Internet radio - the perfect storm

Jørgen Falck has left a new comment on the post "The political dimension of the artist":

Thank you Pliable. Your Greek birthday-concert for Mikis Theodorakis sounded beautiful here on my iTunes player, and I look forward to your next broadcasts on Future Radio (header photo). Like you I'm interested in the classical music life in general and in the radio. And yes, I am looking for alternatives.

Unfortunately we are facing a grotesque situation here in Denmark because of incompetent government policy: The Danish BBC, DR, are building a great new media house for radio and TV, including a new concert hall for the National SO by the architect Jean Nouvel. However, the financial costs of this house are so overwhelming that the government has forced DR to sack a lot of their best employee's, and to make sharp cuts in the programs as well.

The results are all to clear: Repeat broadcasts and common repertoire in huge quantities, Mozart, Beethoven and Mozart again and again.

Therefore, instead of this misery me and other Danish music lovers are tuning in to the Internet's radio world. That's how I found your Overgrown Path and the Radeo site. And thats how I became a daily listener to the excellent Norwegian station Alltid (Always) Klassisk. If not a Danish, I must have a Scandinavian favourite, after all.

Thank you Jørgen, glad you enjoyed the Skalcottas and Theodorakis. Overgrown Path radio will broadcast every Sunday at 17.00h British Summer Time. As I have said before - this is the future of radio. And the perfect storm gathers strength.
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Terry Riley’s Voices In C

Paul Hillier gives us an interesting new take on a musical icon of the 1960’s. Acclaimed as a choral director Hillier is also author of books on minimalist composers Steve Reich and Arvo Pärt, and lives in Copenhagen. With these credentials a vocal take on Terry Riley’s minimalist classic In C with Danish forces makes a lot of sense. A vocal version was first discussed with the composer in the mid 1990s, and Riley annotated a score with ‘sacred syllables’ for the singers to use. It has taken ten years for the project to come to fruition, but the wait was well worth it.

The new recording of In C has been made by Paul Hillier (below) with the twelve-strong early and contemporary vocal goup Ars Nova Copenhagen and the Percurama Percussion Ensemble, and it is a sign of the times that this outstanding new release is on Ars Nova’s own record label. In this vocal version the pulse normally played as a High C on a piano is played by a single marimba, with support from seven other marimbas (one bass), and a vibraphone and Bali gong, with both vocal and percussion parts undergoing polyphonic tranformations. This new take on In C is composer authorised and works beautifully by adding new textures to the original. The percussion parts are difficult enough to play, yet the Ars Nova ensemble deliver the vocal lines with an accuracy that is quite breathtaking.

This is timeless music in more ways than one. The designer of the appealing Bridget Riley influenced sleeve had the bright idea of including old photographs of all the performers in 1964, the year that Terry Riley composed his masterpiece. But such is the youth (and talent) of the performers that many couldn’t supply photographs – simply because they weren’t born in that year.

Now read more about Terry Riley’s music in Requiem for Adam
Header image grab is from Bridget Riley's 1961 Movement in Squares. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included for "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 other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Simple gifts – a guilt-free Christmas CD

This is the perfect guilt-free Christmas CD. Don’t worry about dumbing down - it has shed-loads of scholarship and musicianship. But don’t worry about muesli and sandals – it delivers demonstration quality sound, has all the favourite Christmas tunes you will ever need, and finishes with one of the great moments of recorded music, the recessional carol In dulci jubilo complete with organ, instrumental ensemble and a very large choir in a 12th century cathedral.

A Mass for Christmas Morning presents a selection of Michael Praetorius’ music arranged as it might have been heard in one the large churches in central Germany in the early 17th century. Praetorius was born into a strict Lutheran family, and his compositions became the musical core of the liturgy of Protestant churches in northern Germany. The Lutheran Mass uses the basic structure of the Roman mass, but with more congregational participation – which gives a great opportunity to produce a sonic spectacular.

The versatile Paul McCreesh compiled the mass and conducts. His Gabrieli Consort & Players uses authentic instruments, and include well-known singers such as Sally Dunkley. The professional artists are supplemented by the excellent Boy’s Choir and Congregational Choir of Roskilde Cathedral (my header photo shows the boys), and these choirs are supplemented in turn by local amateur forces. The recording venue is Roskilde Cathedral in Denmark which provides suitably resonant acoustics, and a perfect organ in the form of a three manual instrument dating from 1554.

The final clincher for this guilt-free Christmas purchase is the price. The recording was made by Archiv in 1994. Which means that in today’s crazy music market where the new is valued above everything else, this CD is now available for mid-price or lower – I paid £7.85 ($15.50) for mine from Caiman in Florida delivered to the UK. Don’t worry about the date of the recording. Like a fine wine this Mass for Christmas Morning simply gets better with age, but unlike claret it gets cheaper at the same time.

