On An Overgrown Path

Berglund's silence of Jarvenpaa

2012-01-27T08:55:00.004Z

Nielsen's Fifth Symphony has been well served by the record industry. I grew to love it through a long-deleted 1975 LP. Producer David Mottley and engineer Stuart Eltham captured the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra conducted by Paavo Berglund in that wonderfully rich yet realistic sound that was the hallmark of EMI's recordings of the period. Simon Rattle said of Berglund "He is one of the great conductors still among us", an opinion I will happily concur with. I remember a blistering Shostakovich Seventh Symphony in the acoustically magnificent Caird Hall in a freezing Dundee in the 1980s, with Berglund conducting the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

Paavo Berglund's 80th birthday passed unnoticed on April 14, 2009. The reason is not difficult to find. The Finnish maestro has never been part of classical music's PR circus. One lasting memory of Berglund [seen above] is his Shostakovich in an arctic Dundee. Another is an appearance by him on BBC Radio 3's In Tune programme a couple of years back. Presenter Sean Rafferty was in the studio in London, Berglund was being interviewed over a line from Scotland where he was conducting. Sean Rafferty asked his usual fawning and vacuous questions. Berglund refused to answer in anything but monosyllables. As Berglund became more taciturn Rafferty became more voluble (if that is possible) until the interview ground to a halt. If it was available on CD it would be a best seller.

From The Uncertainty Principle - May 2009. Paavo Berglund died on Jan 25, 2012. Thanks for the music and for the wisdom Paavo.

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). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Classical music is not a spectator sport

2012-01-25T15:05:00.006Z

Cut to the Britten Studio at Snape on Saturday evening (Jan 21) where the 'Returns Only' sign was posted at the box office. So what sold out this remote venue in the middle of January - a pop-up concert by Gustavo Dudamel and his Simón Bolívar band perhaps? Well actually no, the event was an exploration of symmetry presented as part of Aldeburgh Music's Faster Than Sound experimental series. A major factor in the box office appeal was that Marcus du Sautoy was animating the event - author of several best selling books and a frequent TV presenter, his day jobs are Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and Fellow of New College.

Marcus du Sautoy was leading an exploration of symmetry in mathematics, design and music supported by a graphic designer, a multi-disciplinary artist and a multi-sensory artists collective. This Oxford professor of mathematics is also no slouch when it comes to music - he plays the trumpet and his unscripted deconstruction of the Goldberg Variations put many professional musicians to shame. His symmetrical soundtrack included Iannis Xenakis' Nomos Alpha and Olivier Messiaen's Quatre études de rythme Île de feu 2 in quadraphonic diffusions and a sequenced version of Bach's Goldberg Variations performed on MIDI Piano and Mac mini. All the photos were taken at Symmetry and the central figure in several of them is Marcus du Sautoy.

Symmetry sold out against the odds and Marcus du Sautoy kept his audience captivated for two hours. So someone, somewhere was doing something right. This was not a conventional live music performance and there is no suggestion that Symmetry can provide a template for the future of classical music. But it can provide some pointers to innovative ways of connecting with that elusive new audience, and where better to start than challenging conventions? Jonathan Harvey famously proposed that classical music should drop its silly conventions and Symmetry confirmed that we should be far more willing to experiment - and sometimes fail - with new concert formats.

Allowing the audience to move around during the performance was one of Jonathan Harvey's suggestions. Symmetry was not a live music performance, but I was impressed by how well the no seats Top Gear-style format (hate the programme but let's learn from it) worked in the Britten Studio - see accompanying photos. In the 1970s the seats in Philharmonic Hall in New York were replaced by red rugs and foam cushions, with Pierre Boulez explaining in a pre-echo of Jonathan Harvey "There is so much formality involved in the performance of music that we make it hard for audiences to get emotionally involved." More recently experiments such as Gabriel Prokofiev's classical club nights have dispensed with that formality - we need others to follow their lead.

Overturning established intermediaries was the second pointer from Symmetry. Even in these financially troubled times a not inconsiderable number of middle feeders - agents, impressarios, PR consultants, media companies etc - are making a very comfortable living from classical music. Any change threatens that comfortable living, which is why established intermediaries pay lip service to change while actually resisting it. Credits for Symmetry include graphic designer Richard Rhys, multidisciplinary artist Russell Haswell, visuals and electronics facilitator Farmersmanual, which describes itself as 'a pan-European, multi-sensory artists' collective that presents a stream of events from concerts to interdisciplinary cultural, aesthetic and political experiments', and co-producer Lumin, which creates 'sound led experiments across art forms'. Those are not names you find in the average concert programme - which is a pity.

The third pointer from Symmetry was the power of the visual. This is a familiar theme On An Overgrown Path and Saturday evening reinforced the point that a spoonful of images helps difficult music go down. Big screen organ recitals are popular with audiences, so why not big screen symphony concerts? And that could just be the starting point - at Snape Russell Haswell's oscilloscope images created by real time sound spectrum analysis gave a taster of the further possibilities.

Another pointer from the event was how a really good presenter never talks down to his audience. Marcus du Sautoy stretched his audience - which had one of the widest age ranges I have seen at Snape - and took them with him all the way to Xenakis' Nomos Alpha without once talking down. If you need any more convincing watch this video. In comments about the decline of classical radio a number of readers complained about how the current generation of radio presenters talks down to their audience. Marcus du Sautoy handed out work sheets for the audience to complete in the intermission with the explanation that "mathematics is not a spectator sport". We could well adopt "Classical music is not a spectator sport" as a new battle cry because many of the genres current problems are caused by futile attempts to repackage it as a passive entertainment rather than an active experience.

The key role of the animateur - the final pointer from Symmetry - is also a familiar theme here. Seeing Marcus du Sautoy in action brought home just how lamentable BBC Radio 3's current crop of imported Classic FM presenters really are. Marcus du Sautoy may not come cheap, but ex-Classic FM 'face of the BBC Proms' Katie Derham comes at a reported annual cost of £250,000 - and still the ratings go down. Symmetry was all about seeing things from a different perspective. So, in conclusion, here is a suggestion for an experiment that might just engage with a new audience. Send Katie Derham back to reading the news, recruit Marcus du Sautoy to present the Proms on BBC Radio and TV, and hire Farmersmanual, Lumin et al to give the Proms concerts a much needed makeover. I have a feeling the result would not be spectator sport.

* More on the Britten Studio in Playing in new music's sandbox.

Photos are by Jana Chiellino and come via Aldeburgh Music, whose indefatigable Marc Ernesti receives my thanks for finding me a complimentary ticket for the sold out event. All views expressed here are, of course, my own. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk Also on Facebook and Twitter.

Degenerate music from the land of the iPhone

2012-01-24T16:12:00.005Z

Degenerate Music or Entartete Musik was a label applied in the 1930s by the Nazis to music that was proscribed because it was deemed harmful or decadent. Degenerate Music from the 1930s is now a fashionable cause but Entartete Musik from our own times is ignored, presumably because the regime doing the proscribing makes iPhones, hosts the Olympic Games and buys an awful lot of Bentleys. That great travel writer Colin Thubron takes up the story in his indispensable To A Mountain in Tibet:

In a land maimed since 1950 by Chinese occupation, by mass killings and displacement, the Cultural Revolution, with its wholesale destruction of all things old, struck at Tibet's heart. Amid the executions and 'struggle' sessions, all public vestiges of Buddhism were erased, the Buddha denounced as reactionary, sacred images tossed into latrines, and scriptures converted into shoes for disgraced monks. By 1976, out of more than 6000 monasteries and temples, thirteen remained.

One of the any great monasteries destroyed in the Cultural Revolution was Tashi Lhunpo, which lost many of its precious scriptures, statues and images. Of the six thousand monks in the monastery, only two hundered and fifty were able to follow the Dalai Lama into exile, yet in 1972 under the patronage of the Dalai Lama, Tashi Lhunpo Monastery was re-established at Bylakuppe in the south of India.

The Panchen Lama is the spiritual head of the Tashi Lhunpo monastery and the second most important figure in Tibetan Buddhism. In 1989 the 10th Panchen Lama died unexpectedly after delivering a groundbreaking anti-Chinese speech. The lineage then passed to Gedun Choekyi Nyima, the six-year-old boy identified by His Holiness the Dalai Lama as the 11th Panchen Lama. But in May 1995 Gedun Choekyi Nyima disappeared and suspicions that he had been kidnapped were confirmed in May 1996 when the Chinese leadership admitted to holding him and his family in "protective custody."

Above is one of the few photos of the 11th Panchen Lama. At the time of his disappearance Gedun Choekyi Nyima was the youngest political prisoner in the world and despite repeated attempts, no international agency or human rights organisation has since been allowed to visit him or his family, and today their condition remains uncertain. As part of their policy of subjugating the Tibetan people the Chinese leadership nominated and selected their own 11th Panchen Lama in November 1995 who was quoted by the Chinese state news agency, Xinhua as saying:

"All the lamas of Zhaxi Lhunbo (Tashilhunpo) Lamasery, including myself, and the believers should love the Communist Party of China, love our socialist motherland and love the religion we believe in,"

Degenerate Music from the land of the iPhone comes in the form of Time of the Skeleton Lords - the latest in a series of CDs made on location at the Tashi Lhunpo monastery in exile as a joint venture with the 30 IPS label. This new release traces the journey of the consciousness through Bardo, the intermediate period between death and rebirth. Recording and mixing were in the very capable hands of Mark Tucker whose other credits include the Spice Girls and Dario G. Not so long ago this kind of recording would be of interest only to ethnomusicologists. But the quality of today's solid state portable recorders and the involvement of a recording professional means the Tashi Lhunpo release tick the sonic as well as ethnomusicological box - the visceral sound of the dungchen (long horns) establishes a direct lineage to Jonathan Harvey's Body Mandala. More on the Tashi Lhunpo sound in Wagner and the Tantric Orchestra.

* January 27th is Holocaust Memorial Day here in the UK, an event dedicated to learning lessons from the past and using them to challenge hatred and persecution in the present. 'Entartete Musik from the land of the iPhone' is one of several articles that will remember acts of hatred and persecution that have also become victims of collective amnesia.

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). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Open the doors and let the sound stream out

2012-01-24T10:00:00.005Z

To Alex Ross' growing list of Cage centenary events I would add Aldeburgh Festival's John Cage Musicircus curated by James Weeks and Exaudi on June 23. As the Aldeburgh Festival brochure explains - a plethora of Festival artists and others fling open the doors of the Hoffman Building and let the sound stream out. Centrepiece of the Musicircus is a repeat of Exaudi's performance of the John Cage Song Books. Their first performance at Snape of the Song Books provides my header image and an article here, while you can listen to James Weeks talking to me about Elisabeth Lutyens and more in an iTunes podcast here.

Also on Facebook and Twitter. Header photo is (c) On An Overgrown Path 2012. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Classical music has a lot to protest about

2012-01-23T13:30:00.009Z

We need more activist musicians so it was encouraging to see members of the London Philharmonic protesting about the excesses of the Israelis and to see New York Philharmonic music director Alan Gilbert protesting about the excesses of a mobile phone user. With those protests out of the way hopefully the London Philharmonic musicians will turn their attention to the orchestra's corporate sponsor Japanese Tobacco International - the company is the world's third largest cigarette company - and Alan Gilbert will talk to the man in the front row from his orchestra's global sponsor Credit Suisse - the bank is currently under scrutiny in a US Department of Justice tax evasion investigation.

All of which is, of course, small beer compared with the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. But the infringement of human rights in China is very big beer indeed; so it is worth noting that the London Philharmonic returned a few days ago from a seven concert tour of China with pianist Hong Xu while tomorrow (Jan 24) the New York Philharmonic gives a Chinese New Year concert in Avery Fisher Hall under guest conductor Long Yu.

Although managed by New York based CAMI, Long Yu, who is seen above, has close links with the Chinese Poly Group. This state controlled business started as a military enterprise in the 1980s, the decade of the Tiananmen Square massacre, and went on to become one of China's largest manufacturers of weapons. Ostensibly Poly has now divested itself of its armaments businesses but a Canadian Intelligence Service report concludes that the company has not completely severed its links with the People's Liberation Army. Another part of the same group, Poly Culture & Arts, is the state authorised cultural broker whose interests range from tour and theatre management to CD manufacture. Poly Culture also controls the performance venues in most major Chinese cities, some of which will be familiar to touring Western orchestras including the New York Philharmonic.

