Posts

Showing posts from October, 2013

Classical music still has more money than sense

Image
Alex Ross reports in the New Yorker that Valery Gergiev’s annual income is said to be $16.5 million. Recordings of Hans Gal's Symphonies by Kenneth Woods and of Missy Mazolli's new opera about Isabelle Eberhardt are just two important recent projects that relied on crowdfunding . $13,500 was needed to deliver the acclaimed Hans Gal Symphonies; which is 0.08% of the amount reportedly paid each year to Gergiev by arts organisations around the world . As funders search for yet more savings , what is the defence against the accusation that classical music still has more money than sense ? Also on Facebook and Twitter . 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).

Catalonia triumphant - Jordi Savall's tribute to Pau Casals

Image
Catalonia, triumphant - Catalunya, triomfant - is the opening declamation of Els Segadors , the Catalonian national hymn which was recorded in 1988 in a deeply moving rendition by Jordi Savall and his much-missed wife Montserrat Figueras . Catalonia is a creative powerhouse which has given us the two great string players, Pau Casals and Jordi Savall. So, to mark the fortieth anniversary of Pau Casals' death this month , I invited Jordi to record this brief exclusive tribute to his compatriot. In that tribute Jordi Savall remembers Pau Casals not only for his great musicianship, but also for his human engagement for peace and concord, dialogue and justice. Jordi shares those values and this week releases Orient-Occident II , his personal homage to war-torn Syria which brings together musicians from Lebanon, Israel and Syria in a long awaited follow-up to his best-selling Orient-Occident project. As always with Alia Vox this lavish new CD/book is a thing of great beauty, n

Music's UN Messengers of Peace send mixed messages

Image
The Gulf States have, justifiably, come under the spotlight for their repressive treatment of gays . But the human rights abuses are far more widespread: investigative organisation Human Rights Watch has documented these abuses and starts its latest report with these words: The human rights situation in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) worsened in 2012 as authorities arbitrarily detained and deported civil society activists, and harassed and intimidated their lawyers. In September, an independent monitor found significant problems in the treatment of migrant workers on the high-profile Saadiyat Island project in Abu Dhabi, identifying the payment of illegal recruitment fees as a key concern. Fortunately classical music is actively involved in human rights via the four superstars who are United Nations Messengers of Peace , including new recruit Lang Lang . Of these messengers of peace, three have first hand experience of the situation in the Gulf States, as Daniel Barenboim , fellow m

Classical music's popular and attractive new market

Image
'A sort of art revolution seems to have been going on [in the Gulf States] in the last ten years. In 2005 the Abu Dhabi government opened the Emirates Palace concert hall in a 7-star hotel, then four years ago the Qatar Philharmonic gave its first concert in Doha (under the baton of Lorin Maazel, no less). Last week Bahrain opened its new 1001-seater National Amphitheatre ; Dubai is also building an opera house and last year the spectacular Royal Opera House, Muscat opened its doors in the Omani capital. [See photo above]. This is where the BBC Symphony Orchestra caravan rolled up last week, thanks to an invitation from the Royal Opera House... With the growth of music education, orchestras and opera houses in this region together with fabulous hospitality, the Gulf Arab states could well become a popular and attractive part of our touring itinerary' - BBC Radio 3 blog post November 2012 by Phil Hall of BBC Symphony Orchestra 'The decision to bar homosexuals from ente

Rare Wagner is rescued from record company archives

Image
In the Wizard of Bayreuth's bicentennial year Wagner's rarely heard Under the Double Eagle march has been rescued from the archives in a notable new release from Warner Classics. The march is, of course, the work of the Austrian bandmaster and composer J.F. Wagner (1856-1908) and not his more illustrious namesake. But if my nuanced deceit generates some social media buzz about one of the least publicised but most rewarding classical releases of the year, it will have done its job. Under the Double Eagle is one of the slighter words in Warner's retrospective from their newly acquited EMI archive Sir Adrian Boult - the Complete Conductor . I previewed the 10 CD box in August under the headline This Tchaikovsky is the cat's whiskers . Now, having auditioned the new discs, I am moved to pronounce that Sir Adrian's Tchaikovsky surpasses the cat's whiskers - even Ginger's . If you want to hear recorded sound that has never been bettered - period - listen t

Virtual failure in commercial terms but who cares?

