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Showing posts from August, 2010

Pushing the classical music envelope

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'In his short life and his art, the French Canadian composer Claude Vivier was a man diving, often recklessly, into the ultimate…. And from the edge of experience, he began to bring back, in the years leading up to his death in 1983, a new sound.' – Paul Griffiths , The New York Times I recently asked Who is pushing the classical envelope? My header photo shows a little-known figure who certainly pushed the classical music envelope and in the process created a new sound world that is ripe for rediscovery. Claude Vivier, was born to unknown parents in Montreal in 1948. After adoption his education prepare him for the priesthood until he was expelled from his seminary for "immature behaviour". But his religious training had awakened another vocation and he went on to study music, first in Montreal and then in Europe where his teachers included Karlheinz Stockhausen . In 1976 Vivier visited Japan, Bali and other Eastern countries and their musical traditions influenc

Music they will like tomorrow

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Manifesto - The origin of this collection lies in a statement of fact, the evidence of a refusal. No Format. You can't be more explicit. For the very simple reason that, either too fragile, too radical, too singular, too typecast, too elitist, too popular, too adult, too puerile, too mature, too immature, too crossbred, too recognition-demanding, too melodic, too improvised, too modern or too timeless - all the kinds of music published here would never have found room in the false musicscape manufactured by the taste-formatting logic today reigning over the record-industry. Too much, too much, too much - the average is out of scope ! Where is it, then? For, finally, it exists : that luxuriant diversity brimming over from its categories, exploding all systems. And at the other end of the chain, you exist also, as "short-cut" music-lovers - all of you different in your confused desires for the unheard-of and the unexpected, and all similar, too, when the unknown assert

From Sufi to Mahler

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That headline comes from here and sums up my idiosyncratic little blog perfectly. From Sufi to Mahler , and much in between . Also on Facebook and Twitter . Blame me for the header collage. 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

There should be no dividing line

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There was no aspect of human existence which did not exercise some fascination for him and around which he did not allow his mind and fertile imagination to play; and where, as a young man, I had been brought up in a world in which the secular and religous were separate, he insisted that in poetry, music, art and life they were one, and that there should be no dividing line. That is Leonard Elmhirst writing about the Bengali poet, composer and educationalist Rabindranath Tagore. With his American wife Dorothy, Leonard Elmhirst founded Dartington School which was modelled on Tagore's educational experiment at Santiniketan in Bengal. The summer school at Dartington has made a major contribution to contemporary music ; the musicians who have participated in it include Peter Maxwell Davies, Igor Stravinsky, Maderna Boulez, Luciano Berio and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Sir William Glock presided over the summer school for some years. In 1913 Rabindranath Tagore was awarded the Nobel

Your predictable diatribe

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JB has left a new comment on your post " Scarcely better than a first run-through ": Your comments on the performance of Sibelius 5 [ sic ] seem correct to me. From the opening bars to less than impressive conclusion it was obvious that Robertson had not grasped the epic nature of this work. But why link it to your predictable diatribe against the BBC etc. ? The problem certainly wasn't the quality of the playing of the orchestra but the uninspired direction.When did you last hear the orchestra live? You do them an injustice. I think it would be useful to respond to the email above in some detail. On Aug 26 I watched the BBC Symphony Orchestra Prom on television. It was immediately apparent that the performance of Sibelius' Second Symphony (not Fifth as stated in the email) was particularly poor, both in interpretation and playing. But at that point I decided not to write about it because I knew it would inevitably produce reactions like the one above. But on Aug 28

Scarcely better than a first run-through

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The second half of the concert was given over to a truly dire performance of Sibelius’s Second Symphony. Generally speaking, even boring performances can be interesting from the point of view of divining why they are so dull, but this one charted new realms of ennui. Tension was slack, phrasing unrefined, atmosphere negligible. Degrees of light and shade, together with other subtle details of harmony and emphasis that give the score life, went for nought. Key points of emotional frisson were missed. Moments of crucial structural significance were glossed over, the build-up of excitement towards the finale coming across as distinctly matter-of-fact. Lacking as it did any assertive or communicative ideas on interpretative strategy, the performance was scarcely better than a first run-through. Geoffrey Norris tells it like it is in his Telegraph review of David Robertson's Aug 26 Prom with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Quite rightly Norris praises the performance of Mark-Anthony Turn

May I say a word about André Rieu?

