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Showing posts from August, 2012

Life on the road is liberty

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"One right to which few intellectuals care to lay claim is the right to wander, the right to vagrancy. And yet vagrancy is emancipation, and life on the road is liberty: one day bravely to throw off the shackles with which modern life and the weakness of our heart encumber us, in a pretence of liberty; to arm oneself with the symbolic staff and bundle and run away ". Those are the opening lines from the collection of Isabelle Eberdardt's writing titled Prisoner of Dunes , and it is now time to arm myself with the symbolic staff and bundle and run away from blogging for a while and leave you with a different perspective. That is Nabil Othmani (right foreground) and Steve Shehan (left background) in the header photo, and my music to run away by is their recent album Awalin . Nabil Othmani was born in Djanet in the Algerian Sahara and there is a chilling convergence of paths at this point. His father was the great Tuareg oud player and singer Baly Othmani whose body was fo

Profession heal thyself

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For some time On An Overgrown Path has been asking Are classical music journalists above criticism? Now it is reported elsewhere that the chief music critic of a UK broadsheet has left following allegations of conflict of interest. Fellow critics are defending him. Which is understandable; because if this becomes a trend, there will soon be a lot more vacancies . Also on Facebook and Twitter . Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

We cannot turn our backs on the past

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When, in 1951, Henri Dutilleux presented his vibrantly diatonic First Symphony, Boulez greeted him by turning his back. That is Alex Ross writing in The Rest is Noise and Dutilleux's vibrantly diatonic Symphony is one of the works in a new five CD overview of his music. There is much notable music in the oeuvre of this underrated composer, and also a sub-text that is relevant to the challenges currently facing classical music. Dutilleux (b. 1916) reflects his fascination with time and memory in his compositions, and uses involuntary memory to link past, present and future. His music is certainly not retrogressive. But its message is that, despite Boulez , we cannot turn our backs on the past; a very relevant sentiment as classical music struggles with denying the past and reinventing itself as a child of the digital age . Virgin Classics' Dutilleux box also includes his Second Symphony, the Cello Concerto composed for Mstislav Rostropovich , the Violin Concerto commissione

Research identifies classical music’s unique selling point

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Music, an abstract stimulus, can arouse feelings of euphoria and craving, similar to tangible rewards that involve the striatal dopaminergic system… These results indicate that intense pleasure in response to music can lead to dopamine release in the striatal system... Our results help to explain why music is of such high value across all human societies. Those extracts are from a paper in the journal Nature Neuroscience . Complex science needs to be treated with respect and caution, but the findings do resonate with recent paths about the links between classical music and hallucinogens , kinetic art (thanks go to Norman Perryman for the heads up ), therapy , and ecstatic traditions such as Sufism . They also suggest exploitable similarities between music and tangible reward systems such as sex and gourmet food, and more importantly to opportunities for the medical application of music – in particular as a palliative for Parkinson’s disease, because a loss of dopamine-secreting neuron

Beware of the circle game

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Two immensely satisfying musical experiences in eight days: Jing Zhao playing Bach’s Cello Suites in Norwich , and the Wu Quartet playing Britten, Peteris Vasks and Schubert in Cratfield . Musicianship of the highest order links both concerts, but so do several other attributes. All the artists were young players not yet sucked onto the celebrity treadmill. Both venues were small sacred/spiritual spaces - the Swedenborgian Chapel in Norwich and St Mary’s Church, Cratfield  - with intimate and involving acoustics. And both concerts were presented by non-professional promoters. By contrast mainstream classical music remains fixated on the virtuous circle of big agent, big artist, big venue, and big audience. All of which reminds me of the Sufi fable The Conference of the Birds . Here is the irreplaceable Bernard Levin’s précis of the fable from his book Conducted Tour : The birds go to seek their mysterious king, the Simorg. Their journey is beset by terrible hardship, amid which

