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Showing posts from February, 2009

Positively 4th Street

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Art of the book cover from David Hajdu's Positively 4th Street . Upper image shows Joan Baez and Bob Dylan , the lower Mimi Baez Fariña and Richard Fariña . The artwork is by Eric von Schmidt based on his classic poster for the 1964 Baez-Dylan tour. Ironically, the original posters were withdrawn and pulped as Dylan did not like them. Despite this, or perhaps because of, they are now valuable collector's items . As well as beautifully capturing the zeitgeist of the early 1960s Positively 4th Street makes a valuable contribution by reassessing the contributions of Mimi Baez Fariña and Richard Fariña, who are usually overshadowed by Mimi's sister Joan and Dylan. The first album by the Fariña's, Celebrations for a Grey Day is well worth exploring, particularly for Richard Fariña's use of the dulcimer. On the day that he died in a motorcycle accident in 1966 Richard Fariña had been attending a launch party at the Thunderbird bookstore in Carmel Valley, California f

Handel in the bland

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I have to say I thought Jessica Duchen's article on Handel in the Independent , with it's comment 'Had he lived in the 1980s, his chief rival could have been Andrew Lloyd Webber' , was a very silly piece of writing. I blame the Independent more than Jessica. It is common knowledge that for an article on classical music to appear in the Independent or Guardian these days it has to meet one of three criteria. It has to plug a new CD, it has to plug a live performance, or it has to put the knife into someone's reputation. I guess we have Norman Lebrecht to thank for that . Image credit from Save the Children Australia's Handel fund-raising concert in May 2007 at the Sydney Opera House; it raised over 100,000 Australian dollars. 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). Reporterrors to - overgrownpath at hotmai

I hate Tchaikovsky

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Henry Holland has left a new comment on A Faustian bargain : I think it's unfair to say Pierre Boulez "refuses" to conduct Tchaikovsky, it's like he said in an interview once "I listen to Sibelius and Tchaikovsky for pleasure, but I have no desire to conduct it". I think we've all heard conductors do stuff that they have no interest in and it benefits no one. I simply wish Mr. Boulez had spent his years conducting MORE stuff, instead of staying pretty much with the same core of works + new music, often recording them 2 or 3 times. Thanks Henry. I based my comment on the following section from Boulez - Composer, Conductor, Enigma by Joan Peyser (Schirmer ISBN 0028717007). In 1975 Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto was played at Lincoln Center, when Boulez was away. " I am not a fascist ," Boulez explains. "I hate Tchaikovsky and I will not conduct him. But if the audience wants him, it can have him". Ms. Peyser's 'psych

Lost in amplification

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We went to hear the Spanish flamenco jazz guitarist Eduardo Niebla last night at the Norwich Arts Centre . This intimate venue is a deconsecrated church that holds an audience of 180 and requires the subtlest of any sound reinforcement, if any. British based Niebla brought a trio in which his own acoustic guitar was backed by a second acoustic guitar and a tabla. That is about all I can tell you about the performance. Other than that Niebla and his two sidemen were heavily amplified (with reverb) through four small PA speakers that were probably brought from Tandy many years ago. The result was the kind of over-loud, compressed, clipped, nasal, sub-hifi sound that we used to listen to in our college rooms in the 1960s while drinking cheap Algerian red wine. We fled at the end of the first half, and listened to Ralph Towner on an ECM CD in the car on the way home to remind ourselves what an acoustic guitar really sounds like. Oh dear, is amplification the next big thing for classica

On history's clock it was sunset

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So gorgeous was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admirarion. Together they represented seventy nations in the greatest assemblage of royalty and rank gathered in one place and, of its kind, the last. The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history's clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor. Those words come from Barbara Tuchman's book The Guns of August . It tells how the secret treaty system among the European powers transformed what should have been in a regional conflict in the Balkans into the catastrophic Great War. Shortly after the 1962 Cuban missile crisis the Washington Post published an article describing how Barbara Huchman's book had influenced President Kennedy's decision to negotiate with the Russia