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May I say a word about André Rieu? It is easy to look down at him and his style of presentation, to sneer at it as schlager or easy listening or glorified elevator muzak or whatever. I've done it myself. But, to my own considerable surprise, I find myself less and less sympathetic with such criticisms, and more and more embarrassed to have indulged in it myself. He is providing -- dare I say it? -- innocent, wholesome pleasure to millions of people, many of whom have never been afforded the opportunity to develop sophisticated classical music tastes. My mother-in-law, who grew up in a poor neighborhood near the Chicago stockyards and certainly never had exposure to classical music growing up, enjoys her Rieu CD and video very much. And the more I think about it, the more I can't find anything wrong with that. For it seems to me that to find fault with someone else's musical pleasure is at best presumptuous and at worst just rank snobbism. As much as I admire artists of un

Speakers' corner

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Travelling with music is in the news. Next week On An Overgrown Path takes off by plane to Languedoc for a few bars rest. We are travelling light so I am experimenting with the XMI X-mini II speaker for use with my iPod nano, see the photo above. Initial results have been very impressive. The mini speaker weighs just 400 gramms, plays for eleven hours using an internal battery charged via the supplied USB lead, gives very acceptable sound aided by the vacuum behind the miniature drive unit and costs just £12.99 delivered . Of course it does not compare with full-sized speakers. But the XMI X-mini II does exactly what it says on the packet and is a very sociable supplement to the trusty Sennheiser PX 200 headphones I travel with. We are flying to Perpignan with Ryanair . I have used this airline many times because they fly from London Stansted, which is our nearest major airport. No, they do not win prizes for courtesy, but nor do they claim to. But last December I returned from Mar

Who is pushing the classical envelope?

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We all think of Lady Gaga as a real envelope pusher: she's doing new things in music, performance, and with videos right now; her costumes are otherworldly; and she refuses to be tagged as any kind of "type" at all. Whether or not you like her music, she's a good inspiration for anyone who's feeling frustrated by conventions or who just needs a pick-me-up after a tough day at school or work. But she's not the only eccentric in music history. Reaching new audiences remains a preoccupation for classical music. Which means the quote above, from a website targeted at college age readers, makes interesting reading. The article showcases videos of ten entertainers who paved the way for Lady Gaga's liberating style and, unsurprisingly, not one of them is a classical musician. Which raises some interesting questions. Who is pushing the classical envelope ? Is classical music frustrated by conventions ? Should it be making better use of the new digital tools ? D

How social is your media?

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No apologies for returning again to the vexed question of the BBC. Five orchestras, the BBC Singers, the Proms, the biggest new music commissioning programme in the world and a total classical music budget £51.6m are all controlled by the BBC . Which means that everyone involved in, or listening to, classical music in the UK is affected by the BBC, as are many others around the world. The uncovering here this week that the BBC was using beta software to monitor blogs, Twitter and other social media could have been embarassing for the corporation. But it was handled in exemplary fashion by the BBC's online and technology team who quickly and honestly responded to my story and explained what was going on . This response is consistent with my previous experience of the BBC technology staff; they work in an open and collaborative manner that contrasts sharply with some of their colleagues in programme making areas. It is probably not a coincidence that the video about this blog and m

Why Malicious?

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'Mahler Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor. John Barbirolli made this recording over three days in July 1969 at Watford Town Hall, near London, while fighting depression and alcohol addiction...' - Why Mahler ? by Norman Lebrecht 'But in spite of the refuge of hard work the effect of depression in his last years was that his life-tempo slowed down notwithstanding drugs. It was no wonder that by taking these 'pills to purge melancholy' he gave uncharitable, malicous people the impression that he was drunk, an impression fostered by the knowledge that he always carried a flask of whisky and a bottle of soda water with him (also by his indistinct speech caused by his stubborn refusal to wear his dentures, and perhaps, too, by his tremulous hands - in fact a herditary Barbirolli trait.)' - Barbirolli, Conductor Laureate by Michael Kennedy. I can't wait for Why Stockhausen? Now on Facebook and Twitter @overgrownpath . Photo shows John Barbirolli conducting the