Classical music represents culture and humanity and China's crimes against culture and humanity are well documented - among them the subjugation of Tibet. Since invading Tibet in 1949 China has systematically destroyed one of civilisation's oldest and most precious cultures and in an unprecendented crime against humanity an estimated 1.2 million Tibetans have died at the hands of the Chinese, many killed with weapons manufactured by the Poly Group. Yes, classical music has a lot to protest about.

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). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

The sound is just following its own nature

2012-01-21T15:16:00.008Z

In our practice, we think that noises, cars, voices, sights are distractions that come and bother us when we want to be quiet. But who is bothering whom? Actually, we are the ones who go and bother them. The car, the sound, is just following its own nature. We bother things through some false idea that they are outside us and cling to the idea of remaining quiet, undisturbed.

That refeshingly lateral thought is relevant both to John Cage's view of music as "just an attention to the activity of sounds" and to a certain symphonic ringtone. It comes from Achaan Chah who was an important Buddhist teacher and founded two major monasteries in the Thai Forest Tradition. This Tradition is worth exploring for those who are attracted by the common sense approach of Buddhism but find Zen too austere and Tibetan Buddhism too arcane. To keep the playing field level Zen provides the graphic in the form of a photo I took recently in the Musée Guimet, Paris, while Tibetan Buddhism supplies the soundtrack in the form of Jonathan Harvey's Tranquil Abiding for chamber orchestra. This is one of the works on the CD of his music by Ilan Volkov and the BBC Scottish Sympony Orchestra titled Body Mandala - more on that contemporary classic here.

* Quotation is from A Still Forest Pool, the Insightful Meditation of Achaan Chah edited by Jack Kornfield and Paul Brieter. This thought-provoking little book can be read online here.

* Body Mandala is being performed as part of the BBC Symphony Orchestra's Jonathan Harvey festival at the Barbican on Jan 28, 29 and 30. The festival also includes the UK premiere of the composer's opera Wagner Dream.

Photo is (c) On An Overgrown Path 2011. 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 Also on Facebook and Twitter.

Music from beyond the laminar flow region

2012-01-20T09:49:00.007Z

Perhaps the brain has the equivalent of a laminar flow region (like water from a tap), where all the ordered information and processes are well catalogued and indexed. This is our acquired and inherited knowledge, conscious and sub conscious. Outside this region there is the equivalent of chaos, masses of unstructured data and half-formed thoughts: a swirling mass of unstructured and unintelligible information derived from the incalculable quantities of sensory input the brian receives every second: a region of wild turbulence and disorder. Chaos.

We are only vaguely aware of this chaotic region. Here lurk the demons of madness. Yet isn't genius on the edge of madness? What is actually happening at the boundary - at the edge of chaos? If the analogy of our example of the water flowing from the tap holds true, than at the edge of chaos there is an erratic stream of tiny whorls of disordered thought which comes spinning out of chaos to penetrate the lamina region.

Are these tiny whorls the seeds of creative thought? Does inspiration heighten our awareness of them, and allow us to crystalise the occasional one into a brilliant idea? For so much of our brief time on earth, we are content to exist in the secure and predicatable laminar world. However, when we face the demons at the edge of chaos we can sense the tiny whorls of creative thought as they come spinning out of the blue....

Those thoughts come from the adventurer and free-thinker John Ridgway. They appeared here previously in a very early post about Gesualdo and Nick Drake and I was reminded of them last night listening to a recording of Bohuslav Martinů's String Quartet No. 6. How true it is that for the majority of our brief time on earth we are content to exist in the comfort of the laminar flow region. It is our inbuilt craving for the secure and predictable that so much contemporary culture exploits while, by contrast, Martinů's Quartets build on those tiny whorls of creative thought that come spinning out of the blue at the edge of chaos.

Martinů's Symphonies are gaining acceptance but his Quartets are still neglected - presumably because their exploration of the outer reaches of tonality is alien to a digital age in which, as John Ridgway reminds us, all information must be neatly catalogued and indexed. I was listening to the commendable account by the Panocha Quartet account of the Sixth Quartet from their complete cycle of Martinů's Quartets on Supraphon; the artwork above exhibits remarkable synchronicity with the opening quote. Naxos has alternative recordings of the Quartets which I am not familiar with. More on music from beyond the laminar flow region here.

Header quote is from the out of print We Sailed Away by the Ridgway Family ISBN-13: 978-0316877091. 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 Also on Facebook and Twitter.

Travel and accommodation will be paid by Israel

2012-01-19T08:59:00.005Z

Top Music blogs - Free trip to Israel‏

I stumbled upon your blog while searching the web for top music blogs!

I am contacting you on behalf of an organization called Kinetis. Kinetis is a grassroots organization established to promote the recognition of Israel at home and abroad as a vibrant and inspirational source of creativity and innovation. By educating about and exposing the creative energy of the Israeli environment and people, we seek to enhance global appreciation for Israel's unique contribution, and to revitalize national pride.

The "Vibe Israel" project, which I manage, is an all-expenses paid 7-day tour of Israel we offer to online opinion makers and leaders who write about areas in which Israel has an offering of global relevance. We recently invited a group of Mommy Bloggers to show them the family life, parenting and children aspects of Israeli life, and the response was great (we hosted 3 leading bloggers from the UK and 2 from Spain) and Design bloggers to show them the design scene here.

We are now looking into creating a tour for music bloggers (no specific genres, a taste of different genres) and are doing some basic research to ascertain exposure and relevance of this subject online. Please find attached some more info and a sample itinerary.

If you are interested in coming, please advise the following..

Looking forward to hearing from you,

Adi Kaplan Senior Projects Manager

That email arrived yesterday. The last self-financed visit I made to Israel with my family was informative and enjoyable and hopefully over the years On An Overgrown Path has helped promote the creativity of Israel and the Jewish diaspora - the header photo shows senior Israeli composer Paul Ben-Haim whose Kabbalat Shabbat was given a very rare broadcast by me in a Jewish Voices programme on Future Radio in 2010. There certainly is creative energy in Israel and abroad, but there is also most definitely considerable room for improvement. I wish Kinetis luck with its project but will not be taking part. This article may help explain why.

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). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

On the road with a Sufi saint

2012-01-18T10:55:00.006Z

'A strong breath of life rose from Marseille and its ports, an insistent call towards distant horizons, like a subtle and irresistible magic spell. For the first time Orschanow realised that the universe did not end here on this quayside, that out there, beyond the soothing sea, were lands of sun and silence: Africa.'

Those are the words of Dmitri Orschanow, the central character in Isabelle Eberhardt's little known autobiographival novel Vagabond and my header photo shows the quayside and soothing sea at Marseille. Isabelle Eberhardt was a cultural explorer, Sufi adept and libertine. It is no coincidence that the narrator in her autobiographical novel is male because, as my October 2011 post recounted, from an early age Isabelle experimented with cross-dressing. For most of her extensive travels she wore male Arab clothing and assumed the identity of a man, a disguise that almost certainly went beyond the need for security in Muslim countries.

Like Isabelle, Orschanow stayed in Marseilles en route for North Africa and the quays of the Old Port form the backdrop for several of the scenes in Vagabond. Those quays are also the backdrop to the photo above which I took it in December last year. I had just finished re-reading Vagabond over steaks frites and local vin rouge in the Brasserie Le Quai; this is next door to the Hôtel Beauvau where Isabelle stayed before leaving Marseille for the Maghreb in 1899. Below is a backstreet in the Panier, or Old Town.

I had been in Paris with Titi Robin, in Le Barroux with the Benedictines, in Avignon with Les Pénitents Noirs, and then travelled south to be with Isabelle Eberhardt in Marseille. More than a hundred years ago the city was the gateway to the Maghreb. But for the population of the former French colonies of Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, Marseille is the now the gateway to Europe. And for many that gateway is locked by EU visa requirements. Since 1998 more than 17,000 people fleeing from poverty and repression in North Africa have died attempting to cross the Mediterranean illegally, making the landlocked sea the biggest mass burial site in history. Some illegals survive the journey and finally arrive in Europe's most ethnically diverse city, Marseille.

Marseille is not a popular tourist destination despite being France's second biggest city and located in the sunny south. But it is well known as a centre of organised crime thanks in large part to the film The French Connection. Which means the tourists stay away and miss a resident cast of Senegalese, Berbers, Tuaregs, Sephardic Jews and migrants from Greece, Italy and Spain that could grace any movie. Above is a scene at Marseille Provence airport which has many flights to the Maghreb.

Like any big city Marseille can be scary and when I first visited in 1971 it was very scary indeed - back then my cheap hotel in the notorious area near the Gare Saint Charles was protected at night by a large guard and an even larger Alsatian dog sleeping across the entrance. But I have been back many times and despite walking the streets on my own at night, see photo above, I have been struck by nothing more than the sheer electricity of the place - below is some of the local street art.

We know the details of three different addresses in Marseille that Isabelle Eberhardt stayed in during her short life. In 1899 she booked in to the Hôtel Beauvau on the harbourfront before sailing for Tunis. Today the Hôtel is owned by a major hotel group and a room with a terrasse panoramique costs 639 € ($816) a night plus buffet breakfast at 21.00 € ($27), which is rather out of this blogger's price range. So I simply took the photo below as a reminder of what I missed.

A short distance away from the Hôtel Beauvau is 67 rue Grignan where Isabelle stayed with her Algerian husband Slimène when he arrived in France in 1901. The rue Grignan is now part of Marseille's commercial centre and has changed beyond recognition over the years, but well back from the waterfront there is a more tangible link with Isabelle Eberhardt.

In her invaluable biography Annette Kobak describes how Isabelle Eberhardt stayed several times in the house of her brother Augustin at 12 rue Merentie. This is at the top of the steep hill that the main street of the Old Town, the Canebière, climbs as it leads away from the harbour and, by chance, was close to the apartment I was staying in. Annette Kobak describes how Isabelle stood looking out of the barred sitting-room window on to the peeling plane trees lining the small residential street. That is 12 rue Merentie in my photo below, and it has changed little since Isabelle left in 1901 en route for North Africa, where she was to die three years later at the age of just twenty-seven.

Despite her family having no direct connections with Islam, Isabelle Eberhardt was convinced she had been born a Muslim. She was deeply interested in esoteric mysticism and in Algeria was made an initiate of the Qadiri brotherhood, one of the oldest Sufi orders; this was an unprecedented honour for a European yet alone a European woman. Isabelle Eberhardt was a pioneering feminist and the Eternal Feminine was a sub-text to my road trip to Marseille. Which meant that on my iPod was Aïcha Redouane singing her own settings titled Maqâm d'Amour (World of Love) of poems by the 8th century female Sufi saint Rabi`a Al-`Adawiyya .

Aïcha Redouane was born a Berber in the High Atlas region of Morocco and studied music in Egypt before settling in France. She formed the Al-Adwar Ensemble with her husband the Lebanese persussionist Habib Yammine and they accompany her on the disc. Rabi`a Al-`Adawiyya was the first proponent of the doctrine of Divine Love, a concept that transcends Islam and is at the heart of all monotheistic and polytheistic religions. I do not know if Isabelle Eberhardt was familiar with the verse of Rabi`a Al-`Adawiyya, but I somehow think the late 19th century action woman would have appreciated this poem by the Sufi saint.

I carry a torch in one hand
and a bucket of water in the other
with these things
I am going to set fire to Heaven
and put out the flames of Hell
so that voyagers to God
can rip the veils
and see the real goal

* Song from the Uproar: the Lives and Deaths of Isabelle Eberhardt with music by Missy Mazzoli, films by Stephen Taylor and directed by Gia Forakis opens at The Kitchen. 512 West 19th Street, New York on February 24th 2012, more details here.

* Montserrat Figueras and Jordi Savall's valedictory Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) is a celebration in music of the Mediterranean. The accompanying book contains two important essays, The Sea of Death - the Challenge of Immigration by Rossend Domènech and Revolt? Revolution? by Tahar Ben Jelloun.

* Marseille is the Euroean City of Culture in 2013.

* More on Algeria in Music and politics in the garden of Allah.