Ne Me Quitte Pas

There is an interesting article in yesterday's New York Times about Leonard Cohen. In it novelist Pico Iyer is quoted as describing Cohen's songs as sounding like “collaborations between Jacques Brel and Thomas Merton.” Thomas Merton has featured here many times . But there is also a random path to the Belgian singer-song writer Jacques Brel (what is it about Belgians ?) . Last year we were driving north through France to take the ferry home from Dunkirk after spending some time in search of Pablo Casals and hands-free harpsichordists . Our ferry was departing early the next morning and we had not booked overnight accomodation near the ferry terminal. It was a Saturday in June and finding somewhere to stay around the Channel ports proved to be difficult. At last we found a pleasant chambres d'hotes run by a charming middle-aged lady on a small farm a few miles inland from Hardelot-Plage . When we came down for an early breakfast we found the living room decorated with

Re-envisaging Beethoven

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The General - Melodrama: I was one human being [Egmont: No. 8 Melodrama] By permission Sony BMG A persuasive combination of Beethoven's music and a contemporary text inspired by the 1994 Rwandan genocide looks like being this year's best kept music secret. Last autumn I added a comment to my post Also sprach the Composer noting that Paul Griffiths had been working on a project that combined the story of the Rwandan tragedy with a composite score drawn from Beethoven's music. Last month a Sony BMG double CD slipped onto the amazon.co.uk website. The title of the CD was Beethoven - Ideals of the French Revolution and the moody study of conductor Kent Nagano on the cover can be seen above. The track listings are only a little more informative than the title - CD1: The General , for orchestra with soprano, choir, and narrator. Music by Ludwig van Beethoven. Text by Paul Griffiths. CD2: Ludwig van Beethoven. Symphony No.5 Op. 67, Egmont Op. 84 (excerpts) and Opferlied , Op.

Dancing about architecture

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A comment from Bodie on Beware of the contextual cage reminds us that Elvis Costello said 'writing about music is like dancing about architecture' . Last October I wrote about the Sokol Czech communal exercise movement which continues today with flash events in major UK cities. As part of their Le Corbusier's exhibition the Barbican is presenting outdoor exercise classes over the weekend of March 7-8 to celebrate dance and architecture. Which is very appropriate as Le Corbusier started his day with calisthenics . Above is Le Corbusier's sublime exercise in aesthetics at Ronchamp in France. His pas de deux with Iannis Xenakis features here . Photo credit Piensalo . 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

Beware of the contextual cage

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I don't like trying to describe music in words, because that always means shutting it up in a contextual cage - Pierre Hamon Another kind of contextual cage here. The image is my mash-up, it's (c) On An Overgrown Path 2009. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Bring on the iterations

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Iterations are the way forward for classical music. In the continuing quest for new audiences the iterative process currently involves new music , new composers , new media , new recorded music distribution models , new performance venues and new pricing structures . Over the weekend Aldeburgh Music contributed another iteration with Tarantula in Petrol Blue . This new opera was performed in Snape Maltings using local youngsters supplemented by professional singers. A first-rate but uncompromisingly modern score by Anna Meredith was coupled somewhat uncomfortably with a populist but surprisingly dark text by children's author Philip Ridley . His lines 'If you do what I say/You can chew my gum all day' convey the spirit of the iteration. Street cred was in abundance at Snape last night. Arias were sung via mobile phones, skateboards appeared on stage, McDonalds was among the product placements and amplification, which favoured male voices, was the order of the day. 30 ye

Walking with Varèse

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Avant-garde composer Edgar Varèse and Georges Simenon, creator of Inspector Maigret, would seem to have little in common. But, during Simenon's five year post-war exile in America, Varèse was one of the few close friends he had in New York, and the two spent hours walking through Greenwich Village exchanging ideas. They were brought together as two Europeans in exile, rather than by a shared interest in contemporary music. Although Simenon said he modelled his multi-layered plots on the counterpoint of Bach's fugues, cited Schubert as an influence, and had moved in the same circles as Georges Auric and Igor Stravinsky in 1920s Paris, he listed his favourite music as Dixieland jazz. In August 1945 the French Judiciary Police had ordered issued an expulsion order against Georges Simenon. During the German Occupation of France the opportunist novelist had walked a fine line between co-operation and collabaration to allow him to continue indulging his voracious appetite for chat