No reasonable offer refused

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Many thanks go to my American readers for taking BBC director general Mark Thompson off our hands . Now can we also interest you in Roger Wright, Petroc Trelawny, Rob Cowan, Katie Derham and Norman Lebrecht? Also on Facebook and Twitter . Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

The whole joy is in the journey

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“The joy of life is the joy of the journey. If one could close one’s eyes and be put immediately on the top of the Himalayas, one would not enjoy it as much as the one who climbs and goes from one peak to another, and sees the different scenery and meets different people on the way. The whole joy is in the journey.” That is Inayat Khan quoted by his biographer Elisabeth de Jong-Keesing . Today’s unimaginative concert programming whisks us from peak to peak, which means we miss the opportunity to meet different people and scenery on the way. One such missed opportunity is the Estonian symphonist Eduard Tubin , the 30th anniversary of whose death will fall on November 17th. Header image show one of my LPs from BIS’ pioneering 1980s cycle of the Tubin symphonies which, thankfully, has been transferred to CD . Is contemporary concert programming too monochrome and is that one of the reasons why classical music is failing to attract a wider audience ? Also on Facebook and Twitter . An

Back to the Bach of 1900

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In a preface to the original 1974 LP release of his recordings of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos Sir Adrian Boult expressed the hope that they would “take our audience back to the Bach of 1900, to the smooth and solid expression given by a far larger orchestra than Bach could ever contemplate, and those who prefer the delicate staccato interpretations of the sixties will have no difficulty in finding many excellent records in this vein”. However, despite the recordings being made with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, they are not big band Bach in every respect; recorders are used in the First and Fourth Concertos and a harpsichord provides the continuo throughout, although I recall being told by session producer Christopher Bishop that the latter choice at least was his, rather than Sir Adrian’s. This still deliciously inauthentic Bach has been out of the CD catalogue for far too long, but now returns in the “don’t think, just buy” eleven CD EMI box seen above. Currently retaili

Yin and Yang are changing very quickly

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Our world is at a very interesting age. In the West, people are studying yoga, karate, meditation - Eastern things. In the East people are studying science, business, Western art and philosophy - Western things. This is now the time when Yin and Yang are changing very quickly. So if you are holding on to any idea - of what is Eastern, what is Western, how things are, how things ought to be - holding any idea, any opinion at all, then you will have a problem; you cannot connect with the world. But, if you lay it all down, all your ideas, all opinions, then the truth is right in front of your eyes... Zen Master Seung Sahn of Providence Zen Center writes in the introduction to A Still Forest Pool , a compilation of the teachings of the Thai Forest Buddhist tradition meditation master Achaan Chah . My soundtrack is Sabîl from Palestinian oud player Ahmad Al Khatib and the Israeli Druze percussionist Youssef Hbeisch , a CD from the record label with a secret life that I found recently

Talk about immortal masterpieces is rather ridiculous

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“It's been many years since I dipped my ears in that raging ocean....” confesses Alex Ross in a recent email about the music of Kaikhosru Sorabji, and what an eloquent description “raging ocean” is of that composer's unique soundworld. Kaikhosru Sorabji, seen above, was born on August 14th, 1892 in Chingford, Essex. But it is unlikely, even in an age obsessed with composer anniversaries, that the 120th anniversary of his birth this week will receive much attention. Sorabji’s output included six piano concertos, three organ symphonies and six symphonies for solo piano. But he remains a marginal figure – his music has never been performed at the Proms – who attracts just a small cult following. That following, incidentally, includes a young Alex Ross who broadcast the four hour Opus Clavicembalisticum on Harvard’s student radio station WHRB a few months after Sorabji died in October 1988. Today Sorabji is remembered mainly for his prolixity. This reaches a peak in one wo