All photos (c) On An Overgrown Path 2012. Any other 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). I travelled by train from Norwich to Marseille and returned on a Ryanair flight to Stansted. My journey and this article were entirely self-financed. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk Also on Facebook and Twitter.

My own downward spiral of listening enjoyment...

2012-01-17T12:38:00.003Z

Bob, your comments over the years about BBC Radio 3 have always resonated strongly with me and I don’t even live in the UK. They have great relevance to my own downward spiral of listening enjoyment of CBC Radio 2 (in Canada), and I share Scott’s sentiments (in the previous post on this subject). One used to be able to learn something from CBC Radio 2 programming; now it’s some bimbo who self-identifies as “the girl with the hair in the chair” and whose pithy commentary is pretty well limited to “ewwwwww, doesn’t that send chills up your spine?”. (To be fair, the IQ rises 20 points for two hours afterwards with another host, and on Saturday and Sunday.)

I am most grateful for your flogging this issue as I am sure there must be at least one producer at the CBC who reads your blog. Let the hills echo with the sounds of complaining. Radio 3 and Radio 2, in the UK and Canada respectively, have lost their way. Clearly people aren’t listening, in Britten’s sense and as reflected in audience numbers.

Best, Tom Hogan [Disclaimer: I have no association with the CBC or any broadcast entity.]

P.S. Before pressing SEND, I can't resist asking you what Norman thinks about all this.........?

Tom, many thanks for that email. There can only be two possible explanations for the resounding silence elsewhere on this topic. Either other commentators are in complete agreement with the direction that classical radio stations are taking. Or the commentators are not prepared to bite the hand that feeds them. From my own point of view it is wonderful being retired because your pension provider cannot fire you. All of which reminds us yet again of the insidious power of the classical radio stations.

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). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Perhaps thinking really is the best way to travel

2012-01-16T17:46:00.002Z

This photo is an outtake from the visit to Sainte-Nazaire in France that resulted in my 2010 post Musique Concrete. In the background is the famous Sainte-Nazaire bridge and on the left is a cruise ship being fitted out in one of the city's dockyards. I remember wondering at the time what would happen if one of these ships fell on its side. And let's not forget the many connections between classical music and cruise ships.

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Will citizen composers emulate citizen journalists?

2012-01-16T16:05:00.002Z

But if you just look at the history of images then it becomes much easier. For 500 years the church had social control because it was the main supplier of images. You can point to Darwin, but social control moved with the control of images in the early 19th century to what we now call the media: newspapers, then Hollywood and television. There is now another revolution and the images are moving to individuals.

David Hockney talks to Nicholas Wroe in Saturday's Guardian. There are also some interesting thoughts in the article on the relationship between visual perception and hearing. These are prompted by Hockney's declining hearing and are relevant to the thread on these pages about seeing the music. It is illuminating to apply Hockney's theory of the control of images to music. As with images, music was initially controlled by the church. But since the early 20th century that control has been in the hands of the now beleagured intermediary layer of record companies and music publishers and other assorted middle feeders. But what will replace them? As David Hockney tells us, web enabled citizen journalists are rapidly replacing traditional news media. Will web enabled citizen composers replace music publishers, record companies and other traditional intermediaries? It may sound fanciful, but one case study suggests citizen composers are a real possibility. Back in 2005 Jeff Harrington wrote that "the internet, in my opinion represents probably the greatest positive change in how independent artists communicate with audiences." Jeff has successfully reinvented himself as an internet composer and described to me how his business model works in a Future Radio programme in December 2010. Listen to the streamed interview here and the linked post is here.

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Is Olivier Messiaen part of the Vichy myth?

2012-01-15T18:37:00.008Z

The relationship betwen music and totalitarian regimes is a recurring theme On An Overgrown Path and the collaborationist Vichy regime in France has featured in a number of these paths. Until recently what had really happened in Vichy France during the Second World War was obscured by assiduously cultivated folklore. Central to this is the myth that the entire population of France was opposed to the Nazis and that everyone was an active member of the resistance. Only in recent years has the truth been uncovered about les années noires, a truth that includes the Vichy policy of deporting Jews to deathcamps without Nazi coercion.

After the Franco-German armistice in 1940 the 84 year old Marshal Pétain became Chief of State of Vichy France and presided over a regime that had a strong following in the Catholic Church. In August 1945 Pétain was found guilty of treason, and was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment on the grounds of his age and First World War record. He served his life sentence imprisoned on the Île d'Yeu off the Atlantic coast of France, dying there in 1951, aged 95. In 2008 my exploration of the Vichy path took me to the Île d'Yeu and the rather equivocal account I wrote then of Olivier Messiaen's connections with the Vichy regime has stayed in my mind. That is Messiaen in the photo above and my words about him are repeated below:

When France fell to the Germans in May 1940 captured French troops were sent to detention camps. Among them was the composer Olivier Messiaen, who was born on 10th December 1908 in Avignon. Messiaen was held first in a transit camp in France, then in Stalag VIII-A, near Dresden in Germany, where his Quatuor pour la fin du Temps (Quartet for the end of Time) was famously given its first performance in January 1941. But, later that year Messiaen, as a soldier of the defeated French army rather than a designated 'undesirable', was released. He returned to Nazi occupied Paris where he became profesor of harmony at the Conservatoire. Messiaen, who was a devout Catholic, actually worked for the cultural arm of the Vichy government for several months. He composed a patriotic cantata for schoolchildren on the theme of Joan of Arc, the score of which is lost. Messiaen's diaries make no mention of the liberation of Paris by Allied troops in August 1944, despite the fact that he was living in the city.

Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps is a masterpiece irrespective of its context. But there is no doubt that the Quartet's concentration camp context has helped its popularity. Which is why the context of other works composed by Messiaen in the period between his appointment as a professor at the Paris Conservatoire in autumn 1941 and the liberation of Paris by the Allies in August 1944 is also important. Among the works Messiaen composed in this period are Visions de l'Amen, Trois petites liturgies de la présence divine and Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jésus.

Even before Messiaen started teaching in Paris two Vichy anti-Jewish statutes had been enacted which impacted directly on the Conservatoire. (Vichy law applied in Paris and the occupied north while giving precedence to German law). Among other measures the Vichy statutes banned Jews from influential professions including teaching, the media, broadcasting and the arts, and limited Jews to comprising no more than two percent of other public service professions and three percent of students in higher education. The arrest and deportation of Jews by the French police was a regular occurence in the years 1942 and 1943. In Paris in one day alone, July 17 1942, a sweep by 4,500 French police arrested 12,884 foreign Jews, including women and children as young as three, and held them for several days in a stadium in the city before deportation.

In 1943 deportations spread to include French Jews and the Vichy government handed over the Jewish former prime minister Léon Blum to the Germans. On June 28 1944 there were massacres of Jews in a number of French cities following the assassination of the Vichy propoganda minister in Paris. In total 75,721 Jews were deported from France in the Second World War, the majority were sent to Auschwitz and less than 2,000 survived.

These were hardly events that would go unnoticed in the Conservatoire and elsewhere in Paris. Which raises the question, have the Messiaen biographies been influenced by the Vichy myth? Respected Messiaen biographer Nigel Simeone thinks not and supplies robust evidence that the composer was "distanced" and "disinterested" from politics. But until recently the Vichy myth told us that everyone in wartime France was distanced and disinterested from politics. Messiaen certainly mixed with collaborators and Nigel Simeone confirms that Messiaen's publisher René Dommange was a supporter of the Vichy regime, while other sources report Dommange as actively collaborating with the Nazis.

Was a degree of acquiescence inevitable in occupied France? (Pierre Boulez and others were also active in Paris during the German occuation). Did Messiaen have little choice but to keep his head down at the Conservatory and refine his fortuitous mix of spiritual orthodoxy and technical innovation? Does a composer's music exist in isolation from its context? Was Pablo Casals right when he said a musician's attitude to life is more important than music? Does any of this matter seventy years later? Important questions that are very difficult to answer and I have a feeling we have not reached the end of this path. Meanwhile, I am on the road with Messiaen here and in search of his birthplace here.

* Sources include Memory, the Holocaust and French Justice edited by Richard J. Golsan (ISBN 0874517419)

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The hills are alive with the sound of complaining

2012-01-13T17:39:00.002Z

People protest when I complain about BBC Radio 3. So here is someone else doing it.

Marseille street scene is (c) On An Overgrown Path 2012. With thanks for heads up to Spectator reader David Derrick. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk Also on Facebook and Twitter.

How music appeared as a defence witness

2012-01-13T10:42:00.013Z

Chance uncovers a unique example of music being used in the defence of a war criminal. Many visitors arrived On An Overgrown Path yesterday following the airing of Nazi Hunters - Paul Touvier on History Television in the States. Search engines had directed them to my January 2010 article which uncovered links between French war criminal Touvier and the singer Jacques Brel, who is seen above. By coincidence as History Television was bringing Touvier to the attention of many in the States a book on the same subject arrived here in Norfolk from Seattle.

It is a volume I had tracked down online following a recommendation from a reader who had read my recent article about the continuing activities of the Society of Saint Pius X, the traditionalist Catholic group that had harboured Touvier for sixteen years before his arrest in 1989. Memory, the Holocaust, and French Justice edited by Richard J. Golsan is a valuable academic study of the flawed prosecution by the French judiciary of Touvier and of Vichy police chief and friend of President Mitterand René Bousquet. The book confirms what I had already uncovered about links between Touvier and Brel and adds some fresh information.

My 2010 article explained how a song titled Voir appeared on an album compiled by Touvier and released on Philips in 1967 to benefit a Catholic charity. At his trial in 1994 Touvier was defended by Jacques Trémolet de Villers. As well being a lawyer Trémolet de Villers is president of the Catholic fundamentalist group La Cité Catholique and is a monarchist and far-right activist. Memory, the Holocaust, and French Justice recounts how at the trial Trémolet de Villers claimed that Brel had written Voir, with its lyrics "To see a ruffian and try to love him...See the eternal enemy and try to forget" as a tribute to Touvier. Fortunately the jury was not moved and Touvier was convicted of crimes against humanity for his part in the 1944 murder of seven Jews and a human rights activist. It also appears that in his attempt to love a war criminal Trémolet de Villers had tried to forget the facts. Radio France dates the composition of Voir at 1958, while Brel was closely associated with Touvier from 1968 to 1971.

* Video of Jacques Brel singing Voir here.

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Mobile phone rings in finale of housing crisis

2012-01-12T08:20:00.010Z

Yesterday's news story that former French football star Eric Cantona was to be a candidate in the forthcoming French presidential election has a pertinent music connection. Cantona's candidature was in fact a clever publicity stunt to draw attention to what he describes as the "millions of families in France whose suffering is forgotten". In a newspaper interview the former Manchester United footballer reveals that he wants other presidential candidates to support the housing activist group Fondation Abbé Pierre which works on behalf of the 3.6 million people in France who are homeless or live in substandard accomodation, see the advertisement above. Fondation Abbé Pierre was founded by the moderate French Catholic priest L'Abbé Pierre (1912-2007) who is a French folk hero and founded the Emmaus movement in 1949 to help poor and homeless people and refugees. In 1986 acclaimed pianist and Messiaen authority Jean-Rodolphe Kars abandoned his concert career and ordained as a priest in the Emmaus community. Père Jean-Rodolphe continues to work with the poor and homeless today, but in 2005 returned to the recording studio to record an album of Jewish music for Les Éditions de l'Emmanuel. It is a tale worth reflecting on at a time when Twitter obsessed classical music sees the big issue as a mobile phone ringing in a Mahler symphony. The full story of Jean-Rodolphe Kars and his 2005 album is in my post Following in Olivier Messiaen's footsteps.

* Translation of Fondation Abbé Pierre advertisement - 'Manon scribbled on the walls. The rest is not her work. 600,000 children are victims of bad housing. Let's do something about it!'

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Richter's crouching ovation for Weissenberg

2012-01-11T08:29:00.003Z

'Weissenberg (who says he's a fervent admirer of mine) has completed a colossal undertaking and one can only congratulate him on it. His work bears all the hallmarks of honesty, conscientiousness and the love that he feels for his work. If only his fingers didn't press ahead so much at the end of the fast variations, as this really spoils Bach's music. But I actually believe it does not come easily to him'.

