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Showing posts from April, 2008

Had to get away to see what we could find

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Evening in Jemaa El Fna in Marrakech , (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008, headline from Crosby, Stills & Nash . Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

A door to the Arab world

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For a valuable resource on the Arab world go to http://www.al-bab.com/ . The sections on arts and culture and music in particular are very useful. Also good music resources for individual countries, for instance check out Berber music . Al-bab is a private project by Brian Whitaker who is the Guardian's Middle East editor . Now read about the secret life of an Arab record label . Photo is detail of Koutoubia Mosque in Marrakech , Morocco. The Koutoubia dates from the 13th century and its name derives from el-koutoubiyyin which is Arabic for booksellers, as a book market once filled the surrounding streets. More art of the mosque here . Photo (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Sweeping cobwebs from the edges of my mind

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Evening in the souk in Marrakech , (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008, headline from Crosby, Stills & Nash . Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Honey I shrunk the pension fund

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There has been quite a lot of interest in the fate of my (and a lot of other people's) EMI pension following my post in October last year . Another letter arrived from the EMI Group Pension Trustees today which says: 'In mid December we reached an agreement in principle with EMI and its ultimate investor, Terra Firma, that the Fund would be granted a meaningful amount of watertight security, which would rank equally with the security granted by EMI to Citi, the bank that loaned Terra Firma the money to take over EMI. Since that agreement, however, detailed discussions have revealed that the form of security offered does not rank equally with the bank's in certain important respects and is not sufficiently robust in its terms for the Trustee to be able to rely on it in circumstances where it would be needed to support the Fund. In the absence of meaningful and watertight security, and as EMI is not prepared to put forward an alternative funding package, the Trustee has

Eat your heart out RIAA

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Everywhere else it is doom and gloom in the record industry. But here is one retailer giving the thumbs up. He runs a market stall in the Jemaa el Fna in Marrakech and official figures show that more than 90% of CDs and DVDs sold in Morocco are pirated, with an industry spokesman saying "every artistic endeavour is affected". Based on my recent visit I would put the piracy rate higher; during nine days in the country I did not see a single legitimate CD on sale. But then, even the BBC gives permission for file sharing for personal use. Now playing - music of the gnawa communities found in the southern areas of Morocco. The repetitive rhythms and looping riffs of gnawa that are the signature sound of evening in the Jemaa el Fna originated in black African religous rituals and trance and are provided by drums and the gimbri , the long-necked lute seen on the label above, supplemented by iron castanets called karakeb . Hypnotic stuff, but I'm afraid my CD (above) the fr

Tripping the Licht fantastic

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'Our real journey in life is interior: it is a matter of growth, deepening and of an ever greater surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts' - Thomas Merton Karlheinz Stockhausen and Thomas Merton are also together here. Photos of Marrakech-Menara Airport terminal roof (c) 2008 On An Overgrown Path . Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Pierre Boulez - I'm not a shy man

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He says little has changed in the music world since he started out, in that "20% are very interested in new things, 50% can be persuaded and 30% are in their coffins before their time. It is not a matter of good times or bad times. You always have to make an effort and you always need a strong personality to get things done. If you are timid and unadventurous, no matter how good your ideas, nothing happens. Me, I'm not a shy man. I am willing to have a go. Then it is for others to judge its worth" - unmissable, and original, Pierre Boulez in today's Guardian . Lots more on the bogeyman of twentieth century music here. Photo credit Le regard de James . 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 contemporary composer's Passion

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James MacMillan (left) charts progress on his new Passion in today's Guardian . I am playing his percussion concerto Veni, Veni, Emmanuel on Future Radio on May 11. Read about another contemporary Passion 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

Google Earth for classical music?

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Google Earth is the water cooler killer app. The image above is from RAMline which uses Topic Maps software to create a unique multi-dimensional index of music and musicians linked to local digitized archives and other online resources, such as manuscript sources and published editions, live performances and recordings, musical criticism and comment. Could this be classical music's killer app? More here on musical mind maps and music history rewritten . Image credit A. Pitts/Royal Academy 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