Now spend more time in Denmark with a Danish thread
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included for "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 other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

The Winter's Tale

“Heck, I reckon you wouldn’t even be human beings if ya didn’t have some pretty strong feelings about nuclear combat.But I want ya to remember one thing, tha folks back home is a countin’ on ya, and by golly, we ain’t about to let ‘em down” Major Kong (Slim Pickens) to his B-52 aircrew when told to attack the Soviet Union. From the movie Doctor Strangelove.

In January 1968 the fears of a catastrophic nuclear accident that had haunted the scientists working on the wartime Manhattan Project were almost realised when an American B-52 bomber carrying four thermonuclear weapons with a reported combined yield of 4.4 megatons of TNT crashed in Greenland. The US Air Force base at Thule in Greenland was a strategically important early-warning station monitoring Soviet missile activity. Because of its importance and location the US government decided in the late '60s that the base was too vulnerable to Russian attack. So at least one US bomber armed with nuclear weapons was kept in the air all the time within radio range of the base. If Thule was attacked this bomber would be able to strike back against Russia, and the picture below shows one of the bombers, armed with nuclear weapons, at the base.


On 21st January 1968 a B-52 Stratofortress carrying seven crew members and four nuclear weapons was circling near Thule on such a mission when a fire started in the cabin heater. The captain tried to land the crippled bomber at the base, but the fire cut all power and the landing was abandoned. Six crew members baled out safely using their ejector seats, and the stricken bomber with one crew member on board (he could not escape as he did not have an ejector seat) flew over the base and crashed onto the sea ice seven miles west of the base. The bomber exploded on impact killing the remaining crew member, and the force of the explosion scattered the burning wreckage over a wide area. The crashing plane is reported to have severed the hot line telecommunications link from the base, triggering a false nuclear attack alert, and causing the Strategic Air Command to think for a short time that the Thule base had been attacked.

A complex sequence of actions was required to set off the nuclear bombs, and these safeguards thankfully meant that there was not a full nuclear explosion. But the deadly weapons are triggered by high explosives, and these did explode in all four bombs. The resulting explosion spread uranium, tritium and plutonium over a 700 meter radius. The heat from the burning plane caused the ice to melt, and debris, including the thermonuclear assembly from one of the bombs, fell through to the seabed.

The ensuing clean-up operation involved 3000 personnel, 38 naval ships, and the removal of 10,000 tons of snow and ice. But controversy continues as to how successful it was. A U.S. State Department document dated August 1968 said all the nuclear weapons had been ‘accounted for’, but failed to spell-out whether this actually meant they had been recovered. The Danish media claims that one of the thermonuclear weapons (picture right) was never recovered, and still lies on the seabed. A Pentagon spokesman is reputed to have made the following statement about the missing weapon, “I don’t know of any missing bomb, but we have not positively identified what I think you are looking for”.

A study in 1987 by a Danish medical institute showed that workers at the Thule base were 50% more likely to develop cancers than other Danish military personnel. 200 of the workers subsequently unsuccessfully sued the U.S. government, but the discovery process for the court case identified anomalies in health monitoring procedures.

Missing bomb, or no missing bomb, the Thule B-52 crash graphically confirmed the stanza from the Bhagavad Gita quoted by ‘Doctor Atomic’ Robert Oppenheimer before the very first atomic test, and quoted in my article about the Manhattan Project.

If the radiance of a thousand suns
Were to burst at once into the sky,
That would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...
I am become Death,
The shatterer of Worlds

Eighteen years after the Thule accident fears of a full nuclear disaster were realised at Chernobyl in the former USSR (now Ukraine). Important safety procedures were disregarded while testing one of the reactors in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant located 80 miles north of Kiev. In the early morning of 25th April 1986 the chain reaction in one reactor escalated out of control. The subsequent explosion blew off the reactor's heavy steel and concrete lid (right), releasing a fireball with 'the radiance of a thousand suns'. As well as those killed in the blast 28 people died within four months from radiation burns. 19 more died subsequently, and there have been a further nine deaths from thyroid cancer apparently due to the accident, bringing the total fatalities to 56. As a result of the high radiation levels in the surrounding area 135,00 people had to be evacuated

Nuclear energy is never far from the headlines. On the day I wrote this article Russia cut Ukraine's gas supplies, and triggered a knock-on gas shortage in other European countries. Concern over the stability of energy supplies triggered new calls for the development of further nuclear power stations. Among those who worked with the victims of the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear plant were International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), a non-partisan international grouping of medical organisations dedicated to the abolition of nuclear weapons. They work with the long-term victims of nuclear explosions and accidents in locations ranging from Hiroshima to Chernobyl, and their work has been recognised with the 1984 UNESCO Peace Prize, and 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. For the last 21 years IPPNW-Concerts has been working from its Berlin office with top musicians world-wide to raise funds for their work.

