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Showing posts from January, 2010

What I envied him was his courage

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Brother Paul saw me off, repeating his assurance that it had been an honour. On the road in the bright sunshine, I found myself envying him. But precisely what was it that I was envying? The warmth of the cocoon that surrounded him? His certainty? The joy that peeped out again as we shook hands? His faith itself? To some extent, of course, all of these, but there was something else: his courage. The truth is that I am unable to believe that when Christ said: 'My Kingdom is not of this world' he meant that it was. Among the fifty monks of Notre Dame d'Aiguebelle, it was possible to see, misty but unmistakeable, the point. The enclosing shell of the monastery becomes a symbol of what must be the ultimate truth not only of Christianity but of all religions: the Kingdom of Heaven is within. For the monks within the walls, for the rest of us, within the human heart, which has room enough for all the walls there are. We all carry within our hearts a Notre Dame d'Aiguebelle,

Back to back Bach

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How does the Arabian Passion According to J.S. Bach featuring Arab musicians, two jazz saxophonists, a string quartet and a Lebanese singer grab you? The Arabian Passion is the brainchild of Vladimir Ivanoff , who is the Bulgarian founder and music director of the culture straddling ensemble Sarband . Ivanoff sees parallels between the story of occupation and persecution in the Middle East in biblical times, as portrayed in Bach’s Saint Matthew and Saint John Passions, and the tensions in the Middle East today. The Arabian Passion is the result, a 're-interpretation' of sections from both Passions for Sarband, the Modern String Quartet and singer Fadia el-Hage . Transcriptions, arrangements and improvisations of Bach's works have been around for a long time. Jazz pianist Jacques Loussier is famous for his Bach improvisations while Procol Harum’s A Whiter Shade of Pale is just one of many rock tracks that lean heavily on the master. But the thought provoking Arabian P

Your bow Sir Edward

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Going through the motions kills the emotions is a mantra that should be repeated by orchestral musicans before every performance. I was reminded of this when I switched on BBC Radio 3 yesterday afternoon a few minutes into the first movement of Elgar's masterly A flat symphony. Within a short time it was clear that something special was going on, inspired and intelligent conducting was matched by fresh and committed orchestral playing. I have heard the work literally hundreds of times, but after a few minutes I was marvelling once again at just how great a masterpiece Elgar created, rather than fuming at yet another gratuitous 're-think' of his music . Entranced, I went to the Radio 3 website to identify the conductor and musicians and was surprised to find it was Marin Alsop and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra . Congratulations to everyone involved, including the engineers at Swedish Radio, for making a recording that allowed us to hear Elgar pure and simple . And, i

What price BBC music coverage?

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The National Audit Office (NAO) is due to publish a report looking at how much the BBC spends on covering major sporting and music events. The corporation reportedly spent £1.5m sending 407 reporters and technical staff to cover the Glastonbury music festival last year ... The NAO said the report would look at whether the BBC provides value for money with its coverage - from BBC News website . Do you remember someone asking what price the BBC Proms ? My header photo shows a small part of the BBC entourage at a Proms concert. It comes from my July 2006 article Summer in the City and is (c) On An Overgrown Path . Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Music that overflows with optimism

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Rubbra's output reveals a unity on two levels: the musical, which is readily demonstrable, and the less easily perceived religous/philosophical, which overrides the musical and encompasses almost everything he wrote. It is universal rather than sectarian, an instinctive blend of the most spiritual and mystical elements of Buddhism and Catholicism. It led to a music that overflows with optimism and a sense of well-being, though the, at times, dramatic and conflictual aspects attest to the hard-won nature of that ultimate peace and reassurance. Edmund Rubbra's biographer Ralph Scott Grover writes in the 2001 New Grove . If Rubbra is known at all today, it is for his eleven symphonies and the violin concerto, all of which overflow with that 'optimism and sense of well-being'. But there is also some very fine and little known chamber music, including four superb quartets , that deserves to come out of the shadow of more fashionable twentieth-century compositions. The Dut

Love, life and crimes against humanity

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Jacques Brel has sold more than 25 million records worldwide. His songs, including standards such as Ne Me Quitte Pas , have been covered by a Who's Who of performers from Scott Walker and Judy Collins to Frank Sinatra and Nina Simone. Musicians including Leonard Cohen and David Bowie have been influenced by Brel who is a revered figure in his native Belgium and in his adopted homeland of France. So a story about Jacques Brel at the peak of his career singing on a sex education record made by a notorious French war criminals guilty of crimes against humanity sounds like the stuff of an April 1 post. But this remarkable and little known story is true. Regular readers will know that France, monastic orders and Gregorian chant are a recurring theme On An Overgrown Path . For as the incomparable Bernard Levin wrote : I sometimes think I would exchange all the music I have ever heard for real plainsong heard amid walls of stone. During my recent physical and virtual travels I stumb