Sviatoslav Richter writes in 1972 of the first recording of the Goldberg Variations by the sadly departed Alexis Weissenberg , who is seen above. The quote comes from Sviatoslav Richter - Notebooks and Conversations edited by Bruno Monsaingeon. The book also provides the information that Richter auditioned Weissenberg's Bach in his car while driving from Munich to Vienna, presumably listening to an audio cassette. Now I would trust Richter's ears anytime, but his evaluation does raise the question of what is the minimum audio quality level needed to make valid artistic judgements? A propos two true stories from my days at the sharp end of the record industry are relevant. While I was at EMI a senior classical executive on whose watch many great recordings were made complained repeatedly of distortion on white label (test) pressings of new releases. These were the days of vinyl LPs so a technician from Abbey Road was sent to the executive's house to check his audio system. When he arrived he found the tone arm of the record deck weighed down with a copious amount of plasticine "to prevent it jumping from the groove". At another time a prominent critic wrote unfavourably of the sound of EMI releases. Again a technician was despatched to check the reference audio system. In the critic's house one stereo speaker was in his study and one in the hallway "so I can listen while moving aroung the house". No flaky audio systems involved when Richter tells us in his Notebooks and Conversations that the Handel Keyboard Suites, which he and Andrei Gavrilov recorded for EMI, are "veritable miracles".

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The radio is alive with the sound of Jolivet's music

2012-01-10T10:42:00.024Z

In 1936 La Jeune France group was formed by the composers seen in the photo above, clockwise from top left Olivier Messiaen, Yves Baudrier, Daniel-Lesur with André Jolivet seated at piano. Messiaen's reputation has endured while the other three languish in obscurity. Which is a pity as the music of André Jolivet in particular - he was the only European student of Edgard Varèse - deserves to be better know. So it is good to see a mini festival of Jolivet's music on BBC Radio 3.

Performances are in the very capable hands of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by contemporary music advocate Pascal Rophé. Centrepiece of the festival is today's broadcast which has Jolivet's Third Symphony framed by music from Messiaen and by Henri Dutilleux. Shame that the programmes are consigned to the weekday afternoon ghetto where they are fronted by Katie Derham whose credentials include presenting the Classic FM Hall of Fame. However the pain caused by Ms Derham's presence is eased by contributions from the composer's daughter Christine Jolivet-Erlih and musicologist and Jolivet authority Caroline Rae.

Those looking for more details of the Jolivet celebration on the home page of the BBC Radio 3 website will be disappointed as 'Discover Steve Reich' is judged to be a safer option. In the mini-festival the BBC National Orchestra of Wales is performing three Jolivet works in three days. At the BBC Proms there have been three performances of Jolivet's music in 117 years, the last in 1997. How about swapping the Sound of Music for the BBC NOW playing Jolivet in the 2012 Proms season? More on André Jolivet in the my serendipitously titled 2009 post Avoiding the hazards of reputation inflation.

* I swear that my New Year's resolution was to be nice to the BBC and yes, it is good that they are devoting airtime to composers other than Mahler and Shostakovich. But why has the Radio 3 website banished all diacritics? The musicians names are Pascal Rophé and André Jolivet, not Pascal Rophe and Andre Jolivet. Presumably the need to be search engine friendly takes priority over linguistic accuracy and simple courtesy. Or is just plain laziness? - the BBC National Orchestra of Wales website uses diacritics. For information the rule On An Overgrown Path is diacritics in body copy but not headlines; a compromise which hopefully keeps both the search engines and scholars happy. Perhaps the Radio 3 management thinks diacritic is another word for a bad review?

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Classical music needs more Noah Greenbergs

2012-01-09T12:22:00.006Z

Trotskyist, amanuensis to Elliott Carter, bon viveur, Renaissance man, friend of W.H. Auden, trailblazer for racial equality and early music pioneer - those were just some of the personas of Noah Greenberg who died on January 9th 1966 at the age of 46 after suffering a heart attrack.

Today Noah Greenberg is remembered as the founder of the legendary New York Pro Musica and he is seen directing the ensemble in the accompanying photos. A self-taught musician, he formed Pro Musica in 1952 to explore the then unknown medieval and Renaissance repertoire. The photo below shows his 1958 staging of the 11th century liturgical drama The Play of Daniel at the medieval branch of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art known as The Cloisters. This production, which included a narration by Greenberg's friend W.H. Auden, was the tipping point for early music in North America. Later the same year Decca's bestselling LP of Daniel helped tip early music even further towards the mass market and Pro Musica's status as a classical music hot property was confirmed when it signed with Ronald Wilford’s Columbia Artists Management.

Born in the Bronx in 1919 to Jewish immigrant parents, Noah Greenberg grew up in a politically aware household and joined the neo-communist American Student Union while at high school. He remained a communist as a young man but moved away from Stalin first to the Trotskyist camp and then on to the small independent Workers Party which attempted to infiltrate the American labour movement in the early years of the Second World War. While working in West Coast shipyards as a machinist Greenberg lost his draft deferment in 1944 and joined the US Merchant Marine as a crew member; his spell as a ship's cook laid the foundation for his later passion for cooking and good food.

Greenberg was a lifelong resident of New York and Pro Musica's big break came in 1953 with a residency at the Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association of New York on Ninety-second Street. Greenberg had been studying music since high school and in 1938 put together an informal group of singers to explore early vocal music. After leaving the Merchant Marine in 1949 his focus switched away from politics towards music In 1950 Greenberg went to France with his first wife to attend Pablo Casals' first Prades Festival and on his return formed the embryonic New York Pro Musica. Although Greenberg forsook politics for music his activist path came back to haunt him in 1956 when a US State Department backed Pro Musica tour of Europe was cancelled at the last minute, allegedly because of Greenberg's communist past. However a State Department endorsed tour of The Play of Daniel went ahead in 1960 and Pro Music's establishment status was cemented three years later when the Ford Foundation awarded it a $465,000 grant.

But despite the success of Pro Musica Noah Greenberg was more than an early music specialist. In 1950 he was copyist for Elliott Carter while the composer was writing his First String Quartet and Carter gave him access to his personal library of rare editions of Renaissance music. When visiting Paris in 1960 Greenberg met the serial composer Luigi Dallapicola and a performance of Daniel in the same year at Kings Lynn in Norfolk, a few miles from where I write, was attended by Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, not to mention the Queen Mother! Founder Pro Musica member Russell Oberlin sung the role of Oberon in the premiere of Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream at Covent Garden in the same year. A 1963 Decca LP (see below) with Greenberg conducting the Abbey Singers, a training group for Pro Musica, included Ernst Toch's spoken Geographic Fugue and Copland's I Bought Me a Cat. Shortly before his death Noah Greenberg joined John Cage and Merce Cunningham at a soirée organised by Fluxus catalyst Allan Kaprow and there was even a flirtation with nascent world music when Greenberg heard the duduk player Djivan Gasparyan playing when touring with Pro Musica in Armenia in 1964.

Another little-known persona is Noah Greenberg the humanitarian. Pro Musica rose to prominence at a time when institutional racism was an accepted feature of American classical music. Despite this musicians of colour featured in the various Pro Musica line-ups. African American bass baritone Marvin Hayes performed with several of Greenberg's ensembles in the early 1960s and can be seen on the cover of the Abbey Singers' Decca disc above. Fellow African American and percussionist Frederick King joined Pro Musica's instrumental group in 1963 and took part in their Russian tour the following year; he is playing with Greenberg's Renaissance Band in the footer photo. In 1963 Greenberg met with James Meredith, the first black student to attend the University of Mississippi, and in 1965 Pro Musica gave a benefit in Greenville SC for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Noah Greenberg's inclusivity was not restricted to ethnicity: founder member of Pro Musica tenor Charles Bressler, back row in white shirt in photo 3 from 1954, was an uncloseted homosexual a decade and a half before the Stonewall Riot.

There is clearly much to celebrate about Noah Greenberg. So why is he now almost forgotten while other early music pioneers such as David Munrow are familiar names to CD collectors? Greenberg's neglect is due to a combination of several factors. His premature death in 1966 occured while the early music audience was still growing; Pro Musica lost momentum soon after their founder died and disbanded in 1974, leaving a vacuum that was quickly filled by other ensembles. And in the boom years following Greenberg's death early music became the fiefdom of academic musicians who felt uncomfortable crediting an autodidact with a seminal role in the early music revival. Then of course there was Greenberg's political and humanitarian activism...

Neglect by the record companies of Noah Greenberg's recorded legacy is another reason why he is not better known. Above is the LP of The Play of Daniel which was a bestseller in 1958. Greenberg made twenty-eight LPs but as I write not one commercial disc by Pro Musica is available. The Play of Daniel was also recorded for National Education Television, but I can find no information on a video release - does the master tape still exist? YouTube is more rewarding and there are two substantial videos of Greenberg and the instrumental Renaissance Band here and here., but alas none with Pro Musica. But there is a ten minute video of the fiftieth anniverary production in The Cloisters which gives a tantalising taste of what took New York by storm in 1958.

That barometer of celebrity status Wikipedia has a stub article of just six lines on Noah Greenberg - surely he deserves better than that? Yes, Greenberg was a visionary musician and a notable humanitarian, but he was also much more. The first run of seven performances of The Play of Daniel in January 1958 at The Cloisters was a sell out. In response to demand three more performances were scheduled in the much larger Riverside Curch and sold out immediately. This meant that in one month a total of 10,000 people paid to see an obscure medieval liturgical drama and a vibrant new audience was created for early music. All in the year when the musical of choice on Broadway was Rodgers and Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song. Surely this tells us something at a time when classical music is struggling to reach new audiences. Twitter and Facebook may have their uses - but what classical music really needs are more Noah Greenbergs.

* Pied Piper, the Many Lives of Noah Greenberg by James Gollin (ISBN 1576470415) is a model biography. It is the primary source for this article and I cannot recommend it too highly. But sadly it is out of print, the high prices copies are selling for surely suggests enough demand for a reprint. My thanks go to the Housing Works Bookstore Café on Crosby Street, New York for providing an affordable copy. Terry Teachouts 2001 article draws on James Gollins' book and is also recommended.

* Although Pro Music's The Play of Daniel is not available there is an excellent new recording by The Dufay Collective directed by William Lyons. This 2008 release is well worth buying. But with an British ensemble and British director recorded with choristers from an English minster (Southwell) why is the Harmonia Mundi disc prominently branded Production USA?

* I knew of Noah Greenberg from The Play of Daniel and his other recordings. But this path had its genesis when I visited Prades in 2010 on the path of Pablo Casals. Outside Prades is the Abbey of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa where Casals performed many times. Substantial parts of the Abbey cloisters were purchased by the American sculptor George Gray Barnard in the 1930s and shipped to New York to become the centrepiece of The Cloisters where The Play of Daniel was premiered. Photos and more on that path here.

Photos 2, 3 and 6 from top are credited New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundation via James Gollins' book. Photo one is also via the book but the source is not credited. 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 Also on Facebook and Twitter. V1.2 09/01/2012

Music-making oblivious of the world's show

2012-01-08T18:19:00.004Z

A photographic memory of the pianist Alexis Weissenberg who died today aged 82. He is seen here in 1978 with my wife in Paris before playing a Beethoven Piano Concerto with Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic. Karajan's biographer Richard Osborne wrote of the cycle of Beethoven Concertos that Weissenberg and Karajan went on to record for EMI:

'The set has never been much noticed critically, which is how it should be, for this is music-making that is oblivious of the world's show, music-making among friends on terms of their own devising.'

More on the Karajan path here.

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Is attitude to life more important than music?

2012-01-06T16:05:00.002Z

'A musician is also a man, but more important than his music is his attitude to life.'

That quote from Pablo Casals appeared in my 2010 post A musician is also a man. The vexed relationship between music, conscience and accountability has been a recurring theme On An Overgrown Path. So thanks go to John McLaughlin Williams for pointing me towards a new article titled Music, Conscience, Accountability and the Third Reich on the website of the Oriel Foundation, which is dedicated to rediscovering suppressed music treasures of the twentieth century. Header image is from my 2008 post Innocent of political delinquency.

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Are classical music journalists above criticism?

2012-01-06T11:13:00.008Z

There are lessons for classical music in this week's independent report about relationships between the UK media and police. In her report former parliamentary commissioner Elizabeth Filkin warns that a too-close relationship between senior Metropolitan police officers and sections of the media has compromised the ability of both to investigate each other and has damaged trust. Filkin also concludes that a lack of transparency about the relationship between police and media has led to damaging speculation and perceptions.

