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Showing posts from February, 2015

If there is a paradise, it is here, it is here

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The area of experience that 'mystical' and 'spiritual' refer to is often not empirically verifiable, that is, a camera can't photograph it, a scale can't weigh it, nor can words do much to describe it. It is not physical, emotional or mental, though it may partake of those three areas. Like the depths of our loving, mystical experience can be neither proven, nor denied That quote comes from Coleman Barks ' introduction to his book The Soul of Rumi . I bought my copy last year in the estimable Full Circle Bookstore that is part of Café Turtle in Nizamuddin East Market near the shrine of the Sufi saint Nizamuddin Auliya in New Delhi. But that header photo was not taken in New Delhi; it was taken in Clare Hall , Cambridge last Saturday during an evening of ragas played by the Cambridge Hindustani Trio . It is self-evident that the Hindustani music of Northern India, of which the mystical raga is the apogee, is rooted in Hinduism. But Hindustani music also c

There could be worse ways to start a career

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In Amati magazine Jessica Duchen interviews the prodigiously talented young composer and conductor Duncan Ward. In the interview much is made of how Duncan Ward was "appointed as the first conducting scholar of the Berliner Philharmoniker Orchester-Akademie on the recommendation of Sir Simon Rattle", how he is working as assistant to Rattle with the Berlin Philharmonic, and how the young composer is writing a piece for Rattle and his wife the mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená to perform. The interview comprehensively documents Duncan Ward's very impressive career to date but omits one fact: he is managed by Askonas Holt - see above - as are Simon Rattle , the Berlin Philharmonic , Magdalena Kožená and others namechecked in the interview. If the buzz that is building around Duncan Ward induces déjà vu, it may well be because another young conductor called Gustavo Dudamel was managed by Askonas Holt early in his career , and received similar coverage , including endorsem

Unsurpassed Haydn

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The recent sad death of John McCabe cannot be allowed to pass without a mention of his recording of the complete Haydn Piano Sonatas for Decca in the 1970s. His account has never been surpassed and probably never will be surpassed. If somebody had told me ten years ago that I would now listen to more Haydn than any other composer I would have laughed at them. Which just goes to show that my world and my music are never one and the same . No review samples used in this post. Any copyrighted material is included as "fair use" for critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Also on Facebook and Twitter .

How the long tail is being priced out of the market

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Mode Records is a New York label specialising in contemporary music. Their distributor in the UK is Harmonia Mundi , who. like several other distributors, sells direct via Amazon marketplace. When the Mode CD of John Luther Adams' Strange and Sacred Noise reaches Harmonia Mundi in the UK they sell it direct to the public for £16.25 (£14.99 + £1.26 delivery) - see screen grab below - and must be making an acceptable margin in the process. But when the CD makes the short journey to one of Amazon UK's distribution centres, the price increases to £23.18 as in the screen grab above. (Both prices applied on Feb 22, 2015). This represents a 43% (£6.93) price hike by Amazon. This inflated pricing by Amazon is an increasingly common occurrence on long tail titles , and is, presumably, a function of the online retailer's increasingly dominant market position as independent retailers are forced out of business . The large differential between the CD at £23.18 and the MP3 download

London and Dublin - a tale of two cities

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John Luther Adams' Become Ocean receives its European premiere on March 6th. The Pulitzer Prize and Grammy winning work is being performed in Dublin by the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jamie Phillips in a programme that includes music by Anna Clyne, Irene Buckley and David Lang. In London on the same night both the the Royal Festival Hall and Barbican are dark. If you want to hear classical music in London around March 6th the two principal venues offer Hobson's choice. Two days before in the Royal Festival Hall, the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment offers the distinctly unenlightened programme of Dvorák's New World Symphony and Brahms' Violin Concerto with Iván Fischer and Viktoria Mullova - ironically that header image is being used by the OAE to promote their concert. At the Barbican on the 5th March there is the London Symphony Orchestra in a programme that includes a John Williams movie soundtrack and a second half with a " a

Whatever happened to the long tail of composers?

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Reader Antoine Leboyer writes to point out that the New York Philharmonic has made its programme archive available online and that the archive shows how past programmes were far more varied than those played today. Here are just some of the composers that Antoine highlights from past concerts by the orchestra: Siniaglia, Busoni, Bosi, Chadwick, Stanford, Loeffler, McDowell, Hadley, Goldmark, Pfitzner, Enesco, Vieuxtemps and Grétry. Antoine also remarks on how Webern's music has virtually disappeared from New York concerts in recent years. One of the many confidence tricks of the digital era is how a long tail of cultural riches was promised , but a short head immaculately coiffed by audience whoring celebrities was actually delivered. I suggest that one of the key search criteria for the New York Philharmonic's new music director should be a passion for giving audiences permission to like unfamiliar music . Graphic is grabbed from the New York Philarmonic archive lan

Raga versus Mahler is no contest

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We are told accessibility is the key to attracting classical music audiences. But is it really? As part of the admirable Ouverture Spirituelle thread within the 2015 Salzburg Summer Festival there is a performance in the Kollegienkirche by Hindustani and Carnartic musicians of ragas to greet the dawn and sunrise. The ragas start at six o'clock in the morning and the concert on July 26th is already sold out . However, tickets for Daniel Barenboim conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in Mahler's Ninth Symphony at a more conventional hour, are, as I write, still available . Perhaps the key to attracting audiences is not accessible music but different music . Photo of tabla player Kuljit Bhamra playing with Britten Sinfonia musicians in 2012 was taken by me in the Country & Eastern emporium in Norwich, read the story here . Also on Facebook and Twitter .