If you have to bear the exiles' fate

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In the fireplace, a fire is burning. In the room, it's warm, And the rabbi is teaching the young children the alphabet. Listen carefully children, All that I'm telling you, The one among you who will read the fastest Will receive a small flag. Learn children, have no fear, Any beginning is difficult, Happy is the one who has learnt the Tora, What can a man wish more? Children, you are going to grow up, And you will learn by yourselves How many tears and sobs Are present in every letter. If you, my children, One day, you have to bear the exiles' fate, Then, you will draw on your strength by gazing at these letters. Tomorrow, January 27th is Holocaust Memorial Day . This date is the anniversary of the liberation by the Soviet Army in 1945 of the largest Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau , the first name in the list of camps above. My photos show the Mémorial de la Déportation in Paris which remembers the 200,000 people deported from Vichy France to the Nazi co

The decade of the feral choir

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Our word 'happy' comes from the Icelandic word ' happ ' meaning luck or chance. So it was a happy chance that the first live music I heard this decade was from the Oxford Improvisers and Oxford Feral Choir . And in welcome recognition that we are not all beneficiaries of bank bonuses or BBC salaries , Oxford Improvers wisely shunned the burgeoning corporate entertainment market and made their concert free. Which is an interesting contrast to the new Serenata Festival targeted at "Classic FM boutique campers" which offers "Puccini and Pimms" with £795 ticket prices to match . I wonder what the folk at the BBC Proms and elsewhere will make of the Serenata Festival's claim to be 'Britain's first classical music festival' ? But back to the real world. The lunchtime concert of improvised works took place in the church of St. Michael at the North Gate in Oxford, which is where I took the header photo. Oxford Feral Choir was formed r

Now we rise and we are everywhere

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A sesquialtera is a mixed stop popular in English organs of the 19th century. It uses several ranks of pipes to reinforce the fundamental and produce a brighter ( Bryter ?) sound. The sesquialtera stop seen in my header photo was added to the organ in the church of Saint Mary Magdalene in Tanworth-in-Arden in memory of Nick Drake. Below is a view of the 14th century church with Nick's grave visible bottom left. The words Now we rise and we are everywhere , which are inscribed on the back of his headstone, come from the last track on Nick Drake's final album Pink Moon , recorded in 1971. Read more in A skin too few and I am a camera - St. Tropez 1967 . The overgrown path that brought me to Nick Drake was Brad Mehldau's performance of River Man on his double CD Progression: Art Of The Trio (Volume 5) released in 2000. Wonderful solo performance of the Nick Drake classic on the video below, non-German speakers should fast-forward to 1.00 minutes. Photos are (c) On An Ove

We want a wild and ephemeral music

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Iannis Xenakis, who is seen above, appeared at the Centre Universitaire expérimental de Vincennes in February 1969. During the événements of May 1968 the graffiti slogan Xenakis not Gounod was scrawled on the walls of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris . The experimental university at Vincennes on the eastern outskirts of Paris was created by the French government as an open and self-governing college following the 1968 riots. Xenakis' open session at Vincennes on February 25 1969 took place three days before newly elected President Richard Nixon arrived in Paris, the first US president to visit France in eight years. During his visit Nixon met with French President Charles de Gaulle twice. De Gaulle resigned in April 1969, his reputation tarnished by his handling of the events of 1968, and he died in November of the following year. Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 following the Watergate scandal . As another Paris slogan of 1968 said - No replastering, the s

The toast of national leaders

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Glenn Gould's love/hate relationship with Steinway pianos is the stuff of legend and also of a very entertaining book . In the past you could judge a pianist's career prospects by the piano manufacturer they were signed to, but all that has changed and today you judge their prospects by the agent they are signed to. So the following press release makes interesting reading: EMI Classics has signed the superlative young Chinese pianist Yundi, formerly known as Yundi Li, winner of the 14th International Frederic Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw. Appropriately, Yundi’s first EMI release (due out in the U.S. on April 6) will be the complete Chopin nocturnes, issued to commemorate the composer’s 200th birthday in 2010. Together Yundi and EMI Classics plan to record Chopin’s complete works for solo piano. Early in his career Yundi, who incidentally is a Steinway artist , was signed to Columbia Artists Management Inc. CAMI are the 800 pound gorilla of classical music with a client

Contemporary music at the Reich price

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If there are gaps in the Steve Reich section of your CD collection you can fill them very cheaply at amazon.co.uk where Nonesuch's five CD Reich retrospective is currently available for the silly price of £14.58 including UK delivery. Music for 18 Musicians, Music For Mallet Instruments, Voices, & Organ and Drumming are just some of the works in the collection which gives an excellent overview of the composer's career to date. More on Nonesuch here and here. But is recorded classical music too cheap ? 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

