Glock around the clock

Another contribution to the Glock centenary - Sir William with Peter Maxwell Davies at Dartington Summer School in 1979. Glock is often criticised for ignoring the music of certain British composers. So it is interesting to note that there is not a single note of Max's music in the 2008 BBC Proms Season. But, don't worry, there's lots here, and a new CD here.
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Different tempo but the music continues

'The pause is as important as the note' ~ Truman Fisher

We start a summer of travelling tomorrow with a flight to Morocco, so the tempo of posting will slow markedly. While I'm away do read other great music blogs here, but why not escape the tyranny of league tables and explore the long tail of music blogs over here? But don't forget the music continues on my Future Radio programme at 5.00pm UK time every Sunday with a repeat at 12.50am on Monday morning. Here is the forward schedule which starts on April 20 with two modern composers who between them do not have a single note of their music in the 2008 BBC Proms season.

April 20 Unique British voices - Peter Maxwell Davies Missa Parvula sung by Choir of Westminster Cathedral; Edmund Rubbra Symphony No 6 played by Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Norman del Mar. (Nice Max connection as I took the photo of the Japanese garden at Dartington Hall where he was a fixture at the Summer School for many years).

April 27 Bach and beyond - J.S. Bach Sonata No. 1 in G minor played by Mark Lubotsky; Eugène Ysaÿe Sonata No 2 in A Minor for violin played by Thomas Zehetmair; J.S. Bach Partita No 3 in E major played by Mark Lubotsky.

May 4 Meditations on war - Richard Strauss Metamorphosen in realisation for string septet played by supplemented Brandis Quartet; Benjamin Frankel Violin Concerto, 'In Memory of the Six Million' played by Ulf Hoelscher with Queensland Symphony Orchestra conducted by Werner Andreas Albert.

May 11 Elaborated plainsong - Jacobus de Kerle Missa Pro Defunctis (extracts) sung by Huelgas-Ensemble directed by Paul Van Nevel; James MacMillan – Veni, Veni, Emmanuel played by Colin Currie and the Ulster Orchestra conducted by Takuo Yuase.

May 18 Musicians in exile - Bohuslav Martinů Concertino for Piano Trio and String Orchestra played by the Dresden Trio and New Berlin Chamber Orchestra conducted by Martin Fischer-Dieskau; Peter Paul Fuchs Five Miniatures, artists unknown, private recording supplied by Mrs Elissa Fuch; Karl Weigl String Quartet No 5 played by Artis Quartet of Vienna. ITunes podcast of Fuch's Five Miniatures now available for download.

May 25 Vaughan Williams anniversary - Ralph Vaughan Williams Five Mystical Songs sung by Thomas Allen (baritone), Corydon Singers and English Chamber Orchestra directed by Matthew Best and Symphony No. 4 with Sir Adrian Boult conducting the New Philharmonia Orchestra.

Enjoy!

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It's good news week for contemporary music

To start the week two excellent reasons why this new release of Peter Maxwell Davies' chamber music is good news. First, it's great music passionately played by the chamber ensemble Gemini and vividly recorded in the slightly dry acoustics of Studio 1 at the Department of Sound & Recording at the University of Surrey. (The department is very highly rated and has offered a tonmeister course for many years). The main work on the CD is Ave Maris Stella from 1975 which lasts for almost 30 minutes. This is classic early Max, writing before he was seduced by the plush sounds of the symphony orchestra and string quartet. Strange isn't it how composers like Maxwell Davies and Ralph Vaughan Williams produce some of their best works on religous themes yet are non-believers? Worth the purchase price alone is Dove, Star Folded from 2001 which, unusually for Max, is based on a Greek Byzantine hymn; John Tavener had better look out.

The second reason why this CD is good news is that it comes from the Metier label which has been aquired by the enterprising small Divine Art Record Company (who have nothing at all to do with Falun Gong ). Metier have a back catalogue well worth exploring, Michael Finnisy Music for String Quartet, Roberto Gerhard String Quartets and Morton Feldman and Christopher Fox's Clarinet and String Quartet are just some of the riches while Divine Art has a future release of piano sonatas from Elliott Carter, Miklos Rosza, Charles Ives and Edward MacDowell.