Image
My biography? Doesn’t “fit in”. From the wrong side of the tracks all the way. Virtual failure in commercial terms, but who the hell cares either way? That self-deprecation appears on Michael Finnissy's website , which is also notable for the absence of social media links featuring the composer. Pianist Ian Pace has recorded Michael Finnissy's epic The History of Photography in Sound in a superb interpretation on the Métier label . In the admirably comprehensive sleeve notes for the new release Ian Pace quotes Susan Sontag as saying: To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge - and, therefore, like power... Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire. Elsewhere in his notes Ian Pace describes how: Finnissy's work investigates quite exhaustively the possibility of removing

Why do we listen to classical music industry experts?

Image
Two weeks ago BBC Radio 3 controller and Proms director Roger Wright was in New York at the prestigious Lincoln Center, telling classical music what it was doing wrong in his Royal Philharmonic Society Lecture . This despite his having presided over, inter alia , possibly the most lacklustre period in the distinguished history of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and despite having crowned an orgy of dumbing down at Radio 3 by turning the most extravagant Proms' season ever into a 5.8% plunge in radio audience . (When the BBC makes its royal charter renewal submission in 2017 you can bet it will be the Barenboim Ring that is puffed and not the calamitous performance of Radio 3 ). Elsewhere ex- Gramophone editor and sometime Radio 3 contributor James Jolly is sharing his wisdom on the conference circuit , despite the Gramophone's circulation having plunged from 60,000 to 25,000 while he was editor and then editor-in-chief. Why do we listen to classical music industry experts

If BBC Radio 3 is broke why not fix it?

Image
RAJAR audience figures released today show that in the all important Q3 2013 - the period that includes the Proms - BBC Radio 3 lost a further 5.8% of its audience year on year, while total listening hours crashed by 8.9% due to an additional fall in average hours per listener. Despite the official BBC press release once again spinning the audience figures in an imaginative way the message is clear: while Radio 3 fiddled and classical music burned , Radio 2 added a million listeners and grabbed the headlines - see above. Now come on BBC Trust; if Radio 3 is broke why not fix it ? Also on Facebook and Twitter . 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).

Places I'd take Michael Finnissy to if he ever visited Iran

Image
Noteworthy is the upcoming world première of a new work by Hossein Hadisi for voices, percussion and dance. Zahhák: the Dragon King of Persia celebrates the Persian minstrels' art of Naqqáli by re-enacting the ancient myth of Zahhák from the Persian 'Book of Kings'. Hossein Hadisi studied composition with Michael Finnissy and his works include Places I'd Take Michael Finnissy To Visit If He Was Ever Going To Come To Iran for piano. Currently a research associate at Cambridge University studying the traditional Persian improvisation school of Avaz , Hadisi's work spans rock and contemporary music and Bang the Bore XI: Psychobabble based on the Muslim rite of prayer can be sampled here . Zahhák: the Dragon King of Persia is performed by leading contemporary music ensemble Exaudi with dancers from London Contemporary Dance School and the production features paintings by Iranian surrealist master Ali Akbar Sadeghi . Performances are at the RADA Studio Theatre,

The young person's guide to homophobia

Image
Good to see LGBT activism increasing in classical music. Among recent notable examples was the dedication of Somewhere Over the Rainbow performed by Joyce DiDonato and the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Last Night of the BBC Proms to gay victims worldwide. But less than a month after this laudable protest the BBC Symphony Orchestra without Ms DiDonato played their first ever concert in the Gulf State of Qatar , where homosexuality is illegal . LGBT awareness may be in short supply at the BBCSO but irony is not; so their programme in Qatar included music by Benjamin Britten. Why are some gay causes more fashionable than others ? Also on Facebook and Twitter . 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).

Cautionary tale about cutting through classical music

Image
'There was a very interesting study done once by a psychiatrist called Bruno Bettelheim who did a lot of work with autistic children. This was in the 1960s and, at that time, people were very concerned to have everything politically correct and modernised, civilised and egalitarian. So they started to straighten out the fairy-tales that they were telling the children in the hospital unit where they were working. They re-wrote all the fairy stories - they took out all the violent ogres and witches that ate children's heads, together with all the ghastly unfair, cruel and shocking elements. They dressed them up and made them a little more nice and polite. They ran this programme for quite a number of years, but there were other centres that they were looking after where they did not use this approach. About twenty years later they made a psychological profile of these different groups of children and they found that the ones that had the sanitised fairy-tales were much more he

The camera never lies

Image
Forgive a short meander off the usual overgrown path. But there is a rumbling controversy surrounding allegations that town councils in England use parking fines as a "cash cow". The latest development is that the parliamentary Transport Committee has told councils they should publish annual accounts if they want to disprove, to quote the committee chairman, "the deep-rooted public perception that parking enforcement is used as a cash cow". Now, as regular readers will know, I spend a fair amount of time on the road following overgrown paths. One journey earlier this year took me to Morocco which produced posts including the very pertinent They paved paradise and put up a parking lot . En route from our home in Norfolk to Gatwick Airport we stopped in East Grinstead for a meal. As it was a Wednesday afternoon in early March the town centre car park was almost empty, as can be seen from the accompanying photos which were taken on the day. When we returned to the

What Pau Casals said about the classical music industry

Image
'In modern business it is not the crook who is to be feared, it is the honest man who does not know what he is doing' Pau Casals, who is seen above, died on 22nd October, 1973 . Also on Facebook and Twitter . 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).

