worked his magic in the days before television dictated the media agenda. Disney's full length 1940 feature film Fantasia brought classical music to life for millions, and is still regarded today as pivotal in introducing a new audience to serious music. Fantasia was Stokowski's brainchild, and he appeared on screen in a sequence which is seen being filmed in the photo below. (Picture credit Disney Productions).
When television replaced the movies as the entertainment medium of choice Leonard Bernstein took over from Stokowski' as animateur par excellence. Bernstein's famous Young Person's Concerts attracted huge television audiences for an extraordinarily wide range of repertoire, with his broadcast on Christmas Day 1967 reaching an astonishing twenty-seven million viewers.
I have in front of me the programme for the November 2 1963 telecast of a Young Person's Concert - Moussorgsky Prelude to "Khovantchina", Randall Thompson Scherzo from Symphony No. 2, Walter Piston Suite from "The Incredible Flautist", and Brahms Academic Festival Overture. Contrast that with this perceptive comment from fellow blogger Jessica Duchen about BBC TV's Classical Star - 'The most depressing thing about the programme is the way that the music itself is sidelined and chopped up. Evidently our friends at the Beeb don't think that viewers can cope with a whole movement of Mendelssohn.' My header photo shows Bernstein with members of the audience after a Young Person's Concert, and they don't seem at all phased by a whole movement of Randall Thompson. Lenny was a true animateur if ever there was one.
Glenn Gould was also both a great musician and a great animateur, and I have already written about his love affair with the microphone. His radio programme The Art of Glenn Gould ran for forty-eight weeks in the mid 1960s in Canada, and covered everything from the Moog synthesizer to Mozart, and in 1974 he produced a ten week series on Schoenberg. In the late 1960s he turned to television, starting with a series of four Conversations with Glenn Gould in a co-production with the BBC. His television work became as arcane as his radio documentaries, with the hour long The Well-Tempered Listener creating a complex visual montage of Bach's music. Gould's main succeses were in the technically more flexible medium of television. In 1970, in a neat tribute from one great animateur to another, Gould produced the acclaimed Stokowski: A Portrait for Radio. The photo below shows him at work in the recording studio.
Sadly one match of animateurs that seemed to be made in heaven didn't work out for Gould. In April 1962 he played the Brahms' D-minor concerto with Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic. Conductor and soloist disagreed over Gould's spectacularly slow tempi, prompting Bernstein to deliver an apparently critical pre-performance talk. The two animateurs never performed together again, although this was due as much to Gould's self-imposed exile from the concert hall as to any long-term animosity between the two flamboyant musicians.
Last week I told the story of Radio 3 presenter Sarah Walker, who was caught out (in more ways than one I suspect) when a helpful CD player added a fifth movement to Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony. Ms. Walker's CV tells us that in 1995 she completed a PhD in English experimental music. That's the problem. She, and her fellow BBC presenters may have the right qualifications on paper. But, in practice, they fail dismally; both as neutral announcers in the manner of the great Cormac Rigby, and as animateurs in the manner of David Munrow. It's not me that's saying it. It is the audience statistics.
The composer Jonathan Harvey knows a thing or two about experimental English music. He has worked at IRCAM and written a study of the music of Stockhausen. His Mortuos plango, vivos voco for eight channel tape was created at IRCAM, and uses computers to manipulate the sound of the great bell at Winchester Cathedral. It is one of the masterpieces of electronic music, and in the notes for it the composer writes:
In entering the rather intimidating world of the machine I was determined not to produce a dehumanised work if I could help it, and so kept fairly closely to the world of the original sounds. The territory that the new computer technology opens up is unprecedently vast: one is humbly aware that it will only be conquered by the penetration of the human spirit, however beguiling the exhibits of technical wizardry; and that penetration will be neither rapid nor easy.
We're all trying to be too clever. We've forgotten the importance of the human spirit, except when we are trampling it underfoot on BBC TV's Classical Star. We've missed the point that digital technologies, new books, internet radio and blogs alone are never going to attract a new mass audience for classical music. But great animateurs can.
The good news is that the art of the animateur is not dead. The opening of this autumn's Lincoln Centre season in New York was transmitted live on network television. The TV presenter was that indominatable human spirit Itzhak Perlman (photo below, credit Allegro films), and his words about the telecast are a lesson for all of us.