It is important that a similar lack of transparency about the relationship between journalists and classical music institutions does not damage trust and cause speculation. The likelihood of this happening has increased as the available media has expanded to include blogs and social networks. Perks such as free CDs and concert tickets and the occasional jolly to hear Sean Rafferty in Birmingham or an orchestra in somewhere exotic like Rome have been around a long time. But increasingly journalists are taking paid for work from music institutions, and that must inevitably lead to problems of trust. Because, as a perceptive tweet about the tobacco funding debate pointed out, if you accept a payment you are establishing a relationship, and that is a form of endorsement.

The shift towards citizen journalism has been accompanied by another unremarked but important change. Today the role of the journalist is seen solely as informing the public, whereas in the past journalists also provided an essential check and balance to the artistic policies of music institutions. Which means the creative tension between institution and critic has been replaced by a cosy alliance.

We must avoid this debate being short circuited by the response that journalists cannot survive without commissions from music instititions. Just like bank funding, a financial relationship betweeen the critic and criticised may be here to stay. But, as with bank and particularly tobacco funding, the relationship needs to be much more transparent and this quote from the website of investigative journalist George Monbiot is a good starting point for the move towards transparency.

I believe that everyone who steps into public life should be obliged to show on whose behalf they are speaking: in other words who is paying them, and how much. I would like to see journalists, like MPs, become subject to a mandatory register of interests. But until that time I hope to encourage other journalists to declare the sources of their income voluntarily – by declaring mine.

Monbiot goes on to report that his annual payment from the Guardian to supply columns, blog posts and other material is £62,207. Now Monbiot is an established journalist and doubtless deserves that fee. But £62K is no small sum, and quite correctly he believes it is material and should be declared. Now let's assume for a minute that you have two articles about a concert series to read. One is from a journalist who declares he has no financial relationship with the orchestra promoting the concert series. The other one is from a journalist who declares he is paid £62,207 a year for contributing to the orchestra's website and promotional material. Which article would you trust?

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Primal energy unleashed on vinyl

2012-01-05T09:07:00.005Z

Eighteen years after his first encounter with the Master Musicians, Brion Gysin takes Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones to Jajouka to experience the group’s wild and wonderful trance music. Jones spends a month recording the group and releases the album Brian Jones Presents The Pipes of Pan at Jajouka. While the Jones record brought attention to the group, leading to associations with musician/legend Ornette Coleman and writer Robert Palmer, Jones treated the music with special effects.

In 1972, Joel Rubiner made his way to Jajouka to do fresh recordings of the group. He knew that there was an audience for the unfiltered sounds of the Master Musicians of Jajouka and spends the summer with a tape machine and the musicians. Jams formed into songs, Rubiner had tapes that music freaks would die for. Hypnotic, pulsing, energetic, and discordant - the Rubiner recordings needed to be released. In 1974, Adelphi Records took a chance on the Master Musicians and released The Primal Energy That Is The Music And Ritual Of Jajouka, Morocco. When the album was released on CD, it netted the All Music Guide’s Best of Genre award.

Out of print on vinyl for over twenty years, The Primal Energy... makes a return on Sol Re Sol Records (a spin-off of avant-rock label S.S. Records). Sol Re Sol’s repressing of this classic album contains the music of the original (remastered by John Golden), plus the original liner notes by Robert Palmer. The packaging however is something new - housed in a gatefold sleeve, it includes a new cover with little seen Rubiner photographs (see above) from the time the album was recorded. The recordings and photographs have been fully licensed. The group’s publishing royalties have been paid. No one is getting exploited in order to return this wonderful music to vinyl. Fans of Sublime Frequencies, Mississippi Records, the Nonesuch Explorer series, Ocora Records, and the Ethnic Folkways series will dig this release.

That refreshingly evangelical copy comes from the website of Sol Re Sol Records. More on this path in Discord among the Master Musicians and Who are the real Master Musicians? Back in July 2007 On An Overgrown Path was saying Move over iPhone - here comes vinyl.

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Arts bodies and the tobacco industry's cash

2012-01-04T19:27:00.002Z

No apologies for returning to the subject of cigarette money and classical music. I have received this email from Amanda Sandford who is research manager at ASH - Action on Smoking and Health.

Dear Bob Thank you for your email and for raising awareness of the ongoing issue of tobacco sponsorship of the arts.

Yes, we are aware that it is still going on. Unfortunately, as you may be aware, corporate sponsorship by tobacco companies is still allowable since the Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Act 2002 only applies to tobacco brands.

Tobacco sponsorship has been virtually eradicated from sport (F1 being the sole exception) but we do have a way to go persuading arts bodies not to take the tobacco industry's cash.

Amanda's last statement is only too true. The topic of classical music's ethically compromised funders has been picked up by a number of influential sources outside classical music including Naked Capitalism and tobacco.org, but the only influential source to pick it up within classical music has been the admirable Alex Ross. As Amanda says "we do have a way to go".

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Advice please on how to write a piano concerto

2012-01-04T15:25:00.002Z

Scanning the search terms that bring new readers to An Overgrown Path is an education in itself. Every day old chestnuts such as 'Pierre Boulez gay' and 'Petroc Trelawny awful' deliver fresh visitors. And in addition there are the one-off searches, such as this morning's from a university IP address for the term 'How to write a piano concerto'. Rather appropriately Ask.com sent the would-be composer to a post about a John Cage Piano Concerto and the visitor spent forty minutes on my site, so all was not lost. But I suspect the searcher may not have experienced the Eureka! moment they were looking for. So any advice from readers on how to write a piano concerto will be gratefully received and shared. But let's leave the Pierre Boulez query to John Drummond.

Also on Facebook and Twitter. Header installation comes from the 1978 Gramophone Guide to Classical Composers and Recordings. 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

Soundtrack for a humanitarian tragedy

2012-01-03T11:55:00.004Z

News coverage of the humanitarian tragedy in Syria has meant Abed Azrié's setting of the Epic of Gilgamesh has been on my playlist. Composer, singer and 'man of liberty' Abed Azrié left Syria for France in 1970 because he was unable "to work in the Arab countries in which the way people live is still conditioned by halal and haram" and today considers his country not as Syria but the Arabic language. The Epic of Gilgamesh originates from ancient Mesopotamia and is among the earliest known works of literature. It is the precursor of the great epic tradition that includes the Mahabharata and Nibelungenlied and is notable for its proto-environmentalist and feminist themes. The influence of the Epic of Gilgamesh has been identified in the work of figures ranging from psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung, poets Rainer Maria Rilke, Charles Olson and Louis Zukofsky to novelists John Gardner and Philip Roth, and the plot of an episode of Star Trek is also indebted to the poem. Western classical music inspired by the epic includes an oratorio by Bohuslav Martinů and an opera by the Serbian composer Rudolf Brucci, while a grunge theatre rock treatment has played in London, Australia and China.

In his setting Abed Azrié lets the beauty of the Arabic language speak for itself and resists the temptation to make epic gestures with his instrumental forces. His score avoids the fashionbable boxes of world, fusion, Western, Eastern, traditional and avant garde; instead it is simply music created by the eclectic combination of solo voice, oud, ney, qanon, viole de gambe, cellos, mazhar, darbouka, riqq, percussions, cymbals and harp. Recorded in 1977 the Epic of Gilgamesh was one of the first recordings to be released on a musician owned record label - Doumtak is owned by Azrié. Following the success of the Epic of Gilgamesh Abed Azrié's 1990 album Aromates was released by Nonesuch. John Adams, who records for Nonesuch, has said that the Act 1 scene with Mamoud in his opera The Death of Klinghoffer was influenced by Azrié's music, which he was listening to while composing the scene. More on that path here.

Also on Facebook and Twitter. The Epic of Gilgamesh was bought in the Harmonia Mundi boutique, Perpignan, France. 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

Great New Year's Day concert - now let's move on

2012-01-02T09:41:00.005Z

Classical music started 2012 with the traditional New Year's Day concert in Vienna. At which a rich white Judeo-Christian audience wallowed in Western music by long-dead composers played by prejudiced and doubly prejudiced musicians under the baton of a jet set maestro in a showpiece event funded by that ornament of one percenters Rolex (who received a prominent plug on the BBC coverage) and distributed globally by media conglomerates. It was a really wonderful concert and there will doubtless be much self-congratulation about the 50 million people in 72 countries who tuned in to the TV coverage. But less will be made of the 6.95 billion in the other 124 countries who did not make the connection. While classical music debates nothing changes.

Header image shows that Vienna can move on - transcriptions of Strauss waltzes by Schoenberg, Berg and Webern played by the Boston Sympony Chamber Players on my 1979 LP version. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk Also on Facebook and Twitter.

Shostakovich and Bartok tempo accelerando

2011-12-31T16:12:00.005Z

'Phil Hill, on the other hand, was just as happy to retire to his hotel room after dinner and soothe his nerves with Bártok's string quartets or Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony played on a Concertone reel-to-reel stereo that he travelled with.'

Those are 1961 Formula One world champion Phil Hill's tastes in music described in Michael Cannell's newly published The Limit. A fascinating glimpse of a celebrity's pre-iPod playlist - or is it? New Yorker contributor Michael Cannell candidly acknowledges his book's debt to what is known in publishing as "novelistic nonfiction", a genre famously pioneered by Norman Lebrecht. Which means Cannell sometimes plays fast and loose with his motor racing facts, if not with his celebrity playlists. Header image is Phil Hill in a Ferrari Dino 246 at Monaco in 1959. Footer photo shows a car that I saw Phil Hill racing against a few years later, Jim Clark's Lotus 25. And no prizes for identifying who is wondering where the wheels have gone.

Astronaut Neil Armstrong's lunar playlist is here.

Header image credit f1-facts.com. Lower image is (c) On An Overgrown Path 2011. The Limit was borrowed from Norwich library. 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 Also on Facebook and Twitter.

How classical music ignored the breaking news

2011-12-30T10:28:00.013Z

While researching donors to the Royal Opera House for a recent post I was reminded of John Cage's observation that "The opera in society, is an ornament of the lives of the people who have". In his New Yorker review of 2011 Alex Ross picks up on my fiscal theme and eloquently describes the funding sources of major classical institutions as resembling "a rogues’ gallery of international financial malfeasance". Impending global economic meltdown and the Arab Spring dominated the news in 2011, yet classical music's response was an introspective debate on how to support its serious money habit. Despite this, like Alex, I continued to be moved and inspired by music. My header photo shows troubadour éthique Titi Robin who premiered his River Banks project in Paris in November and proved that outstanding music making and alternative business models are not mutually exclusive. If I may be excused one solipsism, John McLaughlin Williams' advocacy of Philippa Schuyler, which progressed from blog to BBC, showed how selfless commitment can transform the marginal into the mainstream. This message was reinforced by the irreplaceable Montserrat Figueras and Jordi Savall whose cross-cultural Mare Nostrum showed us once again how commercially successful music can remain principled and engaged. Let us hope more follow these examples in 2012.

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No crack in a fortress can be accounted small

2011-12-28T15:37:00.018Z

Baroque runs riot in the chapel of the Penitent Blacks (Chapelle des Pénitents Noirs) in Avignon, as seen in my photos. Dating from the 18th century, the chapel was built by the co-fraternity of the Black Penitents of Mercy who tended to the material and spiritual welfare of prisoners in the city. Recently renovated by Avignon city council, the chapel is now the home of a contemporary co-fraternity of the Black Penitents. This was formed in 1983 to "pray for the souls of Purgatory and to be guardians of the traditional Catholic liturgy". Posters and flyers from the Fraternité Saint Pie X are prominently displayed in the chapel, promoting among other events a retreat to study "The spirituality of Monsignor Lefebvre".

The Fraternité Saint Pie X (Society of Saint Pius X) was founded in 1970 by the right-wing cleric Monsignor Marcel Lefebvre in opposition to changes introduced by the Second Vatican Council and among its aims is the retention of the traditional Catholic Mass. The Society gained notoriety for sheltering French war criminal Paul Touvier for sixteen years and when Touvier was finally arrested by police in 1989 he was staying in a seminary run by Lefebvre's followers. A priest from the Society of Saint Pius X sat beside Touvier throughout the 1994 trial at which he was found guilty of crimes against humanity.