Ysaye listening on Future Radio

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There is a rare chance to hear one of Eugène Ysaÿe's sonatas for solo violin on Future Radio this Sunday. My Overgrown Path programme takes a journey from Bach to Belgium and frames Ysaÿe's Sonata No. 2 in A Minor with Bach's Sonata No. 1 in G minor and mighty Partita No 3 in E major. The Ysaÿe Sonatas are inspired by Bach, and the juxtaposition of Ysaÿe's Second Sonata with the E major Partita in the programme mirrors the Belgium composer's statement and restatement of themes from the Bach work. Thomas Zehetmair plays the Ysaÿe and the two Bach works are performed by Mark Lubotsky from Brilliant Classic's invaluable Bach Edition which offers all the composer's works on 155 CDs at a very affordable price. Listen at 5.00pm UK time on April 27 with a repeat at 12.50am on April 28. Ysaÿe was born in Liège in Belgium in 1858, and after graduation became principal violin of the Benjamin Bilse beer-hall orchestra , which found a home in a disused roller-skati

Different tempo but the music continues

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'The pause is as important as the note' ~ Truman Fisher We start a summer of travelling tomorrow with a flight to Morocco, so the tempo of posting will slow markedly. While I'm away do read other great music blogs here , but why not escape the tyranny of league tables and explore the long tail of music blogs over here ? But don't forget the music continues on my Future Radio programme at 5.00pm UK time every Sunday with a repeat at 12.50am on Monday morning. Here is the forward schedule which starts on April 20 with two modern composers who between them do not have a single note of their music in the 2008 BBC Proms season . April 20 Unique British voices - Peter Maxwell Davies Missa Parvula sung by Choir of Westminster Cathedral; Edmund Rubbra Symphony No 6 played by Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Norman del Mar. (Nice Max connection as I took the photo of the Japanese garden at Dartington Hall where he was a fixture at the Summer School for many years). A

At last - music treated as music

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In the week when the BBC, EMI and UK media decided that Nigel Kennedy is the future of classical music I greatly enjoyed a new CD from an independent Belgian label that proves that there is still life beyond the celebrity circus . Llibre Vermell from the Ricecar label is an imaginative realisation based on these anonymous words in the famous medieval manuscript in the Abbey of Monserrat: "Sometimes the pilgrims who are holding vigil in the church of the Holy Virgin of Montserrat wanted to sing and dance, but they were only allowed to sing respectable and pious songs". The CD brings together the Namur Chamber Choir as the pilgrims, the Psallentes as the monks and the excellent boys choir Les Pastoureaux as the choirboys of the Abbey together with period instrumentalists under the direction of Christophe Deslignes . The boy's choir are, for me, the real stand-outs on an exceptional disc, how refreshing to hear young voices in early music. The recording, which derived f

The shock of the missing new

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Email received - Dear Herbert (sic), The Los Angeles Philharmonic is hosting an online Enter-To-Win a pair of tickets to the Philharmonia Orchestra concert in May. Would you be able to mention this on your blog for your LA readers? LA Phil Presents – Philharmonia Orchestra – May 6 & 7, 8:00 PM at Walt Disney Concert Hall Christoph von Dohnányi, conductor For a chance to win tickets to the Philharmonia concert on May 7, click here or visit: http://www.laphil.com/tickets/special_events/philharmonia_contest.cfm Thank you! All the best, Stacy Allied Live/TMG - The Marketing Group 110 S. Fairfax, Suite 210 Los Angeles, CA 90036 Stacy, I'm delighted to give Walter Legge's old orchestra a plug. But couldn't the Philharmonia have offered your funky West Coast audiences something a little more challenging than the programmes below? Did classical music really end with Mahler? Couldn't they have included some of that gorgeous Xenakis I heard them play in London in March? Re

EMI - here are my thoughts

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Email received - Hi, EMI Classics are running a competition on their site where you can win CDs of your choice from their catalogue if you submit a review of one of their albums. I thought this was something the readers of your blog might be interested in. Please have a look at the link below (deleted) and let me know your thoughts? If you would like to include some information I can send you some assets. Thanks! Naomi Snuggs http://www.headstreampr.com/ Naomi, here are my thoughts. You sort out my EMI pension and I'll plug EMI Classics' competition? A deal? Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Handel's Suites are miracles

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'Interesting to listen once again to this 'historic' recording . I know the general public didn't really take to it, so that the people who sell these things clearly didn't make any profit (will it suffer the same fate as Berg's Concerto ?.) And why? Audiences (in every country) prefer to buy Bach - out of habit - and because, in doing so, they think they are showing 'greater musicality'. They undervalue Handel or else they ignore him completely. During their own lifetimes, it was exactly the opposite. Handel travelled everywhere in a carriage, while Bach humbly played the organ at the Thomas-Kirche . Now for Gavrilov and Richter. As soon as I started to listen, Gavrilov struck me as infinitely more interesting (in spite of a certain irreproachability to Richter's playing). Everything about his playing is fresher, more alive, freer. There's nothing studied about it. Only occasionally does he allow himself to be carried away by the fortissimo pa

