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Showing posts from July, 2014

Audiences should be free to listen to what they want

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The alliance between Universal Music and Classic FM to present and promote the high profile Bristol Proms, a concert series that draws heavily on artists signed to Universal Music and Classic FM record labels , demands closer examination. All too often BBC Radio 3 is seen as the only 800 pound gorilla in classical radio . But Classic FM tips the scales at an even heavier weight: with 5.3 million listeners the station controls 74% of the UK classical radio market, leaving Radio 3 with just 26%. The success of Classic FM since its 1992 launch in exploiting the 'shallow classical' market has been the biggest single factor in reshaping classical music not only in the UK, but also globally. BBC Radio 3 has reacted by chasing the same audience as Classic FM, and this has led to the much lamented dumbing down of Radio 3's output . a process that has spread virally around the globe . Radio 3's reactive strategy is proved by hard facts figures to be a mistake. The latest R

The problem is obvious - there is too much classical music

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In a glowing review in the Guardian Andrew Clements describes the Freiburg Opera's Parsifal at the Norwich Theatre Royal - see production shot above - as "a show that almost any British company would be happy to have in its repertory". Yet despite the production's obvious quality, the four performances by the Freiburg company of Parsifal and Tannhäuser attracted lamentably small audiences. A London based critic blamed low profile promotion by the Norwich theatre for the poor attendance, and given the limited budget of the provincial venue, which has charitable status and no material public funding , there is some truth in that explanation. But the glib analysis of poor publicity is typical of the blame culture that is so prevalent in classical music today - blame elitism, funding cuts, antiquated concert conventions, piracy, in fact blame anything other than the self-harming behaviour of the music industry itself. All the fashionable conspiracy theories miss

Max Hole is right, classical music is an elitist club

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Universal Music ceo Max Hole has used the launch of the Bristol Proms to once again denounce classical music as "an elitist club" . And he is right, classical music is an elitist club, and there is no better example than the Bristol Proms . This new concert series, which is hailed in the Guardian as "revolutionary", is managed and promoted by U-Live in conjunction with the Bristol Old Vic". U-Live is part of an elitist club otherwise known as Universal Music which controls, among other things , more than 50% of the recorded classical music market , and U-Live is simply a vehicle for giving Universal Music artists maximum exposure on concert platforms. Which means that almost all the leading musicians at the Bristol Proms are signed to Universal Music labels - Bryn Terfel (Decca), Lisa Batiashvili (DG), Daniel Hope (DG), Avi Avital (DG), and Valentina Lisitsa (Decca), while two of the other artists/ensembles, Ji Lui and the Sacconi Quartet, record for a l

On the road to enlightenment

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Éliane Radigue's electronic paeans to Tibetan Buddhism, Trilogie de la Mort and Jetsun Mila featured heavily in my iPod playlist for a recent road trip from Kalka to Leh in the north of India. As my photos show, the road climbs from Kalka on the edge of the Ganges plain over the western end of the Himalayas to reach the alpine desert of Ladakh - 'Little Tibet' - seen in the final photo. En route the road crosses some of the highest passes in the world: three are over 15,000 feet with the highest, the Taglang La pass reaching 17,480 feet. The 500 mile drive took three long days on the road plus one rest day to acclimatise. For the final 300 miles between Manali and Leh the average altitude of the road is 11,000 feet, and it is only passable between May and October. Due to the altitude there is no permanent habitation for 200 miles from Jispa until the road enters Ladakh; the only services are temporary dhaba - road side eateries - such as the one seen in photo 10. This

Classical music should be an agenda-free zone

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In the past when classical record sales were sluggish, industry luminaries such as Walter Legge and John Culshaw (seen above with Sir Georg Solti) sorted things out by making legendary recordings such as the Giulini Verdi Requiem and the Solti Ring . Nowadays, when sales are slack, a luminary such as Max Hole goes on Classic FM to advocate tearing down the Royal Festival Hall, and then feeds the story to a conveniently on side journalist in the futile hope that the alchemy of social media will transmute contentious sound bites into sales revenues. Quite predictably, the latest proposals by the ceo of the world's largest grouping of classical labels have been greeted with derision by everyone except the aforementioned journalist. Which is, in fact, rather sad, because some of the points are valid . But the problem is that the validity of Max Hole's proposals is totally obscured by a scarcely hidden agenda of keeping Universal Music's monopolistic position unchanged

