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Showing posts from October, 2008

Alma - the loveliest girl in Vienna

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And of course no item about Lehrer in a music blog would be complete without mention of one of his least political but most delightful songs - Alma. I first heard it when I was starting university and had just bought my first Mahler recording (the Cleveland/Raskin/Szell 4th ). I remember being fascinated to discover that Alma only died the previous year. Thanks Scott for that email, which sends us down another fascinating path. My header photo shows Alma and Gustav Mahler in Basle at the time of the performance of the composer's Second Symphony there in 1903. The photo below shows the couple walking between Toblach and Altschluderbach in 1909. There are very few photos of Alma and Gustav together, which may not be surprising once you've heard Tom Lehrer's song. Below are the lyrics for Alma together with the top and tail Lehrer gave it on his 1965 album That Was The Year That Was . Finally there is a recording of the great Tom Lehrer himself singing Alma . Last Decembe

Gestures from a museum?

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Incoming New York Philharmonic music director Alan Gilbert divides music into 'museum' or 'laboratory' - meaning 'traditional' or 'contemporary'. I wonder where that puts, for example, The Art of Fugue or Gesualdo's Tenebrae Responsories ? Coming to that, not all contemporary music is straight from the laboratory . 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 black humoured musical revue

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Caught Northern Theatre Touring's tribute to Tom Lehrer in Norwich yesterday. The evening is described as 'a black humoured musical revue, with songs composed by American satirist Tom Lehrer. It looks at the social and political aspects of common culture, such as racism , pornography and war in a uniquely warped way. The songs of Lehrer are as relevant today as they were when they were first composed in the 1960s .' A magical evening that was also a timely reminder of the depths that today's BBC has sunk to with its so called satire. The highlight of the show was Tom Lehrer's priceless song Werner Von Braun . 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

Dean Dixon - I owe him a huge debt

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Dear Pliable, As a lonely youngster growing up in Sydney in the sixties, one of the great experiences I had was to hear Dean Dixon in many concerts with the SSO. I got to know the basic classical repetory at the old Sydney Town Hall. Dixon seems to have been forgotten, and I couldn't then judge how good a conductor he was, but I owe him a huge debt. Keep up the good work and remember Dean Dixon!!! Yours David Sudlow David, thank you for that memory, and for the opportunity to make sure that Dean Dixon, who features in my photos, is neither forgotten nor underrated. He was born in 1915 in New York City and studied at DeWitt Clinton High School in Harlem, then at the Juilliard School and Columbia University. At the age of 26 Dixon became the youngest conductor to lead the then New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, and in 1941 he conducted the NBC Symphony in the orchestra's summer season. He made many recordings of American contemporary music including Henry Cowell's Sy

BBC - try this one for size

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Readers who think I have a down on my old employer , the BBC, should try this one for size . Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Fifth symphonies reprised

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Wonderful how far modest little posts can reach. With thanks to Steve Smith, who blogs at Night After Night , for a refreshingly collegiate example of music writing . 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

Gustavo Dudamel's rattling deer hooves

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It is a great shame that the exotic scoring, which calls for a range of instruments including a Yaqui metal rattle and a rattling string of deer hooves, means that Carlos Chávez's 1936 Sinfonía India is rarely heard in the concert hall. Fortunately this fine work, which is sometimes sniffily dismissed as 'folkloric' , has fared better on record. The brilliant gatefold artwork seen here is from the original 1981 EMI LP release of Enrique Bátiz's account of Sinfonía India recorded with the Orquesta Filarmónica de la Ciudad de México and featured on the path last year . The early Soundstream digital sound of the Mexican recording lacks impact, but it is available as a CD transfer in a Brilliant Classics eight disc budget compilation . Also now on CD is Carlos Chávez's own recording which has the advantage of being captured in stunning Everest analogue sound using 35mm magnetic film stock. Talking of the media of film but moving to the 21st century you can sampl