And talking of Peter Maxwell Davies I'm playing his Missa Parvula on Future Radio on April 20 in a coupling with Edmund Rubbra's Symphony No. 6, which let's me give a heads-up to Dutton's excellent new recordings of Rubbra's chamber music. And it also means I can share some more good news. Future Radio's station manager told me today that the Overgrown Path programme page gets more hits than any other page on their website except for the schedule and webcam pages. That's more hits than the rock, hip-hop, electro and other programme pages. It must be all that Vaughan Williams I'm playing ... And more good news for the small guys/girls, leading independent record store Prelude Records in Norwich was packed on Saturday , the busiest I've ever seen. Is the tide turning away from the internet?

It's good news week, which is why music is good for you..
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Beatle to Berio to Boulez to birthday boy

Pierre Boulez was born on March 26, 1925. Quite obviously my photo is not of Boulez, but this path leads to him. The photo was taken at the Italian Institute in London in 1965, Paul McCartney is talking to Luciano Berio and between them is Barry Miles who was a key figure in the 60s counterculture. The photo comes from Miles' memoir In the Sixties which places Berio, Cage and others alongside better known icons of the decade and is one of the best books on the period. Like so many good books today it is out of print, but is still available if you search.

One of my favourite Berio CDs is the 1984 Erato recording of his Sinfonia with the New Swingle Singers and Orchestre National de France conducted by birthday boy Pierre Boulez. The Sinfonia is the composer's best-known work and blends Samuel Beckett, Martin Luther King, Claude Levi-Strauss and, of course, Mahler in Berio's unique style.

Barry Miles went to Cirencester Grammar School where his music teacher was Peter Maxwell Davies. In the Sixties describes how Max invited older boys back to the converted apple loft where he lived to drink claret from eighteenth-century goblets, and how, when required to play the piano for the hymns at morning assembly, Max placed a lighted candelabrum on top in the style of Liberace. Miles' other books include an excellent biography of another counterculture figure Allen Ginsberg, read more here.
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Online retailer maxed out?

While much attention is being devoted to the demise of 'bricks and mortar' music stores has the disappearance of a much-acclaimed online retailer slipped under the radar? Many commentators, including me, lavishly praised Peter Maxwell Davies' MaxOpus website with its' paid-for audio file downloads when it launched several years ago. Here is what I wrote - 'It is simply a first class internet resource, and a commercial one to boot ... A brilliant concept, with inspired execution.'

But where is MaxOpus today? The composer's pioneering online venture has been returning an 'Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage' message for some time now, although his publisher still links to it. Temporary technical gremlins, too much too soon or just a victim of Max's problems with his business manager? Information and updates, as ever, welcomed.

Now playing - Peter Maxwell Davies' Image, Reflections, Shadow played by The Fires of London with Gregory Knowles cimbalon (visible bottom right in the header image) on the original 1984 LP release from the now defunct independent Unicorn-Kanchana label, and quite magnificent it still sounds. The header image shows the back of the LP sleeve, I'm glad I hung on to the vinyl.

I notice that Misha Donat produced the Unicorn recording. He was also producer of the label's wonderful cycle of Elizabeth Maconchy String Quartets, which is a perfect back-link.
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More about style than intellectual substance

"A lively era comes to an end this summer, when Nicholas Kenyon presides over his tenth and last BBC Proms season before going off to become the managing director of the Barbican. It’s spooky that his tenure has more or less coincided with Tony Blair’s as Prime Minister, because their regimes have been quite similar. Like Blair’s New Labour, Kenyon has promoted a “big tent” policy at the Proms: strong on diversity, inclusiveness and impact. And, like Blair, he has sometimes been accused of caring more about style and presentation than intellectual substance.