A Faustian bargain

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Are there any pieces of classical music that you would not lose any sleep if you never heard again? There are very few that I can think of. But, I was reminded by a chance hearing on BBC Radio 3 on Wednesday that Franz Liszt's A Faust Symphony falls into that category for me. Strange that Pierre Boulez refuses to conduct Tchaikovsky, but opened his tenure at the New York Philharmonic with a season of Berg and Liszt . Header image is not a Boulez CD. It is the first release by DJ Faust and features 'twenty-seven monsterous (sic) scratching tracks'. 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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Try this chant-topping CD

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The CD above is not a new release. The performers on it are not notably young. It is not new music. The composer does not have an anniversary. It has not recently won an award. But do read on. The disc of Maronite and Syrian chants is sung by the nun with the selling habit, Sister Marie Keyrouz , and accompanying choristers. It was recorded by Harmonia Mundi in L'église évangélique allemande in Paris in 1990. Traditionally these chants, which have their origins in early Christianity, are sung unaccompanied; the exception is on important days in the Christian calendar, when they are augmented by a limited range of metallic percussion. However, this disc follows the more recent practice of adding complementary instruments. The addition of L'Ensemble de la Paix (who are actually Sister Marie's backing band) playing nay, oud, quanoun and percussion, lifts the CD from being a fascinating document of a sacred tradition to a very accessible and enjoyable early music disc with a

Young person's guide to the opera

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The colourful ghosts are coming to Snape this weekend. And no, it is not The Turn of the Screw . A new opera commissioned by Aldeburgh Music tells of magic and mayhem on city streets. The composer is a woman, the director is English-Iranian, the score mixes acoustic and amplified electronic sounds, the text is by an award-winning children's author, the conductor is a woman, the production uses a sound designer, the cast includes local teenagers with no previous stage experience, the premiere is at the end of the mid-term school break, the performances include a schools' matinee, and tickets for under 27s are just £5. Tarantula in Petrol Blue is composed by Aldeburgh alumna Anna Meredith . The director is Bijan Sheibani , the text is by Philip Ridley , the conductor is Jessica Cottis and sound design is by Sound Intermedia . Performances are Feb 21 and Feb 22, with the schools' premiere on Feb 24. Listen to a four minute excerpt from Anna Meredith's score here . Remem

Downloads from the sofa

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A double-bill of one-act operas by Elizabeth Maconchy has been released by Chandos. The Sofa and The Departure, which were composed in the late 1950s, were given acclaimed performances in 2007 by Independent Opera at Sadler's Wells. Chandos has recorded the Independent Opera productions, and this is the first ever recording of The Departure. The two operas are on a single CD . They are also available as downloads (including lossless ), which, of course, you will have to pay for. But here, from the sofa, are some downloads which are free and legal. Philip Sheppard is a cellist, professor at the Royal Academy of Music and a composer of film and TV scores. Just as the European Commission proposes to extend copyright on recorded music from 50 to 95 years Philip has written to me saying: I've just started putting my older albums online as mp3 feeds, as well as dance scores I've written, as I believe that if someone has paid good money to come and see a concert or a theatre

The other Oppenheimer

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Jocelyn Pook’s Oppenheimer mixes Robert Oppenheimer invoking the Bhagavad Gita with a recording of the liturgy of the Yemenite Jews and the text of the Catholic requiem mass, all underpinned with violin, viola and and keyboards. The seven minute long Oppenheimer is one of the sections in Flood; this Jocelyn Pook composition dates back to a 1994 commission from the Canadian dance company O Vertigo , but was revised when two sections were used in the composer's score for Stanley Kubrick’s 1999 film Eyes Wide Shut . John Adams' Doctor Atomic followed in 2005, there is no known connection between the two very different works. Myths and fears about the end of the world provide the narrative for Flood , which draws on Hindu, Christian, Jewish and Islamic sources. This truly universal music now has a terrible relevance which could never have been anticipated when Jocelyn Pook composed it in the mid 1990s. Find audio and video samples, including Oppenheimer , here. Flood is ava

Which lie did I tell?