Audiences can cope if given the opportunity

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In that photo senior Tibetan Buddhist monk Kenrap-la is introduced to Jonathan Harvey's Body Mandala for the first time. He is listening via my iPod as we approach his monastery at Thiksay at the end of the arduous 800 km drive from Kalka in the foothills of the Himalayas to Ladakh on the border of India and Tibet. When I took the photo we were 15,000 feet above sea level and more than 1000 km from the nearest concert hall, in a region where symphony orchestras are unknown and Western art music is culturally alien . Yet, despite this, Kenrap-la listened engrossed for the whole fifteen minutes of Body Mandala . Everyone involved in classical music should look again at my photo and ponder on the following: audiences can cope with challenging and the exalted music , they just need to be given the opportunity . Also on Facebook and Twitter . Photo is (c) On An Overgrown Path 2014.

For the Netherlands

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July 23rd is a day of mourning in the Netherlands for the victims of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 tragedy. My wife and I were particularly moved by this tragedy as our flight from Delhi to London a few days later was rerouted away from Ukrainian airspace - the photo was taken by me at Shey Tibetan Buddhist monastery in India. As a tribute to the victims of all nationalities I offer a link to a recording of the Dutch composer Lex van Delden's 1981 Musica di Catasto . Lex van Delden (1919-88) knew tragedy himself as a Jew in the Nazi occupied Netherlands. His music was championed by Bernard Haitink, Eugum Jochum and George Szell but, quite preposterously, remains unknown in an age of 24/7 Mahler . There is an illuminating interview with Lex van Delden's son here , and more on him in Contemporary composer's Dutch courage . Also on Facebook and Twitter . Photo is (c) On An Overgrown Path 2014.

Ramadan nights

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Qawwali music at the shrine of the Sufi saint Nizamuddin Auliya in Delhi after sunset last Saturday. My Ramadan nights are being spent at a Buddhist puja in Ladakh , a Sufi ritual in India, the Freiburg Opera Parsifal in Norwich , and, finally, at William Byrd's Mass for Five Voices in the beautiful church of St Peter and St Paul in Salle, Norfolk. At the Salzburg Summer Festival during Ramadan there are performances of Sufi chants by an Egyptian brotherhood , the premiere of a work celebrating the Sufi martyr Mansur al-Hallağ by the Palestinan-Israeli composer Samir Odeh-Tamimi coupled with sacred music by Anton Bruckner and Hildegard von Bingen, and a presentation of Jordi Savall's inter-faith Bal·Kan: Honey and Blood project ; it has been my privilege to write the programme essays for those three Salzburg concerts. The controversial Muslim cleric Abdalqadir as-Sufi (aka Ian Dallas) found in Parsifal "pure religion itself". Was Wagner a Sufi? Also on Faceb

How the BBC is distorting the classical music market

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Attention has been drawn by Norman Lebrecht to the poor ticket sales for Freiburg Opera performances of Parsifal and Tannhäuser this week at the Norwich Theatre Royal. In a comment on the story Sunday Times music critic Hugh Canning describes the publicity for the Freiburg Opera residency in Norwich as "woeful", a description that has an element of truth but which needs to be put into perspective. The Norwich Theatre Royal - with which I have absolutely no professional connection - is a registered charity which presents a range of arts, entertainment and education events. In the year 2012/13 the Theatre Royal presented 428 performances , making it one of the busiest theatre venues in the UK, with an exceptional average audience of 77% of house capacity. All this was achieved with a total operating expenditure of £2.48 million and a promotional budget of £216,000 (£505 per performance). In 2012/13 box office sales contributed 68% of income, compared with just 2% fro

Peaks and lamas

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Conch shells sounding from the roof announce the early morning puja at the Tibetan Buddhist Thiksay Monastery in Ladakh. We stayed in Thiksay during our recent visit to Ladakh; the monastery dates from the mid 15th century and, as can be seen from my photo below, is modelled on the Potala Palace in Lasa, Tibet. Thiksay, which is in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, is 180km from the border with Tibet. China's annexation of Tibet gives the link with the Potala Palace, which was the home of the Dalai Lama until he fled from Tibet in 1959, a particular poignancy. Peaks and Lamas is a book by Marco Pallis based on his travels in Tibet in the 1930s. Pallis was an acknowledged authority on Tibetan Buddhism, as well as a highly regarded early music specialist who founded the pioneering English Consort of Viols. When he died in 1989 aged ninety-four he was working on an opera about the life of the Tibetan saint Milarepa. More on Marco Pallis in Classical music's mighty and sin