As well as being a fantastic cause there is some music well worth exploring available on IPPNW-Concerts' own CD label, and in co-productions with Swedish label BIS. These are all live recordings of concerts promoted by IPPNW over the years. There are forty-nine CDs in the catalogue with composers ranging from Monteverdi to Elliot Carter. The nuggets worth mining include Furtwängler's Te Deum (right) coupled with Brahms and Hindemith (CD40).

Wort und Musik - 60 Jahre nach Hiroshima is a live recording made at the March 2005 'Nuclear Weapons Inheritance Project' which mixes readings in German from a range of authors including Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Albert Einstein and Sadako Kurihara with relevent music including the aria from Bach’s Goldberg Variations, Shostakovich's String Quartet No 8 and Schubert’s Quartettsatz. On the lighter side there are also a number of jazz recordings worth exploring, including the Berlin Philharmonic Jazz Group playing live in 2004 in the Philharmonie in Berlin with the world-famous baritone Thomas Quasthoff.

IPPNW co-productions with BIS also contain some real gems. My own favourite is a live Missa Solemnis from the Philharmonie in Berlin with Antal Doráti conducting the European Symphony Orchestra, University of Maryland Chorus, and a distinguished group of soloists. Another BIS co-production recorded at the Philharmonie with the New Berlin Chamber Orchestra and members of the Czech Philharmonic and HdK-Chamber Choir conducted by Martin Fischer-Dieskau includes two of Doráti’s own compositions (his Pater Noster, Prayer for Mixed Choir and Jesus oder Barabbas? a melodrama after a story by Karinthy Frigyes for Speaker, Orchestra and Choir) alongside works from Bartok and Martinu. Finally among the BIS co-productions a live Mahler Symphony No 9 with Rudolf Barshai conducting the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra is a rarity well worth investigating. All proceeds from the sale of these CDs benefit those in dire need as a result of war, industrial and natural catastrophe. Need I say more?

Picture credits: Header - Amazon, B-52 and nuclear bomb - Thule Forum, Chernobyl - BBC News, Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed.
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If you enjoyed this post take an overgrown path to The radiance of a thousand suns

Danish thread

The thread continued through a visit to Denmark last week. We flew Ryanair to the university city of Arhus. After getting off the airport bus in the city centre we set off on foot to the SAS Radisson Hotel, (which was very comfortable but is a typical convention hotel, although we weren't there for a convention, just got a great deal from Expedia - this post is starting to sound like all those other geeklogs about open source conferences in San Francisco isn't it?).

Our route took us straight past an excellent bookshop, Hinges Antikvariat in Banegardsgade, which had displayed in the window Monasteries of the world: the rise and development of the monastic tradition by Christopher Brooke (photographs by Wim SwaanPublisher: Ware, Hertfordshire : Omega Books, 1982, c1974.ISBN: 0-90785-330-7 DDC: 271.0094) which I swiftly vacuumed up for 200 Danish Kroner. A wonderful book, with a very good text supported by excellent photographs and really good plans.

The main reason for visiting Arhus was to take in the new Aros Gallery which opened earlier this year, and as a building manages to deliver that unique Scandinavian combination of style and function, see photo below.


It is a must visit for its collection of twentieth-century Danish art, but the unexpected show stopper was Ron Mueck's five metre high sculpture 'Boy'. Modern works of art that stop you dead in your tracks are rare; this one was surrounded by gawping visitors of all ages. The header photo shows 'Boy' on display at the gallery.

Musically it was also an interesting visit. I picked up Danish composer's Johann Ernst Hartmann's complete symphonies on the German label CPO, an 18th century Danish composer that is well worth exploring.


I also picked up Spanish composer's Fredirico Mompou's complete piano works in a 4 CD set - nothing at all to do with Denmark other than that it was on the shelf in a music store. This recording comes from the Dutch label Brilliant Classics which is well worth exploring, they are a budget label but seem to be very smart at licensing (or recording) artistically worthwhile recordings. I have got a lot out their release of the Rubio Quartet recordings of the complete Shostakovich String Quartets , an excellent 5 CD set at a ridiculously low price.

We even managed to fit in alive performance of an excellent string quartet comprising Principals from the Arhus Symphony Orchestra. We didn't know until we arrived that the concert was in the 200 year old reconsructed Elsinore Theatre in the 'Old Town' (Den Gamle By) which is a wonderful open air museum a short walk from Arhus City Centre. The acoustics of the old wooden theatre, but the programme (apart from an excellent Haydn early quartet) of Verdi and Kreisler quartets fell into the category of justly neglected masterpieces!

Also visited Arhus Cathedral (Arhus Domkirke) which dates from the 13th Century. Its' many fine wall paintings were white washed over in the Reformation giving a striking stark simplicity to the interior (although thankfully some of the paintings have been incovered and restored). A noteable feature of the Domkirke is the Frobenius Organ which has been used for many famous recordings, including Dame Gillian Weir's Messiaen Cycle

A memorable visit, and the power of Ron Mueck's work will stay with us for some time.
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