Why I will be returning my Gergiev tickets

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Dear Pliable, Thank you for your article on Gergiev and the LSO . It’s time this was out on the table. Richard Morrison’s startling article in October’s BBC Music Magazine is a timely reminder that those who know, and those who care, should be taking stock of Valery Gergiev’s stewardship of the London Symphony Orchestra. Why? My first concerts with the LSO reach back to 1962. I still have the treasured programme for Pierre Monteux’s 88th Birthday Concert (April 1963), at which he performed Beethoven’s 8th and 9th Symphonies - deeply moving, and anyone who owns recordings of Kertesz’s Dvorak and Solti’s early Mahler (I was there for his shattering Mahler 2nd) will have a very good idea of the orchestra’s sound at the time, its brilliance and its virtuosity. Others will disagree, and I have heard wonderful performances from the London Philharmonic, Philharmonia and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras over the decades, but for me the LSO has always been the best band in town, even if I was not

Final approach to Berlin

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Writing about Stockhausen et al being performed in the redundant Tempelhof Flugplatz in Berlin brought back memories of flying into that most extraordinary of airports. The first time I flew into Berlin was in 1973 and I was fortunate to be the only passenger in an executive jet. The views approaching Tempelhof was very similar to those seen in the two photos reproduced here. During final approach over the cemetery the plane was at the same height as the apartment blocks on the right, and I remember an early morning flight when eye contact was made with bleary eyed Berliners at their breakfast tables. By a quirk of fate I was in Berlin on 1 September 1975 when British Airways switched its flights to the new Tegel airport in the suburbs. This meant I arrived at Tempelhof and departed from Tegel. The glamour has certainly gone from flying. My first flight into Berlin was by executive jet into Tempelhof. My most recent visit, documented in I am a camera - Berlin , was by unglamorous R

Music for prepared organ

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Dear Pliable - your recent pieces on John Cage prompted me to share the enclosed Guardianism ("typo" just doesn't do it justice) from more than 20 years ago. Love your blog. Best wishes, JS Size also matters 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

The quality of light and proportion

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Benedictine Abbeys and music are inextricably linked. The great churches of the Romanesque period were created to send columns of plainsong soaring upwards and in the 20th century none other than Iannis Xenkais was project director for the monastery at La Tourette in France. The stunning images featured today show another great new Benedictine Foundation, the new Cistercian-Trappist monastery of Nový Dvůr in Bohemia. The inspirational building is the work of British architect John Pawson . The design of Nový Dvůr combines references from the original baroque farm on the site with entirely new architecture. Although contemporary in style John Pawson's design follows St Bernard's twelfth century architectural blueprint for the Order , with an emphasis on the quality of light and proportion, on simple, pared down elevations and detailing. Nový Dvůr is the only Trappist monastery in the Czech Republic and is a sister house of Sept-Fons Abbey near Marseille in France. This buil

The essence of freedom

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One evening we went to Emilio's on Sixth Avenue and Bleeker Street, a restaurant that was a fixture in what was then still an Italian neighborhood. It had a lovely outdoor garden in the back that compensated for the stereotypical food. Bobby [Dylan] was all fired up about the concept of freedom.What defined the essence of freedom? Were birds really free? he asked. They are chained to the sky, he said, where they are compelled to fly. So are they truly free? From Suze Rotolo's essential memoir of Greenwich Village in the sixties 'A Freewheelin' Time'. See Dylan's art here. Suze Rotolo is the lady with Dylan on the cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan . 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

You should occasionally look at the results

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Valery Gergiev's politics are big news right now. Richard Morrison asks in BBC Music Magazine 'Should conductors play around with politics?' while Norman Lebrecht reveals that a Gergiev peace concert was sponsored by an ex-Soviet oligarch on trial for smuggling arms. It is all worrying stuff. But what is more worrying is the reaction of audiences to Gergiev's music making. I have to be honest and admit I am not Gergiev's biggest fan. I praised his London Mahler 8 here recently. But when I listened to the BBC Radio 3 relays of his Rachmaninov symphonies with the London Symphony Orchestra last month I thought them his usual soul-less, driven, jet set music making . But whatever Gergiev plays, and however he plays it, some of the audience for his London concerts will always behave as though their football team has just scored the winning goal. Richard Morrison is on the side of the football fans and reports that Gergiev 'is idolised by many music lovers in Brita

What is it about Fifth Symphonies?