"Television was how I came to the States (to appear on the Ed Sullivan show - Pliable) and I've always felt very comfortable doing it. Of course, there are battles. Television will always err on the side of making something not quite as classy as it could be. I try to put my foot down because people in the mass media often don't give audiences credit. To bring a large audience to a piece of serious music and make it accessible does not mean reducing it in any way. And I've learned that if something is good, even if it is a little difficult, people will get that it is good."
Writing in the Cambridge Review in October 1957 Peter Laslett, founder of the Open University, described the BBC Third Programme as "a sevice which is literally the envy of the world". Fifty years later the service is in danger of becoming the laughing stock of the world. It doesn't need rocket science, or expensive technology, to reverse the decline. It just needs John Drummonds ill-judged presentation changes to be reversed. And it needs the BBC to remember the words of that great animateur Itzhak Perlman - "If something is good, even if it is a little difficult, people will get that it is good."
Now read how John Drummond and Leonard Bernstein just didn't hit it off.
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Good news from my friends in Holland. Radio Mona Lisa programmes are now available on demand for two months after broadcast. The weekly programme is hosted by Patricia Werner Leanse, and is devoted to women composers and performers. Patricia, who is seen in my photo above, is a mezzo soprano from California. She has lived in the Netherlands since 1989, and also writes for the influential Dutch magazine "Opzij". Her recent recording of the complete vocal music of Marjo Tal with pianist Patrick Hopper (BVHaast # 0302) received considerable attention in Europe. Listen to some fine contemporary music on demand via this link.
American ladies are doing some very good things in Holland. I wrote about Dutch based composer Vanessa Lann here a while back. Follow this link to Vanessa's Myspace site for a complete performance of her song cycle "Memory Demands So Much" based on a poem from Denise Levertov.
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'They may be best known internationally for their high-octane, martial-arts routines, but the monks - based in the Shaolin Chan Buddhist monastery in China - will be in more reflective mood in the piece, entitled Sutra, for which artist Antony Gormley is designing the set and the lighting. Performed by 16 dancers, the piece - which the monks (photo above) themselves asked choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui to create - considers the monks' relationship with living creatures, and the ways in which the human body can re-interpret the spirit and energy of animals such tigers and snakes. "The monks wished for Sidi Larbi to create something different to their usual martial arts and bright lights routine, which has become a sort of circus," Gormley says. "We wanted to go back to the internal conceits of Chan Buddhism, about the philosophy of emptiness, and how energy goes through but is never contained by the body." '
Report from today's Guardian. Now read about a surprising link between another great dance piece, The Rite of Spring, and Buddhist Tibet.
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If Stephen Pratt's new work The Miraculous Mandolin is half as good as its title it should become a twenty-first century classic.
More on the composer here, and another title from the gods here.
Mandolin from luthier Randy Crosby. 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
Aldeburgh Music's inspirational plans to realise Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears' artistic vision for Snape have received backing from an American funding body, The Kresge Foundation. Aldeburgh are now just £380,000 ($792k) short of the £14m ($29.1m) funding target for their new creative campus, which can be seen in the accompanying images. The Kresge Foundation have offered a £250,000 ($521k) 'challenge grant' to be awarded if the balance of £130,000 ($271k) is raised by public subscription.
Wonderful news given the strong historical links between Britten and the US. Now help build the future of new music by donating here. Read more about the new campus here, and read an interview with Aldeburgh Music's chief executive here.
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'A society that revels in others' public distress or humiliation, filmed in intrusive close-up, is a pretty sick society. Classical Star harks back to the worst excesses of the Roman arena. The children are exhibits in a human circus. The judges use the thumbs up/thumbs down technique of the Roman emperor; they offer us pretension, patronage and a deep sense of self-importance. We are all being coarsened by this continual diet of exploitation. '
That's just one paragraph from Hilary Davan Wetton's attack on BBC TV's Classical Star in today's Guardian. He hits the nail right on the head, he says it is bad for classical music. And Hilary isn't just a grumpy old blogger. He is a musician, teacher and conductor. And his new CD of Vaughan William's seasonal Hodie is out on Naxos this week.
Now, on the day of Ursula Vaughan William's memorial service let's remember a pilgrim's final progress.
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What's the greatest threat to music? - The growing perception that what matters is money and power. In music, the real things of value are courage, trust, respect, being non-judgmental, and being able to share.
Says Herbie Hancock in today's Guardian. After that I really don't need to post anything else today. But I will. In fact another story about money and power is coming up in a few minutes.