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I am acutely aware that there is a difference between art and entertainment, and it was put rather well by William Goldman , the Hollywood script writer, in a very entertaining book called Which Lie Did I Tell? What he said was this: the difference between art and entertainment is that entertainment either tells you lies or tells you comforting truisms that we all know already, and art tells you uncomfortable things that you perhaps don't want to hear, truths that you may not be comfortable to hear. Header art is by Banksy . The unlikely source of the quote below it is John Rutter. The composer was talking at The Challenge of Contemporay Music , an admirable seminar organised in 2007 by Norwich Cathedral Library. Before anyone raises the question as to where John Rutter's music sits on the entertainment to art spectrum here he is again speaking at the seminar: I think composers are probably divided into two kinds with all sorts of shapes in between. There are explorers and the

Not quite Harmonium

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Is Naxos product mediocre? 84% of the Overgrown Path readers who voted in the recent poll (and the response was the biggest ever) said no . Which will come as no surprise to anyone other than John Adams . Talking of which, above is the first recording of John Adams' music that I ever bought. It is the 1984 ECM recording of Harmonium made by Edo de Waart and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. Yes, that is a vinyl LP, strange how things go full circle . The credits for that ECM LP tell an interesting story. The recording was made in Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco. John Newton was the engineer, and mixing and editing is credited to Martin Wieland, Manfred Eicher and John Adams at the Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg . ECM founder Manfred Eicher did not travel from Germany to San Francisco for the sessions, a decision that was not taken well by the ambitious young composer. This precipitated John Adams' move to the American Nonesuch label, where he remains twenty-

I love silence

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Last Friday evening at the Barbican, the BBC Symphony Orchestra played Supernova by Guillaume Connesson, a contemporary composer who featured here recently . I lamented to Antoine Leboyer , who introduced Connesson's music to me, that the BBC relay of the concert was marred by intrusive announcements by the Radio 3 presenter. Antoine explained that trop de talk is not unique to Radio 3, as this French joke shows: How do you recognize that you have tuned in to France Musique - the French equivalent of Radio 3 ? It is the one station where they speak all the time. John Cage is the famous champion of silence . But the following quote is from Cage's contemporary William Alwyn, and comes from the newly published biography of Alwyn titled The Innumerable Dance . I love silence. I love the beauty that lies hidden in silence. For silence in music, said Mozart, is of equal importance to sound. I was born in a time when silence could still be heard ... It is not far from silence to b

Out of the Darkness

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Gertrud Kolmar was one of the estimated 1.1 million Jews who died in Auschwitz. Born Gertrud Käthe Chodziesner in Berlin in 1894, she is regarded as one of the finest poets in the German language. One of her best known poems is Aus Dem Dunkel - Out of the Darkness. In July 1941 Gertrud Kolmar was inducted into forced labour in a Nazi armaments factory, and was transported to Auschwitz in March 1943. The date of her death is not known. Composer Julian Marshall has written a new chamber cantata for eight voices, mezzo soprano and two cellos titled Out of the Darkness which sets the poetry of Gertrud Kolmar. Julian Marshall was educated at Dartington Hall School and The Royal College of Music and had a successful career as a rock musician before returning to classical music in the late 1990s. He was a member of the band Marshall Hain whose 1978 hit single Dancing in the City (YouTube clip here ) sold more than 2 million copies. Out of the Darkness is being premiered in Winchester