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An email from a reader mentioning Valentin Silvestrov prompted me to listen to the now deleted 1996 CD of the Ukrainian composer's Fifth Symphony with David Robertson conducting the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin ; the ECM-cloned artwork of the Sony disc is seen above. Listening to Silvestrov's remarkable symphony for the first time in several years started me thinking, what is it about Fifth Symphonies? If you want to capture the essence of a composer's style you will find it remarkably often in their Fifth Symphony. Think of Beethoven, Bruckner, Sibelius, Shostakovich, Vaughan Williams, Mahler, Martinů, Prokofiev, Nielsen and Tchaikovsky. Their Fifth Symphonies are not, necessarily, their greatest works, but somehow they capture the unique voice of those composers. The magic number five also applies to lesser-known symphonists. If you want to understand Valentin Silvestrov, Edmund Rubbra , Hans-Werner Henze , Arnold Bax or William Alwyn , start with their Fift

Just Pärt of fiction

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It had been performed in the great barn at Snape Maltings , of course ... Arvo Pärt, who was present only because his own work was being premiered the following day, sat in the row in front, dressed in a long, brown raincoat like a seedy French detective. He’d leaned forwards, a thumb buried in his huge dark beard, his balding head shining above the long hair, hunched and concentrated. He was all elbows, a lot thinner than Jack had expected, and kept nibbling the ends of his long fingers, too restless for an Old Testament prophet. His wife sat next to him, looking owl-like behind huge spectacles. She often spoke for him in interviews and Jack was more nervous about what she might say than of Pärt himself ... Jack took a bow afterwards and then, once the clapping had subsided and the house lights had gone up, surveyed members of the audience from the side. Among the silvery, distinguished heads there was a lot of winking, a lot of confiding of patient fortitude and thin-lipped smirks, p

National security and intellectuals

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I say this with some confidence: No one in the Bush Administration cares about John Adams . He is an undeniably good composer, and that alone guarantees him a resounding yawn from the least intellectual government in recent memory. If he's on a list, it's not because the men and women into whose hands we have entrusted the Republic, but rather because, probably, of Klinghoffer or because he shares a name with some IRA terrorist from the late 1970s. I've pointed this out before, and it still blows my mind: Angela Merkel has interesting things to say about Wagner and various directors, though the things are interesting, probably, because of the low standards for cultural awareness to which most Americans hold their leaders. George W. Bush would probably be hard-pressed to name one or two of Wagner's music-dramas. I'd even spot him Walküre . If one of the titans of Western music doesn't register on the Generalissimo's radar, then I doubt John Adams is even in

Talking of blacklists ...

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In June 1950 the notorious report Red Channels: Communist Influence on Radio and Television was published by American Business Consultants Inc ., a company established by former FBI agents. The anti-communist tract, which is seen below, accused 151 prominent Americans working in the arts and media of having communist connections, and created a blacklist which profoundly affected the careers of those on it. The musicians named included Aaron Copland , Leonard Bernstein , Morton Gould , Marc Blitzstein and Pete Seeger . There was only one classical pianist among the famous names blacklisted, and that musician was a woman. Ray Lev, who is seen above, was born in Rostov na Donau , Russia in 1912, and a year later moved to the United States with her father, a synagogue cantor, and her mother, a concert singer. After studying in London Ray Lev made her public debut there aged 17. She went on to became one of the leading American classical pianists in the 1930s and '40s and made a numbe

Conductors close to megalomania

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I have seen conductors, more often than composers, close to megalomania. I once interviewed Karajan and he had the whole of the Berlin Phil on the stage at the Festival Hall waiting for a rehearsal. Our slot ended, but Karajan wanted to keep talking. After a while there was a rather tentative knock on the door and the leader of the orchestra poked his head round and said, 'Maestro, the orchestra are waiting on the stage.' Karajan literally shouted 'Raus! Raus!' and shooed this rather distinguished musician away. Michael Berkeley in a Guardian interview about his new opera For You which has a libretto by novelist Ian McEwan . Raus is German for 'get out!' Another Karajan story 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