Remembering Pablo Casals

Image
Pau Casals died at 2 p.m. on Monday, 22 October 1973 in the Auxilio Mutuo Hospital, San Juan, Puerto Rica. It is one of many paradoxes that in an age when classical music is obsessed with anniversaries , this important anniversary is passing virtually unnoticed. Here, in an attempt to at least partially rectify that, is a reblog of my 2010 tribute to the great Catalan musician and humanitarian titled A musician is also a man . 'So it was that in the spring of 1939 I came to Prades. I could not have imagined at the time that I would spend the next seventeen years of my life in this little town in the Pyrenees. And in spite of the sorrow in me, I found respite in my surroundings. With its winding cobbled strees and whitewashed houses with red tiled roofs - and the acacia trees that were then in bloom - Prades might have been one of the Catalan villages I had known since childhood. The countryside seemed no less familiar to me. The lovely patterns of orchards an vineyards, the wild

Today people go to concert halls looking for answers

Image
Reaching a wider audience is seen, quite rightly, as classical music's number one priority. Yet the strategies for reaching that wider audience are, with a few notable exceptions , based on ill-founded hunches imported from the entertainment industry , while actionable data on what might actually appeal to a wider audience is resolutely ignored. One such example of actionable but ignored is a new survey by think tank Theos which reports that 52% of people believe that spiritual forces in some way influence their lives, while 77% believe that some phenomena cannot be explained by science. These findings resonate with the views expressed by the Latvian composer Peteris Vasks in an interview that accompanies the recently released and highly recommended recording of his piano trio Canto Perpetuo by the Boulanger Trio seen above. In the interview Vasks explains that: ...people go to the concert hall because they are looking for answers. Above all for a way out of their difficult, u

In music there is an infinity of undecidables

Image
More evidence of how artwork changes the sound of CDs comes from this new release on the Spanish Enchiriadis label. Músicas Viajeras is a journey through the music of Christians, Sephardic and Muslim Spain performed by chamber choir Musica Ficta and early music ensemble Ensemble Fontegara with sonic enhancement from Juan Lucas' cover photography. Those who doubt that graphics can influence sound or that frequencies we can't hear alter those we can hear should reflect on Gödel's theorem . This states, when expressed in layman's language, that in any consistent axiomatic system there are undecidable propositions; moreover not only are there undecidables, but there is an infinity of undecidables. Which means music exists only in constant flow and flux . Also on Facebook and Twitter . No freebies involved in this post. Any copyrighted material is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis, and will be removed at the reque

Seeking the music that is beyond immediate reach

Image
Junayd, the eminent Sufi master of the tenth century , counselled one of his fellow seekers to "know his contemporaries and understand those of his time and age" and went on to say "I note that the entire concern of most creatures is for this lower world, and that they seek the fragile goods that are within their immediate reach... the seeking of perishable realities has blinded minds and hearts occupied with the sole desire for the most vain of these... men are totally fascinated by the present life, and the things of the future life have become inaccessible to their clouded minds". Although generally viewed as a mystical expression of Islam, Sufism, with its emphasis on the inner wisdom of gnosis , can also be interpreted as an order of life independent of established faiths that has considerable contemporary relevance. The much vaunted digital long tail of 'things of the future' has proved, in reality, to be a short head of 'perishable realities

Who said that music programming is mundane?

Image
My journey down a typically overgrown path has uncovered evidence that music programming is far from mundane . Here is the track listing for a newly released double CD from Cherry Red Records : Disc One 1. Gabor Szabo – El Toro 2. Alice B. Toklas – Recipe for Hashish Fudge 3. Ustad Ali Akbar Khan – Raga Yaman Kalyan: Teen Tala 4. Aldous Huxley – "How Often Have You Taken Mescalin Yourself?” 5. Sounds Inc. – Taboo 6. Sun Ra ( seen in header image ) – Ancient Aiethopia 7. Ravi Shankar – Raga Jinjhoti 8. Herbie Mann – It Ain't Necessarily So Disc Two 1. Les Troubadours du Roi Baudouin - Missa Luba: Sanctus 2. Gabor Szabo – Lady Gabor 3. Jackson Pollock – Modern Art & Method 4. Edgard Varèse - Integrales 5. Yusef Lateef – The Plum Blossom 6. Ustad Vilayat Khan – Raga Miya Ki Malhar 7. Ken Nordine – Spectrum 8. Sharan Rani - Raga Kausi-Kanada The double CD is titled Dawn of Psychedelia and, on the same path, now read how Elgar takes a trip . Also on