Music to listener or listener to music?

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My post Beware of creating museums of sound , the latest in a long running thread about shifting sonic expectations, generated one of the largest readerships in the ten year history of On An Overgrown Path . That readership was boosted by exposure on Synthtopia , a Facebook portal devoted to electronic music. However, there and elsewhere a number of readers interpreted the article as a plea for the use of sound shaping to correct the sound of acoustically deficient halls, and there were the usual comments such as Paul Kavicky's "This is the stupidest thing I've read all day". Paul and others missed the point that my post was not about corrective technologies, but about bridging the yawning gap between traditional concert hall sound and the ubiquitous headphone/MP3 sound . Despite the naysayers, there is no need to argue the case for using corrective sound shaping. Because, as Alex Ross pointed out in a recent New Yorker article , corrective sound shaping is a done

One small step for quality sound

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On An Overgrown Path was the only independent media source that picked up on the BBC axing their SHOUTcast Radio 3 HD sound stream . Many other individuals expressed concerns on the BBC internet blog and elsewhere, and within the last few hours has come the good news that the BBC have reversed its decision and the SHOUTcast stream has been reinstated. Here is the key section from the BBC statement : Over the past week or so there has been a lot of feedback and comment over changes to the BBC's internet radio streams. We do need to modernise our infrastructure and we have chosen HTTP chunked delivery formats so that we can continue to innovate and provide new features for our users that the older formats do not support. It is clear from your feedback that our fallback choice for SHOUTcast has fallen short in a number of areas. We genuinely do want to make our streams available to as many people as possible within the budget allowed. We have been working over the past week on som

Classical music is being promoted to death

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Reactions to last week's visit by the Simon Rattle/Berlin Philharmonic roadshow to London were polarised between the effusive and the vitriolic. So I am providing a few thoughts of my own which, I hope, gravitate more towards the middle way. I had some peripheral involvement with Simon Rattle early in his career during my EMI days . One memory is his Royal Festival Hall performance of Deryck Cooke 's performing version of Mahler's uncompleted Tenth Symphony. I had arranged for a consumer electronics company to sponsor the recording of the symphony by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra conducted by Simon; that is the original 1980 LP release above. The sponsor's sales director, who was not a great classical music fan, attended the RFH concert and I took him backstage afterwards to meet the conductor. Rather lost for words after the explosive performance, the sponsor asked when the orchestra had rehearsed the Mahler. Rattle explained that their last rehearsal was in the

Why the BBC's radio strategy does not make sound sense

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It is not just Simon Rattle who is talking about sound quality. More evidence that sound is back on the agenda comes from the new controller of BBC Radio 3 Alan Davey. In his presentation to the recent Association of British Orchestras conference Davey placed considerable emphasis on the BBC's traditional emphasis on sound quality, telling delegates how Radio 3 will "through high-quality crafted broadcast sound, say to people that these great treasures are for you and here’s a way in for you", and he has repeated this emphasis on sound quality in a tweet . There is a lot of evidence to confirm the BBC's long-standing committed to high-quality sound. In addition to Radio 3 FM broadcasts there is 5.1 surround sound for BBC Four HD TV relays of the Proms, and also experimental 4.0 webcasts of the Proms . The 4.0 webcast experiment slipped under the classical radar, but is of considerable importance as it exploits the HTML5 standard which has a native audio API (ap

Howells' Clavichord

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Others have written eloquently about John McCabe who died yesterday. I would like to add my own small tribute to his talent as a pianist by reminding readers of his recording of Herbert Howells ' two books of keyboard pieces, Lambert's Clavichord and Howells' Clavichord . These affectionate musical tributes by Howells to, among others, Malcolm Arnold, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gerald Finzi, Sir Adrian Boult, William Walton and Edmund Rubbra are really brought to life by John McCabe's exquisite playing. I first wrote about these little-known works in March 2006 , and to Hyperion's credit they remains in the catalogue on the budget Helios label. This CD of tributes to underrated musicians  itself provides a very appropriate tribute to a remarkable composer and pianist who will be much missed. Also on Facebook and Twitter . Any copyrighted material is included as "fair use" for critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright

Beware of creating museums of sound

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A short while ago we were told by Universal Music ceo Max Hole that the problem with classical music in London is that it is performed in elitist state-of-the-art concert halls. Now we are being told by former Universal Music recording artist Simon Rattle that the problem with classical music in London is that there is no elitist state-of-the-art concert hall to perform in. If we overlook the irony it is good that sound is back on the agenda, but it is also important that the right agenda is pursued. Unlike other blogs which have opportunistically jumped from the Max Hole to Simon Rattle bandwagon, On An Overgrown Path has been consistent in its position that nada brahma - sound is god . Back in 2008 the question was asked here Does the sound matter anymore? and there have been numerous posts discussing the importance of concert hall sound . But recently my position has shifted as I have recognised the irreversible and fundamental change in the way music - including classical