"It’s undeniable that Kenyon’s decade hasn’t been as notable for avant-garde shocks or bold commissions as, say, William Glock’s Prom seasons in the 1960s were. When, as an impressionable youth, I attended the bloodcurdling Proms premiere of Peter Maxwell Davies’s Worldes Blisin 1969, I watched with astonishment as hundreds of outraged punters stampeded for the exits. Similarly, when John Drummond, Kenyon’s predecessor, provocatively programmed Harrison Birtwistle’s Panic on the Last Night in 1995 – knowing full well that it would be televised on BBC One at peak time on a Saturday evening – the BBC switchboard was jammed with calls from appalled viewers.

"Nothing in Kenyon’s era has caused such a furore – not even his faux pas of concocting an entire season last year without including a single woman composer or conductor. He is too silky-smooth an operator, and perhaps too emollient a personality; he doesn’t get a buzz from ruffling feathers.

Richard Morrison tells it like it is in this extract from The Times, although hasn't Nicholas Kenyon been director of the BBC Proms for twelve seasons, not ten? For more on those William Glock Proms, and also on a composer you won't find in the 2007 season, take this path.
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Contemporary composer's missing notes

The manager of the Queen's composer has been arrested in connection with a fraud complaint. Sir Peter Maxwell Davies called in police after as much as £500,000 reportedly went missing from his business account. Officers from Metropolitan Police and Northern Constabulary launched an investigation, and the composer's manager and long-time friend Michael Arnold was arrested last month. He has been bailed pending further enquiries ~ reports Dumfries.co.uk.

Sadly, not a good year for the musician with teeth, in January he also had his gay Orkney wedding was derailed.
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David Munrow - more than early music

'David Munrow and the Early Music Consort of London transformed our view of medieval music. The impact of their performances far surparssed any that had gone before: by demonstrating how medieval music could sound normal, they created a niche for it in the concert hall and on record that it has never lost' ~ From Daniel Leech-Wilkinson's notes for Music of the Gothic era

May 15 2007 is the thirty-first anniversary of the death of David Munrow. His contribution to the acceptance, understanding and performance of early music almost defies summary. He was born in 1942, and learnt the bassoon and recorder as a child. Between school and university he travelled and taught in South America , and started the collection of ethnic instruments that were to give him, and the world, a new perspective on early music making. He read English at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and was encouraged by Thurston Dart to take an active role in the music-making of that most musical of cities. It was at Cambridge that he started giving his unique combination of lectures and recitals on woodwind instruments that set him on a career as an evangeliser and performer of early music.

In 1966 he joined the wind band of the Royal Shakespeare Company and performed incidental music for the Bard's plays in Stratford and London. Shortly after he formed the Early Music Consort, an ensemble that was to challenge and change the performance style of early music. Among the original members of the consort were James Bowman and Christopher Hogwood (photo above).

Munrow is best known for bringing little known medieval and Renaissance music to a wide audience. But his activities were not confined to concerts and recordings. He used early instruments in the film and television scores which he composed, including The Six Wives of Henry VIII, A Man for All Seasons, and The Devils (with Peter Maxwell Davies). He also worked with folk musicians including Dolly Cousins and The Young Tradition. And he was actively involved in new music, among the first performances he gave were Elisabeth Lutyens' The Tears of Night (1972), and Peter Dickinson's Translations (1971) and Recorder Music for recorder Player and Tape (1973). He was a natural communicator, his BBC Radio 3 programme the Pied Piper was broadcast four times a week for five years and introduced a huge audience to the riches of early music, and he also devised and presented the TV series Ancestral Voices.

David Munrow's recorded legacy is considered so important that one of his recordings was included on the Voyager space craft's 'golden disc' that was sent to Mars a year after his death. The following is a brief guide to three 'essential' recordings, all of which are available in the UK for around just £10 ($18) for each double CD. No serious music collection should be without them.