Now take a journey with Jack Reilly.
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Decadance Vs. The Firebird is an urban ballet for the 21st Century. Mashing up Stravinsky's score with original, hip-hop beats, fusing breakdancing with ballet, and remixing the classic story into a contemporary text, the all-female cast challenges the ballet convention of a 'handsome prince' and instead creates a world where women battle for the right to rule the dance floor. A high energy dance performance ready to entertain diverse audiences of all ages, Decadance Vs. The Firebird presents a new vision for hip-hop dance theatre.
Sample Stravinsky mashed up with hip-hop, if you dare, by following the path from here to multimedia to the video of Decadance Vs The Firebeird.
Now read how dance is not an inferior art form.
Image credit Bumbershoot. 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
Useful article in this week's New Statesman on the Eye Music: Kandinsky, Klee and All That Jazz exhibition that I wrote about here a couple of weeks back.
Now playing - A Colour Symphony by Sir Arthur Bliss, with Vernon Handley conducting the Ulster Orchestra. This 1922 work is a musical bridge between the pageantry of Elgar and the progressiveness of Stravinsky and Milhaud. There are four movements, Purple - Andante maestoso, Red - Allegro vivace, Blue - Gently flowing, and finally, Green - Moderato.
Sir Arthur Bliss held that most royal of musical titles, Master of the Queen's Music. He is remembered as an English composer, and is unlikely to feature on Sequenza21. But he was in fact half-American (on his father’s side), and America played an important part in his life and career. In 1923 Bliss went with his father to the United States, and was active there as a conductor, pianist, lecturer and writer. During the time he was in the US his music was played by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Pierre Monteux and the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski. He met Trudy Hoffmann in California and married her in 1925, and returned to England the following year.
A Colour Symphony was composed the year before the composer travelled to America, and the work was a major success on both sides of the Atlantic. But both this work, and the composer's reputation, have faded into obscurity in the intervening years. Today Bliss is usually remembered for his score for the 1936 film based on H.G. Wells' novel The Shape Of Things To Come. That is unfair. His music deserves to be heard more often, particularly A Colour Symphony and Music For Strings. As they say on Amazon.com, if you bought Tippett's Concerto for Double String Orchestra you will like Bliss' Music for Strings.
Wonderful playing from the Ulster Orchestra under Tod Handley in A Colour Symphony. Read more about that fine orchestra here.
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A self-confessed connoisseur of classical music theovergrownpath is having a snip at BBC Radio 3's Sarah Walker and the bad presentation of 10am Classic collection morning show. It's a case of live and let live but in all honesty if I had to sit through four movements of Mendelssohn's Symphony No 3 in A played by the Scottish Symphony orchestra at 10.20am in the morning it would probably send me to sleep: - Reblogged from Britblog roundup #142 on Suz Blog.
Thanks Suz, although it was actually the London Symphony Orchestra - that's what the LSO in my post stands for. But the BBC Scottish is excellent as well, and they blog. Although, sadly, they change their chiefs almost as frequently as your own band, the Lib Dems.
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Over in California Out West Arts reports that 'it was at this point that things got a little weird'.
For those who prefer their Moncayo et al less weird I recommend a superb new 8 CD box from Brilliant Classics titled Musica Mexicana. The 20th-century Mexican composers featured include Chávez, Revueltas, Ponce, Halffter, Moncayo, Jiménez, Herrera, and Dimas. Follow this link for a full listing.
The State of Mexico Symphony Orchestra is conducted by Enrique Batiz, who is an unfashionable sixty-five years old. Fancy dress is not required, and as Musica Mexicana is not on a major label and there are no press freebies, it's at a very affordable price. A German internet seller has the 8 CDs for 19.99€, which is £13.90 or $29. How weird is that?
Now read more about Carlos Chazéz, and about contemporary Venezuelan composers.
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There was only one small problem - the music.Later. No sorry - make that two.
Now read about youth, a state of mind
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Much interest in the recent Britten Sinfonia concerts directed by Alina Ibragimova which I wrote about here and here. The programme included the first performance of a Tansy Davies Bach orchestration, Karl Amadeus Hartmann's Concerto Funèbre, and Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht. Hartmann is seen in my header photo (credit Wikipedia).
Listen to the concert on demand on BBC Radio 3 until Nov 9 via this link, including a short interview with Alina Ibragimova.
And some thoughts on recording Schoenberg here.