Paul Touvier had served under infamous Lyon Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie and the crimes for which he was convicted included involvement in the massacre of seven Jews at Rillieux-la-Pape in 1944 and in the murder of the human rights activist Victor Basch and his wife. In the 1890s Basch had led the defence of Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish French army captain falsely accused of treason. When Touvier died in 1996 a traditional Tridentine Requiem Mass for the repose of his soul was offered in St Nicolas du Chardonnet, the Society of St. Pius X's chapel in Paris.

After taking the header and footer photos in Avignon a few weeks ago I walked the short distance to the Lycée Theodore Aubanel where the plaque seen below is displayed.

Here is my translation:

Traditionalist Catholicism flourishes in the Avignon region today and is supported by the staunchly conservative archbishop of the Vaucluse Jean-Pierre Cattenoz who featured in the recent 'Piss Christ' controversy. Close to Avignon is the Benedictine monastery of Sainte-Madeleine at Le Barroux, and earlier posts have recounted how the monks at Le Barroux were aligned with Monsignor Lefebvre until 1988 and have also described the links between Paul Touvier and Lefebvre in more detail. In 2010 Decca released a best selling CD of Gregorian chant performed by the nuns of l'Abbaye de Notre-Dame de l'Annonciation, the sister house of Le Barroux.

The religious community at Le Barroux remains staunchly traditionalist, but still has much to offer those who can see the wood for the trees. Chance discoveries from their excellent shop have already featured here, and my recent trip uncovered another gem. André Raison (1640s-1719) is almost forgotten today: but he was one of the leading organists in the reign of the Sun King Louis XIV and Bach must have studied Raison's Premier Livre d'orgue (1688) as he incorporated one of its themes into his Passacaglia in C Minor. In a recently released 2 CD set André Raison's Masses for Organ in the third and eighth modes played by Jean-Patrice Brosse are interleaved with plainsong sung by Ensemble Vox Cantoris. Excellent sound from the Psalmus label, which featured in a recent post with a disc of pre-Gregorian chant.

On my iPod during my French travels was a CD of arrangements of Jewish themes played by pianist Sonia Wieder-Atherton with cellist and arranger Daria Hovora. This little known release on the independent Naïve label also includes Maurice Ravel's Chanson hébraïque and five of Ernst Bloch's compositions on Jewish themes. As Arthur Miller wrote in The Crucible "Theology, sir, is a fortress; no crack in a fortress may be accounted small".

* Jewish music under the sheltering sky is here.

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Major opera house and singers take tobacco money

2011-12-26T15:54:00.007Z

Tosca trends on Twitter as a result of BBC TV's Christmas Eve screening from the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. But the Royal Opera's funding from a cigarette company does not trend. As well as receiving £26 million in public funding from the Arts Council, the Royal Opera takes money from "Gold Patron" British American Tobacco. With brands including Dunhill, Kent, Lucky Strike and Pall Mall, British American Tobacco is the world’s second largest quoted tobacco company.

Cigarette sponsorship is alive and well in opera and an earlier post revealed that Japan Tobacco International, which is the third largest tobacco company in the world, is a corporate sponsor of Glyndebourne, the Mariinsky Theatre and Salzburg Whitsun Festival, while tobacco money also goes to the London Philharmonic and Ulster Orchestras.

Even more surprising is the number of individual singers jointly sponsored by British American Tobacco and the Friends of Covent Garden. These include bass Jimmie Holliday, soprano Aoife O' Sullivan and mezzo Doreen Curran. It may be argued that classical music needs whatever money it can find. But it can also be stated categorically that smoking is the major cause of cancers of the mouth, throat, oesophagus, pharynx, larynx, tongue, lips and salivary glands.

So we have an orchestra receiving an award for a partnership with a manufacturer of the leading cause of preventable death and we have opera singers taking money from a major purveyor of throat and larynx cancer. What exactly must happen before classical music says no to ethically compromised funding?

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). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Suicide is painless...

2011-12-26T09:02:00.003Z

...when committed to the sublime sounds of Tomás Luis de Victoria. Ninety of Victoria's sacred works in acclaimed recordings by Ensemble Plus Ultra directed by Michael Noone can currently be bought in a 10 CD Archiv box for the suicidal price of £27 in beleaguered HMV stores in the UK. Suicide is Painless aka Song from M*A*S*H is a personal favourite on Bill Evan's album You Must Believe in Spring. And that mention of Bill Evans takes us from Tomás Luis de Victoria to György Ligeti.

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A very happy Christmas to all my readers

2011-12-24T09:05:00.004Z

This is the Christmas Eve scene at the Syriac Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception in Qaraqosh in northern Iraq. Many Iraqi Christians have taken refuge in Qaraqosh from Islamic fundamentalists in the south of the country and the Church of the Immaculate Conception is the largest church in Iraq. Since Saddam Hussein's arrest in 2003 the population of Qaraqosh has doubled and the town is now home to more than 10,000 refugees. My music for Christmas was recorded in Qaraqosh and comes from a newly released CD from French independent label Ad Vitam. On the disc denominations including Catholic and Orthodox Syriacs and Chaldaeans celebrate the Christian liturgy in the Arabic, Chaldaean, Syriac and Soureth languages, the latter being derived from the Aramaic that Christ spoke. A beautiful and deeply moving disc that bears witness to the healing power of music. There is an Aramaic Passion here and more on Ad Vitam, the label that build bridges of hope and trust, here.

* 40% of the proceeds of the CD Qaraqosh are donated to L’Oeuvre d’Orient, a Catholic charity that assists the Christians of Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries.

Also on Facebook and Twitter. Header photo is via bakhdida.net . Qaraqosh was bought in FNAC Paris. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Technology must be imbued with the human spirit

2011-12-23T09:42:00.013Z

'From 1976 to 1980 my son Dominic was a chorister at Winchester Cathedral. During that period and ever since, I have written a number of works associated with that wonderful building and choir. Listening to the choir rehearse, as I often did, with the bells simultaneously ringing above, was one of the mingled impressions which started me on this work: it is entirely based on the boy's voice and that of the largest bell...

In 1980 the sounds were recorded and then taken to IRCAM, the sound research institute in Paris who commissioned the work. Then they were manipulated by computer and cross-bred with synthetic simulations of the same sounds. These latter, being purely digital creations, could be internally transformed to an amazing degree. One could, for instance, move seamlessly from a vowel sung by the boy to the complex bell spectrum consisting of thirty-three partials. The entire pitch structure is based on these partials with their curious, haunting intervals: the harmonies are selected from them, and one transposed selection glissandoes to another.

In entering the rather intimidating world of the machine I was determined not to produce a dehumanised work if I could help it, and so kept fairly closely to the world of the original sounds. The territory that the new computer technology opens up is so unprecedently vast: one is humbly aware that it will only be conquered by the penetration of the human spirit, however beguiling the exhibits of technical wizardry; and that penetration will be neither rapid nor easy.'

Jonathan Harvey writes presciently in the sleeve note for the 1999 Sargasso recording of his Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco for 8 channel tape. Other Jonathan Harvey resources here include visual reflections on his String Quartets, and both a downloadable iTunes podcast and streamed file of my 2010 radio interview with him. On the streamed file only the composer's introduction to his 2008 composition Speakings for large orchestra and electronics is followed by a complete recorded performance. More on that interview here.

Mystical traditions as well as new technology inform Jonathan Harvey's music and the Chinese Buddha from the 10th-13th centuries was photographed by me in the Musée Guimet, Paris; the image is (c) On An Overgrown Path 2011. Any other 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 Also on Facebook and Twitter.

Try some tasty free range Mozart this Christmas

2011-12-22T09:46:00.011Z

Classical music is becoming more and more like factory farming. An intensive and industrialised process financed by global corporations rears consumer friendly products in confined spaces with the sole intention of bringing the bland results to market as quickly as possible . But there are alternatives, such as Bruno Walter's deliciously tasty Mozart. I paid just 14 euros (18 US dollars) in FNAC in Avignon for the new 6CD Sony set seen above which re-issues recordings made in perfectly acceptable sound between 1954 and 1960. Current pricing on Amazon UK is £13.50, which makes this almost free ~~range~~ Mozart.

Thoroughly recommended despite the cost of the bargain price being no documentation at all other than recording venues and dates. Which means no mention that Bruno Walter was a disciple of the Austrian philosopher and educationist Rudolf Steiner. Steiner was a founding figure in the Theosophy movement who influenced a diverse group of musicians including Alexander Scriabin, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Dane Rudhyar and Jonathan Harvey. In 1907 Steiner split with mainstream Theosophy and went on to found Anthroposophy, a spiritual path that cherishes and respects the freedom of the individual. Bruno Walter followed Steiner and contributed a chapter titled My way to Anthroposophy to an authoritative book on the subject.

All of which is fascinating but peripheral to recommending some really tasty free range Mozart. Read Arturo Toscanini's cable to Bruno Walter in The conductor who hated compromise.

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). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Who needs a tune?

2011-12-21T10:18:00.011Z

Toynbee deconstructionist David Derrick has a noteworthy post developing the idea that, in David's own words -"there were two great ages of the tune. The first was in the sixteenth century. It produced the greatest and most elemental tunes. Think of the Old 100th (sixteenth-century French and still sung every year at Concord, Massachusetts), Es ist ein Ros entsprungen (German, circa 1600), Vom Himmel hoch (Luther), many others... The second age was after 1800, and especially after 1850, and it produced a kind of apotheosis of the tune, especially in Tchaikovsky and Puccini. In the great age of counterpoint and in the classical era that followed it the tune was, relatively speaking, in abeyance". All of which chimes with a disc that has been a frequent visitor to my CD player recently.

Ochion Jewell's new CD First Suite for Quartet is an iconoclastic essay in what Free Jazz magazine describes as "melody free" music. Ochion is a tenor saxophonist and his quartet of piano, string bass and drums is drawn from his contemporaries on a masters course at CalArts. The through composed Suite is an exploration of traditional jazz, contemporary classical harmonies, west African rhythmic structures, American folk melodies, Coltrane like mysticism and rock grooves which is not afraid to flaunt its eclecticism by ending with a beguiling piano trio take on You are my sunshine.

Free Jazz links Keith Jarrett, Ochion Jewell and Dawn of Midi as pioneers of a proto-melody free movement. At which point convergence comes into play as Dawn of Midi featured here in a recent post on the subject of Classical music and the mass market fallacy. Ochion Jewell's Suite has a seven movement through composed structure. But despite this it lies outside the accepted definition of classical music and is part of an accerlerating trend towards granularity. Which means all the exciting things are happening in niches, leaving mainstream classical beached in the shallows of the mass market. So who needs a tune?

Ochion Jewell's First Suite for Quartet is released on by independent label Mythology Records and my copy was supplied as a requested review sample. 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 Also on Facebook and Twitter.

Is concert programming too monochrome?

2011-12-20T10:32:00.007Z

My pre-concert talk with conductor David Hill before last Sunday's scintillating Britten Sinfonia Messiah wandered off down a diverting overgrown path. In response to one of my questions David recounted how he recently conducted a concert in Liverpool with the following programme:

Elgar - Wand of Youth Suite No. 2
Coleridge-Taylor - The Song of Hiawatha, Hiawatha's Wedding Feast
Fauré - Requiem

At first this programme, which David Hill described as "one wedding and a funeral", seems bizarre. But is it? Dwindling and ageing audiences suggest classical musical took a wrong turning somewhere down the line. Now spend a few minutes browsing the programmes for the 1896 season of Henry Wood Proms on the invaluable Proms archive. Look at the sheer variety of music in each concert and contrast it with today's austere diet of single Mahler symphonies. Is contemporary concert programming too monochrome and is that one of the reasons why classical music is failing to attract a wider audience?

Header photo was taken in Montmartre Paris and is (c) On An Overgrown Path 2011. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk Also on Facebook and Twitter.

Classical music makes the visual connection

2011-12-19T12:14:00.012Z

Still on a high from last night's Messiah with the Britten Sinfonia and David Hill in Norwich. Readers in Holland can catch a repeat performance at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam tomorrow (Dec 20) evening; but hurry as a quick check of the Concertgebouw's website indicates that, hardly suprisingly, the performance is almost sold out. At a time when classical music is desperately short of smart moves the Britten Sinfonia has scored yet another home run by forming a new professional choir, the Britten Sinfonia Voices, that matches their instrumental ensemble for sheer élan and virtuosity. But don't take my word, read Edward Seckerson's 5 star Independent review for their recent L'enfance du Christ .