I want my work to scare me

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Since leaving Hollywood, I have had the healthy and sobering experience of constantly working with music that is invariably better than any performance of it can be. It keeps final goals always out of reach and it means that boredom is a very rare occurence. I have always found it necessary for my work to scare me. It doesn't do any good to be totally secure in the knowledge that tomorrow's effors will not be too difficult, and that they will, with rare exception, be accepted with praise. Nowadays, worry and self-doubt are room-mates of mine. I'm frightened by the glory of the music I have to work with, and plagued by personal inadequacies. In my profession, triumphs and failures are allowed to be more private, and mass opinions neither make nor break a lifetime career. Thought for the day from André Previn writing in his 1992 memoir of the movie industry No Minor Chords . What a pity that in 2010 extravagant praise, in the form of self-serving 'sticky buns' , has

BBC Buzz uncovered

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Roo Reynolds - BBC has left a new comment on your post " Mysterious BBC Buzz ": I wondered when someone would notice. Congratulations for being the first. As you've spotted, we've been developing a tool that finds where people are discussing BBC programmes so we can link back to them from the relevant programme page. It shows where the 'buzz' is around our programmes, and helps people find relevant and interesting blog posts about that programme. As you've also seen, there was previously a prototype of this same idea called Shownar, which BERG built for us at http://shownar.com/. That prototype has closed down now, but we've been busy taking what we learned from it and building something which integrates directly with our programme pages. Although the new system it still not quite live yet, we recently started using it to find some relevant blog posts that refer to BBC Radio and TV programmes. While we're ironing out the last few wrinkles, it'

Last fight of the Proms?

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A possible strike by BBC staff over pay and pensions threatens the Prom on Sept 9. To counter the threat the BBC senior management trots out its talking heads. Which means BBC Radio 3 controller and Proms director Roger Wright is taken for a quick canter through the standard defence of his annual £215,322 salary and £16,405 personal expenses in today's Guardian . The Guardian is, of course, resolutely pro-BBC management. As one would expect from a paper whose classical music critic splits his time between the paper and Radio 3 . When the Guardian gave Roger Wright a platform to set out the party line in July a BBC staff member emailed me describing the station controller as an apparatchik . That is just one of many similar emails I have received from within the BBC. They all express support for the views on Radio 3 published here and confirm what the RAJAR figures and listeners are saying; there is something rotten in the state of Langham Place. But the dissenting emails als

Mysterious BBC Buzz

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When I post here about a BBC programme my traffic logs show a visitor with this URL prefix arriving on my site - www.live.bbc.co.uk/buzztracker/buzz/moderation/.... Tracing that link back leads me to the BBC Buzz website , which I must confess I have not heard of and which doesn't appear on search engine results, although an earlier similar service (which also monitored this blog) does . But once you have found BBC Buzz there is this quite clear explanation of its purpose, although there is no mention as to whether the service has links to the oddly similarly named Google Buzz : Buzz is what's being said about a programme. We've built a tool that finds where on blogs, Twitter and other online communities people are discussing BBC programmes, and presents links to them on the relevant programme page. If people are talking about a programme, a section called 'Buzz about this programme' appears on its programme page. Clicking on the links in that section will take yo

Stifling the voice of knowledge

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Throughout human history, believers have waged war against one another. Gnostics and mystics have not. People are only too prepared to kill on behalf of a theology or faith. They are less disposed to do so on behalf of knowledge. Those prepared to kill for faith will have a vested interest in stifling the voice of knowledge. Topical food for thought from The Inquisition by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh who are best known for being the co-authors, together with Henry Lincoln , of the controversial The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail . There has been considerable criticism of both these books and of the role assigned to Saint Dominic in the Albiginsian Crusade and the subsequent Inquisition. A far more scholarly approach is found in the meticulously researched documentation accompanying Jordi Savall's 3 CD set The Forgotten Kingdom - The Tragedy of the Cathars which warns that many of the novels about the Albigensian Crusade "substantially distort the historical facts&q

They have no time for childishness

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When the Europeans introduced electric lighting into newly occupied Tangier, a shaykh remarked: 'If these people were obliged to pray five times a day, they would have no time for childishness!' There is more in this observation than meets the eye. That pithy observation comes from Titus Burckhardt's inspirational book Fez, City of Islam . Among the works performed in recent years at the Fez sacred music festival have been Jordi Savall's Jerusalem and Abed Azrié's Gospel of John . I took the photo above in Morocco, but not in Tangier or Fez; it is the souk in Essaouira at the time of jum'ah , the Friday midday prayer that is obligatory for all male adult Muslims. French gypsy musician Titi Robin, 'among us there are no castes' , played at the 2010 Essaouira Gnawa festival to rave reviews . The adhān, the Islamic call to prayer, features in Serbian composer Aleksandra Vrebalov's ...hold me, neighbour, in this storm... on the Kronos Quatet's F