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Yesterday's Mendelssohn problems on BBC Radio 3 chimed beautifully with the following story. It is told by the late and great Cormac Rigby, and is about Radio 3 presenter Tom Crowe, who made his many mistakes with great style.
The best of all Tom Crowe stories is that wonderful moment when, on a Morning Concert, somebody had mistimed the final record, which I think was the Hebrides overture, and it over-ran its slot, and they weren't fast enough to suppress the Greenwich Time Signal at nine o'clock. And so the closing bars of the music and the Time Signal coincided, and there was a sort of shocked silence from Tom, and then he came on the air and said: 'Radio 3. The time is nine o'clock, and I do hope that the Mendelssohn didn't interfere with your enjoyment of the pips.'
From a book with a title says it all, The Envy of the World, Fifty Years of the BBC Third Programme and Radio 3 (Phoenix ISBN 073802503) by another much lamented broadcaster Humphrey Carpenter. Quite appropriately the book is out of print.
My photo shows the Green Continuity Suite in Bush House where I made my mistakes in the early 1970s. You can see Leevers-Rich Mk2 tape machines with remote starts on the desk. More memories from then in The Year Is '72.
Picture credit Old SMs. 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
'With a few obvious exceptions (John Adams springs to mind, as do Elliott Carter and Steve Reich), Britain is not conspicuously friendly territory for recent American music' writes Steven Stucky in a very well-argued article in today's Guardian.
You are right Steven. The problem lies with our broadcasters and concert planners. They suffer from the American pie synodrome. If a composer's music shows any sign of audience acceptance we are fed such large portions of that composer's particular pie by the BBC and the Barbican Centre (which are now, effectively, one and the same) that we run screaming back to our own Thomas Adès and Malcolm Arnold. As reported here, it has happened recently with John Adams, Philip Glass, Elliott Carter, Steve Reich, and Osvaldo Golijov.
We'd love to hear more of the many other fine contemporary American composers. Just tell the BBC and Barbican that a healthy diet is a varied one.
When did the BBC last broadcast 'America's greatest symphony'?
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Above is the box design for the 1980 LP release of Supraphon's Martinů Symphonies, which I wrote about recently. The gorgeous typography is by Miroslav Jiránek. It, literally, graphically reminds us of what we lost when the CD replaced the LP.
This Sunday Nov 4 I will be playing Martinů's Fourth Symphony on my Future Radio programme at 5.00pm UK time. Preceeding it will be another Czech rarity, Krystof Harant's Missa quinis vocibus. This dates from the early seventeenth century, and the exuberant performance by the Prague Madrigalists directed by Miroslav Venhoda should not invoke the silence detector.
The Harant Mass is a mid-price Supraphon re-release. The recording was made in 1971 for LP release, and Miroslav Venhoda died in 1987. The early recording date, which predates much early music scholarship, probably explains why the musicians sound as though they are really enjoying themselves. The CD inlay by Jan Alton Design is below. This very well illustrates the compromises dictated by the CD format. The Harant design does its job. The Martinů could be out of the Museum of Modern Art.
Graphics matter, which is why this book is important.
* Listen via the audio stream here on Sunday Nov 4 at 5.00pm UK time. Convert Overgrown Path radio on-air times to your local time zone using this link. Windows Media Player doesn't like the audio stream very much and takes ages to buffer. WinAmp or iTunes handle it best. Unfortunately the royalty license doesn't permit on-demand replay, so you have to listen in real time. If you are in the Norwich, UK area tune to 96.9FM.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
Composer Hugo Distler died by his own hand on 1st November 1942, aged just 34. Read his tragic story here.
How beautifully shines the morning star (Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern) is Hugo Distler's best known chorale setting. Image of zodiacal light and morning star from Capella Observatory. Which would be appropriate except for the single 'p' spelling. Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
A dummies guide to bad radio presentation on BBC Radio 3 this morning. At 10.20am presenter Sarah Walker introduced Mendelssohn's Scottish Symphony with a typically arch pseudo-musicological analysis. She then played the four movements of the symphony.
At the end of the final movement the Decca CD (466990 Maag, LSO) was left playing without interruption, and returned to the first track, the overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream. This was played all the way through, including several jumps in the CD tracking which went unnoticed.
The comedy ended with Sarah Walker back announcing the whole sequence, and disingenuously blaming the Puck up on "technical difficulties". Sarah, a bad workperson always blames their tools.
More BBC Radio 3 rude mechanicals here and here.
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