A lot of very special things were happening in the Theatre Royal Norwich yesterday. One of them was the visual signing for the Messiah by Paul Whittaker - that is Paul signing for The Sixteen in my header image. Paul Whittaker's miraculous facility for turning sounds into images does more than provide an invaluable service for the hearing impaired: it is also an important pointer towards how classical music can engage with new audiences, whatever their hearing hearing capabilities, by making the visual connection. More on Paul Whittaker in this essential video, and more on seeing the music here.

I presented the pre-concert talk with David Hill at the Britten Sinfonia Messiah and received compensation in kind. 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 Also on Facebook and Twitter.

Where have all the Requiems gone?

2011-12-18T12:26:00.011Z

While I was away in November Jessica Duchen lamented the lack of post-9/11 Requiems in an article for the Independent. John Tavener's Requiem did not make the cut for Jessica's piece but instead gets the consolation prize of a post here. Commissioned for Liverpool's 2008 tenure as European City of Culture, Tavener's Requiem is a truly syncretic work. It uses texts from sources including the Catholic Mass, the Qur'an, Sufi poetry and the Hindu epics to extol the gnostic viewpoint that, to quote the composer, although "the different religious traditions are often in conflict with each other... inwardly every religion is the doctrine of the self and its earthly manifestations". The final movement Ananda, which is a pulsating arch built around the words "I am that - I am God" sung in Sanskrit, Hebrew, Greek and Arabic, is a thing of both great beauty and truth.

EMI's release of John Tavener's Requiem was one of the more memorable achievements of a label in its death throes, despite the above the composer billing for EMI's now departed vice president A & R on the company's website. The excellent sound quality of the CD, which is mastered from Radio 3's recording of the Requiem's premiere given in the acoustically challenging Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral - see above, is a useful reminder that the BBC can still do good things when Petroc Trelawny is not around. Current Amazon price is £6.99 for the 63 minute CD, need I say more? More on John Tavener and Gnosticism here, and, although, not a post 9/11 work I cannot pass up the opportunity to also advocate Rudolf Mauesberger's Dresden Requiem.

* No commercial recording is available of John Tavener's setting of the 99 Names for Allah from the Qu’ran The Beautiful Names, and I am told there are no plans to issue one. BBC Radio 3 broadcast the premiere from Westminster Abbey so a high quality recording exists. Surely an enterprising record company (are there any left?) can license the BBC master just as EMI did with his Requiem? It would make a welcome change from yet another Mahler symphony.

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). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Paz, Salam and Shalom for Montserrat

2011-12-16T15:30:00.011Z

In Marseille last week I stumbled across an intriguing new CD in a store. Paz, Salam & Shalom is, as the title suggests, an exploration of medieval songs from the Sephardic, Muslim and Christian traditions. Part of the appeal of the new release is the accompaniment that subscribes to the view that authentic performances are a somewhat silly tradition by including Tibetan bowls and seed pods from the flamboyant among the percussion. Compellingly performed by Canticum Novum and directed by Emmanuel Bardon, the CD is beautifully recorded in the church of Pommiers in France and released on the small independent label Ambronay. It is a delightful disc which I thoroughly recommend to readers, but that is not the reason for writing today.

When I was in Paris two weeks before travelling south, news had come of the death of Montserrat Figueras. She was, of course, the wife of Jordi Savall and the star of so many great recordings. But Montserrat Figueras, who is seen above, was so much more than a great voice and a great recording artist. She was a central figure in a movement that made classical music more inclusive and more human. She forged a path that Emmanuel Bardon, who studied and recorded with her, and many others have followed. Montserrat Figueras' legacy is not just the memory of her live performances and the solace of her recorded testament: her legacy is also that she made the world a better place.

Since returning from France I have been spending time with the newly released Mare Nostrum, Orient-Occident Dialogues. This was recorded by Montserrat Figueras, Jordi Savall, Hesperion XXI and guest musicians from Armenia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Israel, Greece, Morocco and Palestine between December 2009 and July 2011. In typically elegant Alia Vox style the two CDs come in a lavishly produced book which includes many session photos and a powerful essay on the Arab Spring by Tahar Ben Jelloun. Mare Nostrum returns to the cultural and musical themes that have occupied Montserrat Figueras and Jordi Savall over the past four decades; but there is a new quality of reflection and transcedence in the interpretations that makes this one of the most moving recordings I have ever had the privilege of listening to. Mare Nostrum is playing on my audio system and I find it too difficult to write anything more.

Header photo was taken on my French trip at L'Abbaye de l'Annonciation at Le Barroux. and is (c) On An Overgrown Path 2011. All featured recordings were bought at retail. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk Also on Facebook and Twitter.

Symphony orchestra's king size connections

2011-12-16T09:50:00.007Z

Continuing my tobacco sponsorship thread James Curran points out in a message via Facebook that in the past Naxos recordings of the Ulster Orchestra have been cigarette sponsored. This indeed was the case and my 1997 Naxos CD of James MacMillan's Veni Veni Emmanuel has a sizeable text block explaining that it is part of the Gallaher Group PLC twentieth century music series. As James also points out Gallaher, who are now part of Japan Tobacco International, are a major employer in Northern Ireland. The header image is a scan of the back of the sleeve of my 1982 Chandos recording of Bax Tone Poems which was one of many LPs carrying the legend "Produced by Chandos Records in association with Gallaher Ltd".

James Curran explains he complained to Klaus Heymann about the tobacco sponsorship and was assured this would not be continued. There is no evidence that Naxos or Chandos now receive any cigarette money although the MacMillan sleeve artwork still carries the Gallaher logo. It is not my intention to demonise the Ulster Orchestra, an ensemble that I admire considerably, and, as pointed out in earlier posts, the much higher profile London Philharmonic Orchestra also continues to receive tobacco money. There has been a long history of cigarette sponsorship in classical music with Imperial Tobacco (now British American Tobacco) in particular playing an active role in the 1960 and 70s via their W.D. & H.O. Wills, John Player and du Maurier brands. But medical research has changed all that, or perhaps I should say has changed most of that.

In January 2011 the Ulster Orchestra and Japan Tobacco International won the Allianz Arts and Business award for their "creative partnership and commitment to bringing classical music to communities across Northern Ireland". Allianz is the world's 12th-largest financial services group and 23rd-largest company and as part of the prizewinning partnership the Ulster Orchestra travelled to Ballymena, where Japan Tobacco International has a major factory supplying the UK cigarette market, to give a Christmas concert. So we have a leading health and life insurance company awarding a prize to an orchestra for promoting cigarettes in the community; as my American friends say, go figure. A more positive perspective on the Ulster Orchestra here and listen to me talking to James MacMillan about his new oboe concerto here.

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Whose bread I eat, his song I sing

2011-12-15T11:13:00.006Z

Yesterday's post started out investigating classical music's dependancy on funding from the banking and financial services industries. But it uncovered the for me surprising fact that sponsorship by tobacco companies is still widespread in classical music. In the post I identified the London Philharmonic and Ulster Orchestras and Salzburg Whitsun Festivals as receiving money from Japan Tobacco International, who are the world's third largest cigarette company. Now I have found that the legendary Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg has been a long-term recipient of Japan Tobacco International money. In their 2009 annual report (page 54) the cigarette company explains:

'Our financial commitment has enabled the complete [Mariinsky] orchestra and soloists to travel to the UK to perform concerts at the Barbican theatre, enabling the world-renowned performances to reach an international audience.'

Content remaining on the Barbican website relating to the 2009 performances does not identify Japan Tobacco International's funding of the Mariinsky tour. But this path leads further. For instance the 2009 Glyndebourne Festival annual report lists under corporate supporters 'JTI'. Possibly not coincidentally a newspaper recently reported that the UK parliamentary register of members’ interests shows Japan Tobacco International spent £23,000 entertaining 20 MPs in the past six months.

I suspect this is not the end of the path and more information from readers on tobacco funding for classical music would be appreciated. In the meantime I offer this quote from Cancer Research UK:

It is estimated that one in two regular cigarette smokers will eventually be killed by their tobacco habit, half of these in middle age. Over the last 50 years, six million Britons have died from tobacco-related diseases, three million of whom died in middle age (15-69) losing on average 20 years of life.

You say Mariinsky - I say Mravinsky.

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Classical music's ethically compromised funders

2011-12-14T16:28:00.009Z

Despite the economic turmoil classical music remains financially dependant on the banking and financial services sector. Exclusive Overgrown Path research shows that 45% of corporate sponsorship for ten leading orchestras in Europe and North America comes from the banking and financial services sector. This is more than five times greater than from any other corporate funding source.

A second funding tier comprises companies from the automotive and media industries, with each sector accounting for around 8% of sponsorship. Below that a third tier is made up of companies from the aerospace & defence, pharmaceutical, retail, utility and law sectors. As the research analyses source rather than revenue (see explanatory note below) it is likely that the fiscal contribution of the banking and financial services corporations is considerably greater than 50%.

A number of the corporate funders, both in the banking sector and elsewhere, have been linked to ethical issues, some of which are noted in the supporting material below. This raises the important but little-explored question of what price classical music is prepared to pay for funding. One example of this dilemna is Deutsche Bank, which is exclusive sponsor of the Berlin Philharmonic until 2015, see header image, and also a corporate sponsor of the London Philharmonic.

In 2010 an internal investigation revealed that Deutsche Bank spied on several of its management board and supervisory board members, and on at least one shareholder. One year later the United States government filed suit against Deutsche Bank AG and its wholly owned subsidiary, MortgageIT, Inc. The exact wording of the complaint filed by the US government is that "Deutsche Bank and MortgageIT repeatedly lied to be included in a Government program to select mortgages for insurance by the Government. Once in that program, they recklessly selected mortgages that violated program rules in blatant disregard of whether borrowers could make mortgage payments."

The London Philharmonic also lists JTI as a corporate sponsor without explaining the acronym or linking to the funder's website. JTI is in fact Japan Tobacco International, the world's third largest cigarette company. Their brands include Winston, Mild Seven, Camel, Benson & Hedges and Silk Cut as well as Hamlet cigars. Japan Tobacco International's sponsorship of the London Philharmonic is a five year 'partnership' running until 2013. So cigarette sponsorship is alive and well in classical music, and not just in London. Other organisations receiving funding from JTI include the Salzburg Whitsun Festival and the Ulster Orchestra.

This article sets out to inform rather than condemn. With public funding coming under increasing pressure it is unrealistic to suggest that in the short term orchestras refuse funding from ethically compromised sources. Moreover it can be argued with some truth that it is difficult to find any large corporation that is not in some way ethically compromised. However the acceptance of tobacco money and associated lack of transparency does, in my view, need to be addressed. If this research together with my earlier post Are top musicians sharing the pain? contributes in some small way to the debate on how classical music should be financed it will have achieved its objective.

More on classical music's ethically compromised funders in:
* Whose bread I eat, his song I sing
* Symphony orchestra's king size connections
* Major opera house and singers take tobacco money
* Classical music ignores the breaking news

Research methodology and limitations:
1. Funding sources listed on the websites of the ten orchestras listed below were used giving a sample size of forty sponsors. As absolute revenue amounts are not available there is no weighting by value: for instance the Deutsche Bank contribution to the Berlin Philharmonic will be considerably greater than Smuckers' contribution to the Cleveland Orchestra, yet in the calculation of contribution by source both have equal weight. Despite this it is likely that the results are meaningful in order of magnitude term.
2. The analysis is only for corporate sponsorship and takes no account of public funding. As a guide, in a 2007 interview here Jonathan Reekie of Aldeburgh Music explained that Aldeburgh's funding split was one third comes from box office income, one third from fundraising, and one third from public funding.
3. Sponsors funding more than one orchestra are multiple counted.
4. Choice of orchestras is my own. Orchestras with minimal corporate funding (broadcast and state funded) are not included.
5. I have used best endeavours in compiling this research. Links are provided to all orchestra and corporate sponsor websites and to sources on ethical issues. Collaborative amendment is, as always, welcome.