A prolific composer for the accordion

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Email received : - One of the most prolific composers of accordion music is Sofia Gubaidulina . Her " De Profundis " is a standard in the modern literature. Russia and Ukraine actually have a large amount of accordion players (and bandoneon, etc), as well as composers for the instrument. The Hex Ensemble in the '90's in Holland had an accordion player as part of the ensemble, and many composers, such as Alison Isadora , Richard Ayers and Geoffrey King wrote for them. Also, the Newt Hinton Ensemble (France, Holland, Germany) had an accordion in the group. There was a Trio Strakke Lucht in Holland made up of three accordions, I believe. And Ananda Sukarlan , a wonderful Indonesian pianist living in Spain, had a duo for several years called Anaki , which generated lots of new works in Spain and other countries. In Norway I heard a really good piece by Sam Hayden for the accordionist Frode Halti during the 2004 Ultima Festival . Actually, at the Gaudeamus Interpr

Grateful dead

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Last week I posted the following comment on Classical music runs away to join the circus : Other blogs are making much today of the rumoured 'death' of the Decca label. It is a non-story for me. More on that non-story here. If a search engine brought you to this post, all is not lost . Heads-up credit Antoine Leboyer . Image of Grateful Dead concert card for their gigs on January 24-26, 1969 at the Avalon Ballroom, San Francisco from oldhandbills.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

Composing the credit crunch

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Is this the first classical composition inspired by the credit crunch? Last Tuesday the former bosses of two of Britain's biggest banks went through the motions of publicly apologising for bringing the country to its knees. Tonus Peregrinus , who are better known for their Perotin and their Pärt , have recorded a 'mash-up' of the banker's apologies. Listen to it 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

Whatever happened to folk music?

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Anonymous Soprano has left a new comment on " Music for four accordions" : This brings up the subject of how anything "folk" is perceived by the supposed musical elite -- both music and instruments. See: John Jacob Niles , for instance. The only exception to this seems to be if it comes from somewhere else -- i.e., the performer is always been if they're from a long ways away. "Folk" instruments are respected if, say, they're a Shakuhachi , but not, say, the nearly identical Native American instrument. I guess it's because the assumption is that "folk" music and instruments aren't "educated" properly, and therefore can't possibly contribute anything to the realm of "proper" music? I don't know. All I know is that the best composers pretty much all appropriated folk tunes and sometimes folk instruments...even Mozart. AS, it is a good point you make. We are all guilty of overlooking folk musicians.

Music for four accordions

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Charles Ives , Umberto Giordano , Osvaldo Golijov , Paul Hindemith and Alban Berg all wrote music for accordion. So did Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky; in fact he wrote a score that calls for four diatonic button accordions. Tchaikovsky's Suite No. 2 for Orchestra is not as well known as the Suite No. 4 'Mozartiana' . Which is surprising: as they say on Amazon, if you like Tchikovsky's ballets you will like his Suite no. 2. Or is it because, as they say in the music director's office today: - if your score needs four accordions don't expect us to programme it? I have Michael Tilson Thomas' recording with the Philharmonia Orchestra; which also includes 'Mozartiana' . The performance is excellent as is the sound. The latter is explained by CBS sub-contracting the recording to EMI. The venue was Abbey Road Studio One in 1981 with EMI's Neville Boyling at the mixing desk. My research indicates that this CD of the two orchestral suites is currently only

Every recession has a silver lining

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ECM has responded to the chill winds blowing currently blowing through the music market with some unmissable bargain re-issues. No matter what other gems hit the stores in the coming months, the 3 CD box The Codona Trilogy is certain to be among my CDs of the year. The line up for Codona was African-American trumpeter Don Cherry , Brazilian percussionist Nana Vasconcelos , and Collin Walcott on sitar, tabla, hammered dulcimer, sanza, timpani, and voice. The band took its name from a circus trapeze act of the early 20th century called the Flying Codonas, and this CD re-issue captures the musicians performing their creative high-wire act without a safety net in sight. The Codona Trilogy sets were laid down between 1978 and 1982, and Steve Lake's seventeen page booklet essay tells it far better than I can: Weaving together melodies and rhythms from everywhere - North and South America, Africa, Asia, Europe - Codona presaged the surging advent of a pan-cultural 'world musi