No mud - no music

Image
If you are a poet you will clearly see that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are... You cannot point out one thing that is not here [in this sheet of paper] - time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river the heat. Everything coexists with this sheet of paper... This sheet of paper is, because everything else is'. That is the Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh writing in ' The Heart of Understanding '. My header image shows Arun Ghosh's A South Asian Suite , an Indo-Jazz chamber work inspired by the landscape and cultures of Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka as seen from the viewpoint of a British-Asian compos

Do great classical composers need the common touch?

Image
Several times I was surprised at the end of a meal by suddenly hearing my overtures; than at the restaurant window, indulging in this feeling, I did not know what was having a more intoxicating effect upon me, the incomparable, magnificently illuminated square filled with countless, strolling people or the music bearing all of this as if in roaring transfiguration. Wagner recounts his time in Venice in Richard Wagner in Venedig by Friedrich Dieckmann. The quote is used in the notes for the Uri Caine Ensemble's arrangements of Wagner for string quartet, piano and accordion recorded live at the Gran Caffè Quadri in the Piazza San Marco, Venice. Forget about the unconventional forces, this is a first-rate and often surprisingly moving Wagner disc which I am sure the Master himself would have approved of. Out of the three great composers celebrating anniversaries this year, Wagner and Verdi reached huge audiences thanks to their common touch being exploited in arrangements for popul

Leonard Bernstein's Sufi dream

Image
On October 13, a friend came to visit him and, at Bernstein's request, he read out loud Coleman Barks's translations of a number of poems by the thirteenth-century Persian mystic Jelaluddin Rumi, in particular some lines from Rumi's deathbed poem: Last night in a dream I saw an old man in a garden It was all love. He held out his hand and said, Come toward me. Leonard Bernstein died at 6:15 the following evening. That extract is from Jonathan Cott's Dinner with Lenny . The valedictory choice by the 'Kaddish' Symphony's composer of poetry by one of the most senior figures in the Sufi tradition takes us beyond syncretism to synchronicity. Deutsche Grammophon has recently re-released Dream of the Orient (that is the original 2003 Archiv CD above) on which Concerto Köln directed by Werner Ehrhardt and transcultural ensemble Sarband - celebrated for their Arabian Passion According to J.S. Bach - mix European classical and Sufi influenced Turkish mu

Let's make 2014 a Max Last Night of the Proms

Image
In his recent Royal Philharmonic Society lecture BBC Radio 3 controller and Proms director Roger Wright expressed the view that "the mundane programme is our enemy". This is an admirable sentiment, so today I am offering the Proms director some gratuitous advice on how to outwit the enemy in next year's Proms season. Hopefully the current misguided obsession with composer anniversaries should be self-correcting as 2014 is a lean year with Richard Strauss (1864-1949) being the only bankable birthday boy or girl; surely wall to wall Strauss tone poems is a step too far even for Radio 3? But my recent analysis of Google Trends did show that lesser-known composers respond to anniversary promotion. So my 2014 fantasy BBC Proms season would include all four of the life-affirming symphonies of Albéric Magnard (1865-1914) and, following on from the success of this year's Wagner Proms, a complete cycle of the six operas of Harrison Birtwistle (b 1934). Don't panic - o

Not coming to a TV near you

Image
Elsewhere there are imaginative conspiracy theories as to why the film Peace and Conflict about Benjamin Britten's time at Gresham's School - production still above - is not being aired on British television. Follow this link for another possible reason conspicuously missing from that coverage. Also on Facebook and Twitter . 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).

Oh yes indeed - the mundane programme is our enemy

Image
That is BBC Radio 3 controller and Proms director Roger Wright in the photo above with presenter Petroc Trelawny. As reported here in August , between them they have managed to lose 100,000 listeners, which is 14% of its audience, from Radio 3's Breakfast programme by depriving it of context and turning it into a mundane imitation of Classic FM. So I choked on my coffee this morning when I read this quote from Roger Wright's Royal Philharmonic Society 2013 lecture. 'Context is all - the mundane programme is our enemy!' Also on Facebook and Twitter . 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).