Supporting Material detailing corporate sponsors by orchestra:
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Aviva - global insurance company based in London.
Deutsche Bank - Germany's largest bank. In 2010 an investigation commissioned by Deutsche Bank revealed that it spied on several of its management board members, supervisory board members and on at least one shareholder. In 2011 the United States government filed suit in federal court against the bank and its wholly owned subsidiary, MortgageIT, Inc for alleged misrepresentations relating to mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration.
Faraday- Lloyd's reinsurance syndicate
Fortis - European bank bailed out and nationalised by Dutch government during 2008 banking crisis
JTI - international tobacco division of Japan Tobacco Inc., the world's third largest tobacco company.
Macquarie - provider of banking, financial, advisory, investment and funds management services based in Australia.
Thomson Reuters - leading provider of business intelligence, being investigated by EU for anti-competitive activities.

London Symphony Orchestra
Rolls Royce - provider of integrated transport power systems and the world's twenty-third largest defence contractor.
Takeda - Japanese based global pharmaceutical company. In 1999 pleaded guilty to vitamin price fixing in US.
UBS - investment bank which was bailed out by the Swiss government in 2008, has recently been in the news because of a fraud scandal, and has been described by the Guardian as "the big bank that cannot stay out of trouble".

Berlin Philharmonic
Deutsche Bank - see London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
ING - largest banking/financial services & insurance conglomerate in the world. Was bailed-out to tune of €10bn by Dutch government in 2008.
Unilever - British-Dutch multinational fast moving consumer goods company which has attracted a number of criticisms for its activities from political, environmental and human rights activists.

Dresden Staatskapelle
Volkswagen - car manufacturer, involved in 2005 sex, bribes and corruption scandal.

New York Philharmonic Orchestra
Credit Suisse - multi-national providing private banking and corporate financial services, subject of a 2011 tax evasion enquiry in the US.

Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Bank of America - multinational banking and financial services corporation which is the second largest bank holding company in the United States. In 2009 agreed to pay a $33 million fine, without admission or denial of charges, to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over the non-disclosure of an agreement to pay up to $5.8 billion of bonuses at subsidiary Merrill Lynch. In 2010 agreed $150m (£96.9m) settlement with the US financial watchdog following civil charges it misled shareholders about Merrill's financial position prior to takeover.
ComEd - utility provider owned by Exelon which has received several fines for pollution and security infringements.
BMO Harris Bank - Chicago based retail and corporate bank.
United Airlines - world's largest airline, received Chapter 11 protection from 2002 to 2005.

Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra
Accura - Honda luxury car brand
Rolex - luxury wristwatch manufacturer
Amgen - international biotechnolgy company, Amgen CEO Kevin Sharer received compensation package totalling $21.1 million.
Edison International - utility company
Fidelity Investments - American multi-national financial services corporation. In 2007 U.S. brokerages regulator NASD fined four Fidelity-affiliated broker-dealers $3.75 million for alleged registration, supervision and e-mail retention violations.
JP Morgan Chase - American multinational banking corporation.
Northrop Grumman - American global aerospace and defense technology company. Subject of a number of controversies including agreeing to pay a $15 million fine for 110 violations, occurring between September 1998 and November 1998, of the Arms Export Control Act and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations
Pasadena Showcase House for the Arts - all-volunteer garden and house fundraising organisation donating to LA Phil.
Target - retail chain, in 2010 gave $150,000 donation to Minnesota Forward, which used the funds to back Republican state gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer, who is against gay marriage and has voted against other gay rights initiatives.
The Walt Disney Company - world's largest media conglomerate.
Toyota - world's largest automobile manufacturer.
US Bank - diversified financial services holding company. In 2008, U.S. Bancorp received $6,599,000,000 from the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act.

Cleveland Orchestra
Baker Hostetler - global law firm based in Cleveland, among the top 10 U.S. law firms for merger and acquisition deals in the oil, gas and oilfield service industries.
Forest City - national real estate management
Smuckers - gift retail chain.
Jones Day - international law firm. Involved in 2008 law suit with BlockShopper over links to partner profiles on company's website.
KeyBank - regional bank based in Cleveland, in 2008 received approximately $2.5 billion in Troubled Asset Relief Program funds.
Medical Mutual - mutual health care insurance
The Plain Dealer - largest circulation Ohio newspaper. Famously removed longstanding music critic after unfavourable review's of orchestra's concerts.
PNC - sixth largest bank by deposits in the United States

Boston Symphony Orchestra
UBS - see London Symphony Orchestra.

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Classical music's own version of assisted suicide

2011-12-13T10:06:00.010Z

Next spring the flood of Mahler releases and re-releases is joined by a new symphony cycle from the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. I am sure the Concertgebouw has done its own market research, but my own survey reveals that the cheapest price on Amazon UK for an 11 CD Maher symphony cycle is £16.99 for Gary Bertini's well reviewed interpretations on EMI. Has it occured to anyone else that the death of classical music may in fact be a case of assisted suicide?

* Header image features my original 1972 vinyl release of Georg Solti conducting Mahler's Sympony No 8 as the sleeve design of the new Concertgebouw cycle is simply too ghastly to feature here. Solti's definitive Mahler 8 is, incidentally, currently selling for £5.24.

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Simon Rattle to leave EMI for Alia Vox?

2011-12-12T15:40:00.004Z

Over the years I have both worked for and despaired at EMI, and have also praised the work of French independent label Zig-Zag Territoires. In classical music what goes around comes around and now comes the news that high profile EMI artists the Belcea Quartet are leaving the label to return to Zig-Zag Territoires where they cut their first CD. My prediction is that the next EMI departure will be Simon Rattle who will move to Alia Vox. Header image is the Zig-Zag Territoires Bach meets Coltrane disc which in 2008 I featured under the currently topical headline of Recommended for Coltrane loving Democrats.

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World music - cultural exploration or exploitation?

2011-12-11T16:40:00.013Z

The old concierge in an apartment building where an American writer and his wife lived had said it best. "That type, they want everything, men and women from the common people, young ones, healthy, preferably from the countryside, who can't read or write, serving them all day, then servicing them at night. A package deal, and between two pokes, tokes on a nicely packed pipe of kif to help the American write! Tell me your story, he says to them. I'll make a novel out of it, you'll even have your name on the cover: you won't be able to read it but no matter, you're a writer like me, except that you're an illiterate writer, that's exotic - what I mean is, unusual, my friend! That's what he tells them, without ever mentioning money, because you don't talk about that, not when you're working for a writer, after all! They aren't obliged to accept, but I know that poverty - our friend poverty - can lead us to some very sad places..."

That extract is from Leaving Tangier, a powerful and angry novel by the Moroccan-born Tahar Ben Jelloun and the swipe at long-time Tangier resident Paul Bowles is barely disguised. Bowles is widely lauded for exploring the culture of Morocco and I have written here praising his field recordings of Jewish music in Essaouira and his role in bringing the Master Musicians of Jajouka to an international. But Tahar Ben Jelloun raises the uncomfortable but important question of whether cultural exploration is really commercial exploitation by another name.

Exploitation dressed as exploration is widespread in the arts and Western classical music has a long and distinguished history of plundering Oriental creativity to service Occidental audiences, ranging from Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail through Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade to Colin McPhee's proto-minimalist Tabu-Tabuhan and Britten's Prince of the Pagodas. Recent years have seen massive growth in the world music market and there are some who view world music as just another example of commercial exploitation disguised as cultural exploration.

French guitarist, oud player and composer Titi Robin is one of those questionning the ethics of the record industry and his thesis that world music should embrace commercial as well as creative fusion has already featured here. His River Banks project is an attempt to share commercial and creative rewards by recording CDs in Morocco, Turkey and India using local musicians and production facilities and releasing the results on local labels before marketing them in Europe via French independent label Naïve. But the project is more than an exercise in levelling the commercial playing field as it also rejects musical fusion of ethnic themes in favour of original compositions created for the musicians of each of the three countries.

River Banks will be released in Europe in January 2012 and I have not yet heard the albums. But I travelled to Paris at the end of November to hear the premiere concert performance at the Institut du Monde Arabe, which is where the accompanying photos were taken. Practicalities precluded bringing all the musicians involved to Europe so the live performance used Titi Robin's own trio augmented by one musician from India, Turkey and Morocco respectively. Titi's regular band comprises accordionist Francis Varis and Brazilian percussionist extraordinaire Zé Luis Nascimento, who played incidentally in a 2008 BBC Prom. Joining the Trio in Paris were Indian sarangi player Murad Ali Khan, Turkish kaval flautist Sinan Celik and Moroccan guembri player Mehdi Nassouli.

Many will dismiss Titi Robin's vision as hopeless idealism flying in the face of commercial reality. But something very special happened in the Institut du Monde Arabe on November 26th and it was not just the audience stomping and calling for more after a two and a quarter hour set played by the sextet without an interval. We had a glimpse of a new future - not just a new and exciting musique sans frontières but also a new and more equitable way of doing the business of music. Hopeless idealism perhaps, but please give me that rather than the greedy self-interest that is now the defining feature of the music industry.

* Extended samples from River Banks can be heard here.
* French interview with Titi Robin 'troubadour éthique' on the Three Rivers project here. His views (in English) on the expulsion of Roma from France are essential reading, particularly for those in the classical community who limit their activism to the self-interested topic of arts funding.
* All photos are from Le Cargo musical webzine.
* Hat tip to the translator of Leaving Tangier Linda Coverdale. The UK edition received financial assistance from the admirable English PEN which upholds writer's freedom and challenges political and cultural limits on free expression.

My visit to Paris for the Titi Robin concert was entirely self-funded. 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 Also on Facebook and Twitter.

The message of the symphonies of Beethoven

2011-12-09T15:15:00.006Z

'The most tweeted event of the year was Beyoncé's pregnancy announcement at the MTV awards, which generated 8,868 tweets per second (TPS)' - from yesterday's Independent

'Man lives and evolves by 'eating' significance, as a child eats food. The deeper his sense of wonder, the wider his curiosity, the stronger his vitality becomes, and the more powerful his grip on his existence' - from Colin Wison's The Occult

'The message of the symphonies of Beethoven could be summarised: 'Man is not small; he is just bloody lazy'' - also from Colin Wison's The Occult .

No Beyoncé, but more wonder, vitality and Beethoven here.

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Muti explores taxing new repertoire

2011-12-09T09:48:00.009Z

'Bob, as you were saying in a previous post about big money prizes. Muti is using his Nilsson prize money to pay his taxes! Really furthers the cause of music. What a recording I could have made with half of that...'

That email came from John 'one Grammy - no orchestra' McLaughlin Williams. Why do so many superstar conductors turn out to have feet of clay when they step off the podium?

Post publication clarification - see discussion in comments below and in particular input from John Von Rhein, whose Chicago Tribune piece prompted John McLaughlin Williams' email. I guess the moral is take what you read in newspapers with a pinch of salt.

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Rail trip music

2011-12-08T16:45:00.004Z

'What you do defines you: what you become determines how you see the world and yourself: how that world and self appears determines how you act. To reject the process, to think of getting off the road, is just another road, another becoming, another birth. Knowing there's no person on the road, that is Awakening.'

Those are the words of Ajahn Sucitto, a Buddhist monk of the Thai forest tradition, and they come from Rude Awakenings, Two Englishmen on Foot to Buddhism's Holy Land. This was one of several rewarding books I read on the 1000 mile rail trip from the North Sea to the Mediterranean which I have just returned from and which supplies the accompanying photos with a nod to Jan Jedlička. Rail trip music is Michael Nyman's MGV (Musique à Grande Vitesse - High Speed Music) which was commissioned for the 1993 inauguration of the TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse) Paris-Lille link. Experimental Music - Cage and Beyond by Michael Nyman featured in Words on twentieth-century music.

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Beginner's mind

2011-11-17T19:40:00.003Z

'In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few... This is also the real secret of the arts: always be a beginner.'

Those are the words of Zen master Shunryu Suzuki and the calligraphy for 'beginner's mind' is also by Suzuki. I am away now for a while rediscovering my beginner's mind. Please support other music blogs while I am offline, but do beware of experts. There is Buddhism of a different flavour in New music in the paradise garden.

Quote is from Zen Mind, Beginners Mind by Shunryu Suzuki. Note that this is a different Suzuki to the Zen master D.T. Suzuki who influenced John Cage and many others. 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 Also on Facebook and Twitter.