The Russian Schoenberg

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In October last year I revealed here exclusively that Hyperion were recording the Violin Concertos of the Russian Schoenberg, Mikolai (Nikolay) Roslavets, played by Alina Ibragimova . That CD is now scheduled for November 2008 release and the sleeve is seen above. For years the dated artwork on Hyperion CDs has been their only weakness, so the 'new look' for this release is particularly welcome. There is more on Roslavets claim to be the originator of serial composition in my earlier article . Judge for yourself whether he was the Russian Schoenberg by listening to the generous audio samples om the Hyperion website. Hyperion and other independents continue to show the major labels how it should be done. In January 2009 Hyperion are re-releasing at mid-price a double CD of the complete symphonies of the French composer Albéric Magnard who was born in 1865. Magnard's compositions include the four symphonies, an opera ( Guercoeur ) and a string quartet. He moved from Paris

Has the tide turned?

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Now that's more like it - dumbing up. Above Oblivion's Tide there is a Pier ... Photo taken on Aldeburgh beach (where else?) (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

The Adams family movie spins on

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Oh please! Will someone explain to John Adams what being blacklisted really means . Photo shows John Adams receiving the 2007 Harvard Arts Medal for his 'contribution to public good through the arts' from the university's president elect Drew Faust. 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

You can't keep a masterpiece down

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Leonard Bernstein's Mass is reassessed in the New York Times. 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

Presenting the instrument of the moment

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The kora is the traditional instrument of the griots who have kept West African oral traditions alive over the centuries by combining the role of orator and musician. My photos show Gambian griot Seikou Susso performing this evening in Norwich's Millennium Library as part of Black History Month . Seikou is a cultural ambassador for The Gambia and has taken part in the acclaimed Carnival Messiah which presents Handel's oratorio in the style of a Caribbean street festival. Story telling is an important part of the griot tradition , so congratulations to Norfolk Library Services for bringing words and music into a public library with this free event. The euphonius kora is very much the instrument of the moment. Back in May my post about the art and music of the Sahara featured kora player Toumani Diabaté's solo work The Mandé Variations . In an interesting example of world music meeting classical The Mandé Variations have been orchestrated, and Toumani Diabaté is per

If it's baroque - fix it

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Just listen to Berta Joncus surveying recordings of Bach's Partitas for Solo Violin on BBC Radio 3's Record Review (until Oct 25 on i-Player ) for a perfect example of an intermediary totally destroying any connection between the music and the listener . Don't give up the day job Berta , or even better read John Tavener on mending things that are baroque. 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

Not so innocent ear

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From the Friday afternoon Overgrown Path server log: 212.35.ABC.XYZ (The Barbican Centre) England, London, United Kingdom, 0 returning visit Date Time WebPage 17th October 2008 16:07:59 www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=%22NICHOLAS KENYON%22 GOSSIP&start=10&sa=N www.overgrownpath.com/2006_07_01_archive.html Slightly more innocent ears 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

The Innocent Ear 2.0

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Daniel Barenboim's recording of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3 and Choral Fantasy with the Vienna State Opera Orchestra and Vienna Academy Chamber Choir conducted by László Somogyi was released in 1970 on Westminster Gold . But the innocence didn't last long. A few years later the recording appeared in Version 3.0 . Now intermediate your own way to Innocent Ear 1.0 Image credits Westminster Gold . 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 innocent ear

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These compelling images come from a lost age of musical innocence. When Christopher Nupen made his film of Jacqueline du Pré in 1967 he saw his task as putting as little as possible between the musician and her audience. The result is one of the most powerful advocacies of classical music ever made; an advocacy that sold thousands of recordings of the Elgar Concerto and introduced millions to classical music. Disintermediation was the promise of the digital age. It happened in retailing when Amazon.com cut out the intermediaries. A direct relationship was established between online buyer and seller, and the customer became king. But the reverse has happened with music. In classical music today the commentator is king, and more and more filters are being interposed between musicians and their audience. Celebrity presenters force their way into the frame , continuity announcers explain why we should appreciate a particular work , myths and madness mean more than the score , and mat