Elgar up close and personal

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For a topical example of the curse of close-miking listen to the prominent soloists in Friday's BBC Radio 3 broadcast of the moving Proms performance of The Apostles given by Sir Mark Elder and the Hallé. Microphones may be visible in the 1975 session photo above, but their more distant placement avoided the artificial and fatiguing sound that characterises more modern productions. Elgar up close and personal or Elgar laid-back and natural? - I know which I prefer. The photo shows EMI's Kingsway Hall sessions with Sir Adrian Boult, the New Philharmonia Orchestra and London Philharmonic Choir for The Dream of Gerontius . Staying with matters spatial, those 1975 Gerontius sessions were captured in both stereo and quadraphonic sound, and my LPs are encoded in the EMI/CBS stereo compatible SQ format . Assuming the four channel master still exists in the EMI vaults, there is an opportunity for an enterprising label to sub-license and issue it using one of the new generation

We are by nature analogue beings

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We are by nature analogue (def. "a continuous spectrum of values") beings, consisting of fluid organic substances. This is why my kinetic colours feel good in a visceral way and access our emotions; in contrast to digital images, synthesized from separate pixels. Those bits of separate information don't touch us emotionally, especially when viewed in digital projection. Which is why I bucked the trend, "reverting" to analogue overhead projectors with their continuous flow of light-colour. It's ironic that a spectator/audience will vaguely feel the difference without understanding why (cf. your observations on CDs ). In a different field, tourists will snap up art museum postcards with colours that are horribly wrong, without even noticing the difference to what they just saw in real space and with personal visual experience. The desperate longing for a souvenir , " in search of a lost emotion ". For the same reason, people are always urging me

In search of the lost emotion

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This 1972 Decca LP of the monks of L’Abbaye Saint-Pierre de Solesmes was the first recording of Gregorian chant that I bought, and in the eight years I have been blogging Gregorian chant has featured here many times, particularly as sung by the Benedictine community of Saint-Madeleine du Barroux . In 1972 the monks at Solesmes were speaking to the inner analogue with their LPs, but now their brothers at Le Barroux are speaking to the outer digital by streaming their Divine Offices online , complete with iPhone app for those seeking mobile spirituality. Le Barroux’s iPhone app is one of the more dramatic transgressions of set and setting , but it is symptomatic of a widespread problem. There is now, thankfully, a general understanding of how eco-systems mean that pollution in a stream can destroy life in a faraway ocean. But there is virtually no understanding of the workings of esoteric systems (eso-systems), as evidenced by the fallacy that a transcendental experience in a Prov

Elgar takes a trip

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This Friday (August 10) Mark Elder and the Hallé bring Elgar’s choral masterpiece The Apostles to the BBC Proms . Mark Elder is a notable Elgar interpreter, and encounters with the transcendental and numinous are among the sensations triggered by a great performance of The Apostles . But they are also sensations associated with a very different kind of experience – an LSD trip. And surprisingly there are links between Elgar, The Apostles and LSD. Elgar made the first sketches for The Apostles in the the early 1880s when he was band instructor at Powick Hospital. This was a psychiatric facility originally called Powick Lunatic Asylum which stood in the shadow of the composer's beloved Malvern Hills - the hospital is seen in the aerial view above. Music therapy was pioneered at Powick and the visionary hospital board formed an unconventional band of strings, wind, strings, brass and piano from the institution’s staff . The young Elgar’s responsibilities included conducting,

Time for classical music to awaken the inner analogue?

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Benjamin Britten's 'holy triangle' of composer, performer and listener is bound together together by the glue of sound. Such was the importance of sound to Britten that he built one of the world's acoustically finest concert halls and condemned the loudspeaker as the principal enemy of music . Yet today the glue of sound has become increasingly fissile as mobile and digital technologies heap sonic compromise on sonic compromise . But thankfully the art of great recorded sound is not quite dead, as is proved by a new CD from Nimbus Alliance titled The Art of Transcription * . The quality of the music - Dmitry Sitkovetsky's transcriptions for string trio of Bach's Goldberg Variations and Sinfonias - and the quality of the performances - by Yuri Zhislin , Luigi Piovano and Sitkovetsky himself - are both outstanding. But equally outstanding is the quality of the sound in a recording produced by former EMI staffer John Fraser and engineered by Philip Hobbs

