Indeterminacy in music blogging


Stockhausen, Xenakis, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Francis Picabia, Mozart and Mahler beckon from London - as one savant wrote about the contemporary music scene in England over on Sequenza21 "I do hate ... the lack of diversity in performance (not much range/choice) and all the self aggrandising anti-’intellectual’ inverted snobbery regards the ‘continentals’". I'm away from the keyboard for a few days enjoying the live music, so below is the schedule for my Future Radio show for this Sunday (March 16) plus the following five weeks with links to related articles.

March 16 - Angela Hewitt recital:
* J.S. Bach Toccatas
* Messiaen excerpts from Vingt Regards sur l’enfant Jésus


March 23 - Celebrating Easter with A Love Supreme
* Yuval Ron Ensemble play music from Iraq and Muslim and Jewish Andalucia
* John Coltrane's jazz suite A Love Supreme

March 30 - Vaughan Williams anniversary
* Thomas Tallis Felix Namque for organ
* Vaughan Williams Third Symphony 'A Pastoral Symphony'


April 6 - Contemporary Karajan, to mark the conductor's centenary his recordings of:
* Berg Three pieces from the Lyric Suite
* Honegger Symphony No 3 'Liturgigue'.


April 13 - Pupil and teacher
* Xenakis Komboi
* Hildegard of Bingen lament and Scene 3 from Ordo Vitutum
* Messiaen Oiseaux Exotiques

April 20 - Modern English music
* Maxwell Davies Missa Parvula
* Rubbra Symphony No 6


Photos (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Comments

Henry Holland said…
Pliable, I saw that quote from S21 and my jaw nearly hit the floor. Fine, I live in Los Angeles, which can only support so much live music, but for that person to think that the US or anywhere else besides Germany, perhaps, is some oasis of programming bliss (which is what I took his comment to mean), he's sadly in the middle of a bout of "the grass is greener over there" syndrome.

I regularly have to travel to Europe to hear stuff that will never get programmed here or is done so once every ten years. For my own personal taste, the fact that there's two different productions of Birtwistle's Punch and Judy, one at Covent Garden's smaller space and one at the New Vic by ENO all playing within a month of each other seems like its ideal--except for the 5,000 miles I'd have to travel for it.

Seriously, your blog alone is testament to the vast array of music on offer in the UK, from the earliest plainchant to the most modern scores. You know what the most "out there" productions being done by the major opera companies (Met, NYCO, Los Angeles, Santa Fe, San Francisco, Seattle and the Lyric in Chicago, say) in the US next season are? It's a toss-up between Lulu in Chicago and Braunfels' Die Vogel in Los Angeles, the Braunfels only being considered by me as "out there" because its beautifully lyrical music is simply unknown by most people. That leaves Lulu, which is so.....safe.

Now, I don't know if the gentleman on S21 is an OAP living on cat food, he's so poor he can't afford to travel outside of Brum, but if he has an Internet connection, let's assume he would be able to avail himself of the plethora of low budget flights from Birmingham International that would take him to anywhere in Europe --that's not even mentioning a jaunt down the M6 > M1 or on a train for something in London-- for the cost of a ticket, a pint and some chips and gravy at an Aston Villa match (excluding hotels etc.).

He has that whole buffet of continental offerings on offer, if he can afford it, and I'm stuck here wondering when I'll ever get a chance to hear live the things I enjoy. Birtwistle's astonishing Exody? Hahaha! Saariaho's L'amour de Loin? Yeah, right! Reimann's glorious Lear (two new productions in Germany in October), not in *this* world! etc. etc. If I wanted to hear John bloody Adams, I'd have no problem.....
Garth Trinkl said…
Henry, I too thought that New York City, San Francisco, or Los Angeles might mount Kaija Saariaho's 'L'amour de Loin' or a Harrison Birtwistle operatic American premiere by 2012-13; but now I'm not so sure. (I have nothing, of course, against 'The Bonesetter's Daughter' or 'Daedalus' or even, I guess, 'The Tempest'.)

*

[I was fortunate to be in attendance at the live radio orchestra broadcast performance of 'Exody', from Berlin, a few years back.]

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