The view from a major record label

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' Polydor executives were not known for diplomacy: the man sent to open their American office startled the crowd at the New York press launch by telling them he had wanted to live in the city ever since he had seen its skyline from Long Island Sound through the periscope of his U-boat in 1943.' Joe Boyd writes about music in the 60's in White Bicycles , one of the most entertaining and best written books about rock. Now read Joe Boyd on Dylan and the blues , and, of course, he was Nick Drake's producer . 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

It is impossible to live without inner peace

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On 11th March 2008 Madrid marked the fourth anniversary of the terrorist bombings (above) that claimed the lives of 191 people and wounded 1,856. It was the biggest terrorist attack in the history of Spain and, indeed, Europe, with 10 simultaneous explosions on four of Madrid’s district trains at the height of the morning rush hour. It happened a few minutes before 8 a.m. Later, the police exploded another two bombs that had failed to go off and a third was defused, leading to the identification of those responsible. The ceremony of remembrance for those who were killed began at twelve noon in front of the monument inaugurated last year which stands in Plaza de Atocha . It was led by their majesties King Juan Carlos and Queen Sophia, who laid a wreath at the foot of the monument. After a minute’s silence in memory of the victims, there was a rendition of the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s “Da pacem, Domine ”, a work commissioned by Jordi Savall for performance at the Barcelona Forum

Xenakis - the eyes have it

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'This is the first time I've heard any music by Xenakis; it's completely bowled me over, even though I'm not sure I've really understood it (or not understood it). Intuition? But can one always trust it? ... It seems to me that this, in fact, is what I'd call real 'new' music.' Which famous musician seen in the photo above said this ? The image will gradually enlarge until the correct answer is posted. Hear Xenakis' Komboi on my Future Radio programme tomorrow, Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Beethoven keeps on cycling

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In 2006 Norman Lebrecht got it wrong when he wrote "in fact, no label had issued a (Beethoven) symphonic cycle in three years, and none was likely to do so again". In 2008 Lebrecht is proved wrong again by Paavo Järvi's acclaimed new cycle with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen on RCA. Hopefully the CEO of the Bremen orchestra hasn't reviewed any of Norm's books in the past. 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

Messiaen and Xenakis - Oiseaux Exotiques

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This photo shows Olivier Messiaen pinning the award of Chevalier de la légion d'honneur on Iannis Xenakis in his Paris apartment in 1977. Xenakis was a pupil of Messiaen and I will be playing music by both of them on my Future Radio programme on Sunday April 13 at 5.00pm UK time (repeated 12.50am April 14). The programme opens with Xenakis' Komboi and closes with another award winner, Angelin Chang , John McLaughlin Williams and the Cleveland Chamber Symphony's Grammy winning recording of Messiaen's Oiseaux Exotiques . The two works are separated by music from a composer who shared Messiaen's deep Catholic faith. Hildegard of Bingen is the earliest composer with a detailed biography and her music drama Ordo Virtutum is considered to be the prototype of the art form that became opera and eight centuries later came full circle in Messiaen's massively underrated Saint François d'Assise which only had its U.S. premiere in 2002. I will be playing the

We're riding on the Marrakesh Express

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Marrakech in Morocco is one of the few cities that I haven't seen in this blog's reader stats. But if there are any readers there, or if anyone knows the music scene I'd love to hear from them via overgrownpath at hotmail.co.uk as we will be there next week. While on the subject of Crosby, Stills & Nash can anyone explain why the lyrics of that classic track talk of Travellin the train through clear Moroccan skies - Ducks, and pigs, and chicken call, animal carpet wall to wall when there are hardly any ducks in Morocco, and as it is a strictly Muslim country there are about as many pigs as polar bears? Presumably it was all to do with blowing smoke rings from the corner of my mouth C,S & N also appear in Notes of a College Revolutionary . 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 imag

Glenn Gould re-engineered

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'Whatever I have written, whether published by me during my lifetime or as part of my literary papers still existing after my death, shall not be performed, printed or even recited for the duration of legal copyright within the borders of Austria, however this state identifies itself.' This extraordinary clause in the will of the Austrian novelist Thomas Bernhard , who died in 1989, was the final event in an extraordinary life. He was born in Holland in 1931 and studied at the Akademie Mozarteum in Salzburg before becoming an author. I have been reading Bernhard's remarkable novel The Loser ( Der Untergeher ). It tells the story of a fictional relationship between Glenn Gould and two of his fellow students who abandon their own musical ambitions in the face of Gould's incomparable genius. In The Loser Bernhard unashamedly re-engineers Gould's biography to suit his own ends, and there is no claim to historical authenticity. But as a meditation on success, failure,