A traveller’s tale

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In the 1970s I had the misfortune to be on a passenger jet that made an emergency landing. It was a British Airways flight from Berlin to Heathrow , and in those Cold War days international flights in and out of West Berlin had to make an intermediate stop at an airport in West Germany. My flight stopped at Bremen and shortly after taking off from there the  BAC 1-11 jet  suffered a major power failure that forced it to make an emergency landing. This incident happened in the days when aircraft seat spacing was considerably greater, when turnaround times were considerably longer, when passengers were not encouraged to cram as much carry-on baggage into the cabin as possible, and when cabin crew was a somewhat better paid profession. All the BA crew behaved in exemplary fashion and no one was physically hurt. But the experience was frightening, not only because of the very real danger but also because one of the passengers, quite understandably, had a panic attack during the emergen

What is this breath that is talked about so often?

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Heard what was going on around him - not a system but an attitude - the rhythm of breathing - sounds as living objects - the rediscovery of bodily rhythms - musicians are actors in an abstract drama - bridging the gap between score and audience = Donald Runnicles (above) and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra performing Bruckner's Eighth Symphony at last night's Prom 'It is we who need to know Breath is Life. What is this breath that is talked about so often? Actually it is not so difficult to understand when we come to realise that on planet Earth we have just one thing in common and that is the element of air. We sit in a room attending a lecture or concert; we are all sharing the same air. We may not consider this important, and yet, the moment we enter a world of compassion, knowing that the musicians and the conductor in the concert, or he who is giving the lecture, are all sharing the same air with us, something can happen within to help bring about real change&

The problem is MP3 files cannot look at you menacingly

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Another example of al-Kindī is that you can absorb some of the contents of books without reading them, by irradiation, if you are surrounded by many of them. David Derrick added that comment to How sleeve artwork changes the sound of CDs . Harmless pseudoscience ... Or is it? Here is Nassim Taleb writing in The Black Swan : A private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market will allow you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. The same theory applies to CDs. But the problem is MP3 files cannot look at you menacingly . Also on Facebook and Twitter . Any copyrighted material on th

Set and setting

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Set and setting, the mind set prior to taking LSD and the physical setting in which the experience takes place, seem to be the defining factors in how people interpret the LSD experience. That extract is from Andy Roberts’ Albion Dreaming: A Popular History of LSD in Britain . Hallucinogenics and classical music may differ radically in social acceptance, but the ultimate aim of both is to transport the user to a better place. Yet, although classical music is fazed by its inability to connect with new audiences, it refuses to consider the possibilities offered by the fuzzy area that lies between science and pseudoscience. Set and setting is one of those possibilities, and the argument for further exploration is persuasive. Access to classical music has been improving for decades. First it was only available in the concert hall. Then came crude phonographs followed by poor quality radios. Then came the hi-fi boom. And in recent decades accessibility has increase at an exponential ra

Bridging the gap between score and audience

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In an online interview Gérard Grisey (1946-1998) explains that spectralism is not a system like serial music, but an attitude that "considers sounds, not as dead objects that you can easily and arbitrarily permutate in all directions, but as being like living objects with a birth, lifetime and death". Grisey goes on to describe how spectralism , of which he was a pioneer, tries "to find a better equation between concept and precept - between the concept of the score and the perception the audience might have of it". Writing in the New York Times in 2000 Paul Griffiths desribed how Gérard Grisey's "' Les Espaces Acoustiques ' was a project of the 1970's and can now be seen to have got right much of what that decade got wrong. Grisey heard what was going on around him -- repetitive music, the rediscovery of bodily rhythms, especially the rhythm of breathing, the fascination with harmonic spectra, the idea that performing musicians are