Different gestures from different conductors

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During 1968 Barbirolli acceded to a plea to musicians by Rafael Kubelík not to conduct in countries which supported the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia. By this splendid gesture he deprived himself of the chance to conduct the recording of Die Meistersinger which EMI had hoped to make with the Dresden company in East Germany. Quote is from Barbirolli by Michael Kennedy . Header photo shows Herbert von Karajan signing autographs outside Dresden's Lukaskirche . It was taken in November 1970 during a break from recording sessions for EMI's Die Meistersinger . Karajan was recording the opera with the Dresden State Orchestra and Opera Chorus. 1968 will be remembered as a political annus horribilis rather than the centenary of the first performance of Die Meistersinger . But a centenary production of the opera in London made the reputation of another great Wagnerian whose music also sounds better than his politics . Others made different gestures. Rafael Kubelík had left Czech

Sticky buns from that bloody rucksack

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... it avoids today's ever-increasing trend to cocky knowingness, memorably summed up long ago by [BBC Radio 3 controller] Ian McIntyre in the phrase "handing out sticky buns". 'Editorializing' of any kind was strictly forbidden under the BBC's charter, so producers were not allowed to express opinions or comment on the music in their programmes, nor even to refer to performers as 'distinguished' (they were that by definition if they broadcast for us): they were there to deliver facts. That quote about broadcasting in the 1970s is from Leo Black's ever-illuminating BBC Music in the Glock Era and Beyond . Just before 10 this morning [Aug 18] on BBC Radio 3, Rob Cowan introduces Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 4, conducted by Karajan. After it finished he says "That was Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2....although it says no. 4 on the CD for some reason". The latter said in a very confused voice, as if the error is the CD's not

Klinghoffer's Syrian connection

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Arabic is the sixth most widely spoken language in the world and is the last surviving semitic language descending from the Aramaic spoken at the time of Christ. As an Arab proverb says: 'Wisdom reveals herself in the dialectic of the Greeks, the craftsmanship of the Chinese, and the language of the Arab.' All of which makes the music media's neglect of a setting in Arabic of one of the treasures of Christendom, the Gospel of John, disappointing but predictable. And the disappointment becomes greater when the setting is revealed as by a composer whose influence has been acknowledged by none other than John Adams. Syrian born composer Abed Azrié uses his own translation for his L'Évangile selon Jean (The Gospel of John). Abed Azrié has lived in Paris for more than thirty years and has released a succession of successful albums setting traditional and modern Arab texts to an updated style of Arab classical music that mixes ethnic instruments with synthesizers. His 1991

It's not about what happens

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Just watched Anders Østergaard's independently produced film Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country which documents how video journalists made images of the violent protests in Rangoon in 2007 available worldwide via Norwegian based Democratic Voice of Burma . The independently produced film is a very powerful case study of how quick and dirty media is working where mainstream media is failing. Just read Hello Everybody (title People Like Us in the US) which is an insider's account of how mainstream media gives a filtered and manipulated version of reality in the Middle East. The book's author is Dutch reporter Joris Luyendijk who was awarded the journalist of the year prize in Holland in 2006. His message is clear; mainstream media is failing because it does nothing more than reflect the views of established politicians. Or as an Israeli government media manager says in the book: 'It's not about what happens, but how it is presented on CNN.' Talking o

The music had slipped out

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'The form was so open that the music had slipped out.' That is Leo Black writing in BBC Music in the Glock Era and After about an unidentified work at the Kranichsteiner Musiktage at Darmstadt in the 1960s. Image is of a 1964 performance by Ben Vautier and Alison Knowles as part of the Fluxus Festival in New York City. Photograph is by Fluxus founder George Maciunas . Performance of Maciunas' Piano #13 (for Nam Juin Panik) here . John Cage's experimental composition classes at the New York's New School for Social Research (topical link here ) in the late 1950s contributed to the early development of Fluxus and he was later a neighbour of Fluxus founder Yoko Ono . This has meant that Cage's reputation is linked to the concept of 'anti-art' and his music is unfairly pigeon-holed as a 'difficult listen'. Which does not sit well at a time when 'easy listening' has moved from being a derided musical category to the turnkey solution to a