BBC Proms 2008 tries some time travel

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1972 - Stockhausen's Carré for four orchestral groups is performed twice in a late-night Promenade concert, rehearsal shown in photo above. Other Proms include the first UK performance of Elliott Carter's Concerto for Orchestra conducted by Pierre Boulez and George Crumb's Echoes of Time and River. 2008 - Proms season includes Stockhausen's Klang (13th and 15th hour), Kontakte, Stimmung and two performances of Gruppen in one concert. There is also Xenakis coupled with Vaughan Williams , and four works by Elliott Carter including two UK premieres, plus lots of Messiaen and Vaughan Williams and a programme of twentieth-century music mixed with renaissance polyphony . (Wish I had thought of that ). Are things getting better under new Proms director Roger Wright ? Well, there is also music from Doctor Who as shown in the ridiculous BBC photo opportunity above, dancing round a maypole in Kensington Gardens, and musicians "popping up" on street corners,

Proud to be a music anorak

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Nice to see classical vinyl generating excitement in today's Guardian, but not sure about the headline - 'A music anorak's treasure trove ' which suggests classical music is some kind of nasty habit. Also it appears from the piece that the Guardian (and BBC's) Tom Service doesn't have a record deck. I'll let you into a secret. I don't have an iPod, but I do have a Thorens TD125 , which I guess also makes me a turntable anorak . Elsewhere in the Guardian a late tribute to Herbert von Karajan adds little original but is good for a laugh with my old EMI colleague Peter Alward describing Karajan as 'very shy, a simple man with simple tastes'. Which is the best description of a very large yacht and Falcon 10 executive jet I've ever come across . Photo (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Straussian modernism and Viennese Schmaltz

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'It is worth noting that the novel's last scene, with it's off-stage procession, tumultuous church-bells and climactic murder, itself resolves a very inward drama in the convention of grand opera. A fact not lost on the twenty-three-year-old Erich Wolfgang Korngold, whose opera Die tote Stadt (premiered simultaneously in Cologne and Hamburg in December 1920) is based indirectly on Bruges-la-Morte , and is now the form in which the novel is most widely known. Its immediate source was Le Mirage , the four-act theatrical version of Bruges-la-Morte which Georges Rodenbach prepared at the end of his life, but never saw staged. In dramatising his book he found himself driven to just those kinds of explication through dialogue that the novel pointedly avoids. Korngold, in following him, and in wrapping the play in his precocious melange of Straussian modernism and Viennese Schmaltz, prolonged and broadened the fame of this recondite novel - but at the cost of what makes it so si

The bonds of peace between nations

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'How many people are aware the modern torch relay was introduced by Carl Diem , president of the organisation committee for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, as part of an effort to turn the games into a glorification of the Third Reich. "Sporting chivalrous contest helps knit the bonds of peace between nations. Therefore may the Olympic flame never expire," - Adolf Hitler' - writes Patricia van den Brink from Herne, Germany in today's Guardian . And how many people are aware that Hitler's court composer was a Harvard alumni ? Photo of demonstration in London on April 6, 2008 from Students for a Free Tibet UK . Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Market forces and music collide - again

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Canada’s oldest national orchestra is being axed by CBC Radio. Since 1938, the CBC Radio Orchestra , which is the last radio orchestra in North America, has been an invaluable part of Canada’s music scene. The axing is driven by cost savings which have also resulted in the mass culling of classical broadcasts . Sign the online petition to sign the orchestra here . I hope that the fine CBC musicians will take strength from the story of how, when market forces and music collided in the past at the BBC , the threatened musicians fought back successfully. 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

Glass houses and stones

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Elsewhere Kyle Gann is upset by comments being posted to his blog. Could this be the same Kyle Gann who recently posted this comment to another music blog ? 'I’m so tired of the Brits shoving their immature wunderkind composers down our throats, and whining about being left out of music history in general, that I wouldn’t give a flying f**k about any criticism coming from that country. As for the Germans, after reading the book I wrote Alex a message complimenting the accuracy of his pessimistic assessment of that country’s current activity.' Sometimes so wrong, sometimes so right . 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

Goodbye conductor - hallo composer

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Overgrown Path's web logs over the past few days showed little uplift in traffic to my wide range of Herbert von Karajan articles . Most of the increase that happened came either from searches for the conductor's political and sexual predilections or from Japan, which has always had a special love affair with him. This analysis was mirrored in the mainstream media where, despite strong promotion from Deutsche Grammophon and EMI and some unashamed puffery from Simon Rattle , there was little interest in the Karajan anniversary other than tabloid-style trash from Norman Lebrecht and Ivan Hewett . The music industry loves an anniversary and two years ago we celebrated Shostakovich to death . So why did Herbert's birthday party fall so flat? Many will say it was because of Karajan, but I disagree. Love him or hate him Karajan was a very high profile conductor who has never struggled in the past for column inches . Nobody came to the party this week-end because our love a

Happiness is ...