Audiences need permission to like unfamiliar music

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That photo of Sir Malcolm Arnold and Julian Bream appears on the late composer's website . Ten years ago I was literally very close to Sir Malcolm's music. He spent his final years being tended by his carer Anthony Day in Attleborough just a few miles from where I live in Norfolk. I managed Sir Malcolm's website and one of my first posts  about his music dates from that time. Following Sir Malcolm's death in 2006 I never lost my appreciation of his music, but it featured less frequently in my listening. However, recently I have returned to his symphonies, and listening to them again has raised some important questions. His nine symphonies are the product of a master craftsman. They move forward from Mahler and Shostakovich, yet should be immediately accessible to contemporary audiences saturated in the music of those two composers. But, despite this, Sir Malcolm Arnold's symphonies remain unknown outside a small circle of admirers. Why? Let me make it clear

Listeners are smarter than many influential people think

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Down with soundbites! Listeners are much smarter than many broadcast and concert programmers understand. That comment was added by Grammy winner John Luther Adams when he shared yesterday's Overgrown Path post on Facebook. Header image shows The Place Where You Go to Listen , a sound and light environment created by the composer for the University of Alaska's Museum of the North . This installation rejects the micro viewpoint, and instead uses macro events to create a dynamic soundscape from the perennial rhythm of day and night, the phases of the moon, seismic movements within the earth, and the geomagnetic turbulence of the aurora borealis. Also on Facebook and Twitter . Any copyrighted material is included as "fair use" for critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s).

Become winner

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That annual orgy of self-congratulation by the remnants of the American record industry, the Grammy awards, has little credibility. But the award last night for best contemporary classical composition to John Luther Adams'  Become Ocean was a good call. John Luther Adams - seen above - is a composer with something important to say who says it well , and says it without taking the easy and fashionable option of trading integrity for audience numbers . Awarding a Grammy to Become Ocean gives the lie to the ridiculous assertion by director of BBC Radio Helen Boaden that the "creation of snackable access to classical content is the key to audience engagement". You can't be more audience engaged than a Grammy winner. Become Ocean plays for 42 minutes 13 seconds in one unbroken movement, and the award winning CD from Cantaloupe Music lacks the sub-track index numbers needed to turn it into snackable content. No review samples used in this post. Photo via

Hindu sonatas and interludes

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Last month I reported on the loss in transit of Raga Virga from Ars Choralis Coeln and Amelia Cuni. Now I am happy to report that a replacement CD has arrived and was certainly well worth waiting for. My earlier description of Raga Virga as Indian Dhrupad songs fused with the chant of Hildegard von Bingen fails to do this project justice. Raga Virga does not so much fuse past traditions as build on them to create something entirely new . Star of the show is Amelia Cuni , seen in the foreground above. She trained in the North Indian Dhrupad vocal tradition and has recorded her own realisation of John Cage's eighteen microtonal ragas from 'Solos for Voice 3–58' in his ' Song Books ' - sample here . Cage is usually stereotyped as a Zen Buddhist composer. But Hinduism also shaped his music, and, in fact one commentator talks of Cage’s 'borrowings' from the British-Ceylonese art historian and metaphysician Ananda K. Coomaraswamy . Cage is known to have

McMusic will not solve classical music's problems

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At the recent Association of British Orchestras Conference the director of BBC Radio Helen Boaden declared that Radio 3 listener numbers do not represent a station in crisis, and went on to propose that the "creation of snackable access to classical content is the key to audience engagement". Since the ABO conference the latest RAJAR audience figures have been published, and it is instructive to review Ms. Boaden's two statement in the view of these new figures. The key measurement for radio audience is the number of listeners multiplied by the hours they listen, which gives total listening hours. When Ms. Boaden was appointed director of BBC Radio in February 2103, Radio 3 total listening hours stood at 13.8 million (Q1 2013). RAJAR data published this week reports that in the most recent quarter (Q4 2014) the station's total listening hours dropped to 10.8 million. This is a plunge of 22.1% in less than two years, which represents a crisis in my book if not in

Yet another inconvenient truth

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Warner Classics has emailed journalists a promotional video of opera star Joyce DiDonato at the Stonewall Inn, birthplace of the gay rights movement - see above. The press release states that she sang as a "Tribute to victims of intolerance and injustice", and that the intimate audience included activists who forced the federal government to recognize same-sex marriage. On May 1 Ms. DiDonato takes her Grammy nominated ' Drama Queens ' project to the Royal Opera House in Muscat, Oman . Article 223 of the Omani Penal Code states that: "Any one who commits erotic acts with a person of the same sex shall be sentenced to imprisonment from six months to three years". Same-sex marriage is, of course, not recognized in Oman. More inconvenient truths here . Also on Facebook and Twitter . Any copyrighted material is included as "fair use" for critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s).