Vaughan Williams casts a spell

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Seen on the overgrown path to Stratford-upon-Avon for the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Arabian Nights . A quite magical evening of theatre enhanced by an evocative score by Gary Yershon which includes darbukas , lute and kamanja . Which reminds me that the nice folk at Meredith Music Publication , Galesville, Wisconsin sent me Michael Colgrass' new autobiography Adventures of an American Composer which contains waspish anecdotes about many musical personalities including Leonard Bernstein and Igor Stravinsky . One of Michael Colgrass' stories, titled Opera Pickles , starts as follows: My wife and I were at a party of London's musical dignitaries in 1967 when we struck up a conversation with Dame Ursula Vaughn Williams [ sic ], the sophisticated wife of Ralph Vaughn Williams [ sic ]. She asked about an opera I was writing and shared her thoughts on opera, trying to impress by dropping names and a German phrase or two. I guess the moral of that little tal

Taking a few bars rest

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Bach soon . Photo is (c) On An Overgrown Path 2010. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

This is listening to a human mind

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A wide variety of music, including some by Bach, was sent into the far reaches of outer space on the two Voyager spacecrafts in the 1970s. When eminent biologist and author Lewis Thomas was asked what music he would want sent from Earth into outer space he answered, "I would send the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach." After a pause he added, "But that would be boasting." My header photo shows how boasting has been made affordable. Brilliant Classics 155 CD Bach Edition currently retails in the UK for around £140. Lewis Thomas also said: Music is the effort we make to explain to ourselves how our brains work. We listen to Bach transfixed because this is listening to a human mind. The full list of the music sent into outer space on the Voyager spacecrafts is here , Neil Armstrong's personal moon music is here , and, gentlemen, old Bach is here . Quote credits Carmel Bach Festival and ThinkExist . Brilliant Classic's Bach Edition was given to me as a

A star is spun

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A Star PR pride ourselves on never using ‘off the shelf’ campaigns. Each of our projects is a bespoke,holistic,highly effective and targeted campaign tailored specifically for every individual client. We leverage our media relationships to build profile, influence opinion and reach the largest possible audience . We know what media want and we aggressively persue all promotional opportunities. A Star PR have enviable and unrivalled contacts across all areas of the media, both nationally and internationally. If you’re looking to sell records, raise awareness of yourselves or your client and are ready to become A Star, get in touch! That copy, errors and all, comes from PR agency A Star's website . Their main business is rock acts but among their classical stable is apprentice conductor Alex Prior who has been the subject of some pretty transparent profile building and opinion influencing in the last few days. To succeed in classical music today it is not enough to be seventeen.

All notes are blended in one

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I got the boat to the Simonos Petra landing. A merchant in Daphni gave me a bag of fish to bring along and a letter. Fortunately, he said to leave the fish at the dock. The climb, over a thousand feet straight up in the noonday sun, with my bag on my shoulder, was a real workout - purgatory on the way to heaven. The monastery itself is quite cool, catching the mountain breezes. It is very well kept. I received a cheerful welcome from the guest-master, Father Theologos, and was given a room that looks out on the courtyard and the katholikon , the main church of the monastery. I hope I will be able to stay here. Silence reigns here except for the birds, the wind and the water. Contemplative silence described in O Holy Mountain! - Journal of a Retreat on Mount Athos by Fr. M. Basil Pennington (1931–2005), who was a Trappist monk at St. Joseph's Abbey, Spencer, Massachusetts , as well as a spiritual writer and teacher. The Monastery of Simonos Petra (literally Simon's Rock) is

Elgar and his dogs

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Sir Edward Elgar wrote some truly great music. Gerontius would be among my Desert Island Discs if not my sole Desert Island Disc, and the two genuine symphonies would probably be on that list as well. Among his undervalued masterpieces are The Kingdom , The Apostles , the Piano Quintet and the String Quartet. But like almost every other great composer except J.S. Bach, Elgar also produced some real dogs. Among the dogs is his masque The Crown of India . You will get the feel of the piece when I explain it was written in 1912 to celebrate the visit of King George V and Queen Mary to Delhi for their coronation as Emperor and Empress of India. But perhaps I am being unfair to Elgar when I dismiss the work. It was only published in a piano and vocal score and the orchestral parts for the masque were destroyed in the 1960s. So we don't actually know what the full score sounds like in its original form. At this point that serial completer Anthony Payne enters the story. He "comp

In the shadow of Chopin

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The music police are already telling us how we will be celebrating the Chopin bicentennial this year. So, never one for musical correctness , my header photo honours another giant of the piano, in status if not in stature, who is buried literally in the shadow of Frédéric Chopin. Michel Petrucciani, compositeur - pianiste de jazz , died in 1999 aged just 36. He is buried alongside birthday boy Chopin in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris and his pianistic genius has featured several times On An Overgrown Path . Père Lachaise has more musicians per acre than any other burial ground, and they include Georges Bizet whose headstone is seen below. Bizet's grave is surprisingly understated for France's most famous musician and the dates on it are a sobering reminder that he was the same age as Michel Petrucciani when he died. Adjacent to Bizet is the more contemporary resting place of Georges Enescu who died in 1955. Enescu (Enesco in France) taught Yehudi Menuhin , Arthur Grumiau