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More on Stimmung here and Jordi Savall here. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

An anniverary howl for Allen Ginsberg

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Allen Ginsberg (above) died on April 5, 1997 and Herbert von Karajan was born on April 5, 1908. I'm probably the only person to find a connection between the two, so it's not surprising that if you type "allen ginsberg herbert von karajan" into Google.com the first two results are currently from On An Overgrown Path . Which means you can read about them here and here . Image credit Summer of Love . 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

The art of protest

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While in the Guardian author Charles Cumming makes an important point about China's Turkic-Muslim minority - The British media's obsession with Buddhist Tibet says a great deal about western attitudes to Xinjiang and to its predominantly Turkic-Muslim population. It may be that people remain ignorant of Xinjiang because it has no Dalai Lama, no Richard Gere, to bring its cause to the world's attention. If it did, then we would know more about the barbaric treatment meted out to Uighurs on a day-to-day basis. So paranoid is the Chinese government about the threat of a separatist movement in Xinjiang that it will incarcerate innocent civilians on the flimsiest pretexts. Uighurs have been jailed for reading newspapers sympathetic to the cause of independence. Others have been detained merely for listening to Radio Free Asia , an English-language station funded by the US Congress. Even to discuss separatism in public is to risk a lengthy jail sentence, with no prospect of ha

The pilgrim enters the celestial city

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The sad news comes from America of the death of the baritone John Noble after a long illness. He was born in 1931 and studied mathematics at Cambridge University. While still a student at Cambridge in 1954 he sung the part of Pilgrim in Ralph Vaughan William's The Pilgrim's Progress and went on to a professional career which included singing the role in the EMI recording under Sir Adrian Boult in 1970/71. The header photo above was taken in the Kingsway Hall control room during the recording and John Noble is in the centre foreground with, from left to right, Ursula Vaughan Williams, Christopher Bishop (producer), Sir Adrian Boult , Ian Partridge, Gloria Jennings, Christopher Parker (balance engineer), in front John Alldis (chorus master) and Sheila Armstrong. John Noble's other recordings included Britten's Albert Herring for Decca, Verdi's Macbeth and Don Carlos for HMV, and Finzi's In Terra Pax for Lyrita. He also frequently sung the role of the Christus

No such thing as a free lunch

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Music has been chasing money ever since Bach bundled together six concertos in the hope of earning a few lunches from Christian Ludwig, the Margrave of Brandenburg. In the twenty-first century, as the credit crunch bites and funding dries up in Western countries, hardly a day passes without a story about yet more lavish arts patronage in the Eastern 'sunrise' economies. Today Abu Dhabi gets the red-carpet treatment in the Guardian . Out in the United Arab Emirates the arts are getting everything money can buy, and more. The Louvre is signed up with a new building by Pritzker-winning architect Jean Nouvel and there is a must-have Guggenheim Museum by the must-have Frank Gehry, and crowning it all a 6,300 seater Performing Arts Centre seen above by British-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid who won the Pritzker prize in 2004. Justin Timberlake and Elton John have already done their thing in the new Abu Dhabi Arts Centre, and classical music is represented by a lavish festival organi

No flowers please for Herbert von Karajan

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Few musicians have generated such a mixture of respect and revulsion as Herbert von Karajan. It takes Richard Osborne 851 pages in his masterly biography to capture the essence of this extraordinary conductor, entrepreneur and opportunist, and it would be impertinent to even attempt to cover the same ground here. So instead, with the centenary of Karajan's birth falling on April 5, I offer this personal vignette from my time at EMI, which I hope in some small way illustrates the conundrum that was this extraordinary man. During the late 1970s the Machiavellian Karajan had carefully nurtured a deadly rivalry between EMI and his other contract company, Deutsche Grammophon. This meant that EMI had, at very considerable expense, outbid DG for the four act version of Verdi's Don Carlos with José Carreras and Mirella Freni , and Debussy's Pelléas et Méliande with Frederica von Stade and Richard Stilwell . Pélleas was a personal passion of Karajan, and because of this he