* The Art of Courtly Love - a collection of French secular music from Guillaume de Machaut to Guillaume Dufay. Although the time span is little more than a hundred years it covers one of the most astonishingly rich and varied periods in medieval music, including not only the development of polyphonic song, but also the summit of the song writer's art. Recorded by EMI in Studio 1 Abbey Road in late 1972 and early 1973 this is relatively early Munrow, and the musicians include Early Music Consort founders James Bowman, James Tyler and Christopher Hogwood.

* The Art of the Netherlands - a collection of early Renaissance secular and sacred vocal music. When this recording was made by EMI in 1975 many of the Flemish composers on it, including Brumel, Josquin, Ockeghem and Obrecht were unfamiliar to listeners. Now thanks to Munrow's pioneering work they are well represented both in the catalogue and in live performance. The first CD is devoted to secular songs, while the second is made up of Mass movements and motets. The singers include Sally Dunkley who went on to perform with the Tallis Scholars, The Sixteen and the William Byrd Choir. To purists Munrow's presentation of 'bleeding chunks' of Renaissance masses may appear anachronistic, but this is wonderful music presented with commitment and inspiration. The variety is a strength not a weakness, and the result is a persuasive overview of the music of this period. As well as being an important recording in its own right this budget priced two CD set is an invaluable 'sampler' for anyone wanting an introduction to Renaissance polyphony.

* Music of the Gothic Era is a remarkable survey of vocal music from the 12th to 15th century, progressing from the Notre Dame School, through Ars Antiuqa to Ars Nova. The composers include Léonin, Pérotin, and Machaut, and the singers include James Bowman and Roger Covey-Crump. Music of the Gothic Era was made in 1975,predating by thirteen years the Hilliard Ensemble's recording of Pérotin on ECM, a recording which used two of the same singers. Munrow's performance was pioneering in every way, and it pointed to a new direction with a revised consort exploring sacred repertoire, which alas he did not live to realise. Some of the realisations may be out of step with today's concepts of 'authentic performance', but Munrow's scholarship, vision, enthusiasm and sheer exuberance result in compelling music-making that it is still outstanding in every way after thirty years.

The Archiv division of Deutsche Grammophon recorded Music of the Gothic Era in the Chapel of Charter House School. David Munrow no longer had an exclusive EMI contract. Like Herbert von Karajan, who was also an EMI artist at that time, he signed contracts with both Deutsche Grammophon and EMI to maximise his commercial leverage. Munrow was ambitious, but he never lost his sheer enthusiasm and exuberant delight in music making. His irrepressible personality and talent meant he was now a media figure, and a career as a conductor and broadcaster outside the early music world was predicted.

But it was not to be. David Munrow completed the sessions for Music of the Gothic Era in October 1975, and followed by recording the LP Monteverdi's Contemporaries for EMI in November 1975. These were his last recordings. He took his own life on 15th May 1976, aged thirty- three.

Other David Munrow resources On An Overgrown Path include:
* David Munrow and the Voyager golden record
* Exclusive - a little piece of recording history,
* Monteverdi in Cambridge
* Follow this link for a discography
Article first published On An Overgrown Path in Feb 2006. Image credits: Header - Castle Classics, Early Music Consort - Musicteachers.co.uk, The Art of the Netherlands - www.amazon.com , recording session - Nigelnorth.net
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What a bum note, Norman

It's Critics 2 Creatives 0 in today's Observer. First English National Opera's production of Philip Glass's Satyagraha concedes an early goal to Anthony Holden:

"Oh, do get on with it ~ As music, extremely well performed, it is interesting for 10 minutes, pleasant for another 10, then insufferably monotonous for the ensuing three hours-plus. Some will emerge believing they have seen an inspirational affirmation of the human spirit, others a non-violent attempt to bore the oppressor into submission."

But that's nothing to Norman Lebrecht's defeat by Adams Mars-Jones:

"What a bum note, Norman ~ The strange fascination of reading the book lies in seeing how an unstable emulsion of attitudes breaks down into its components. The style is desperately uncomfortable, full of high-impact, low-logic phrasemaking: 'He was on a vertical curve'; 'Prolific? He invented the word'; 'Vladimir Horowitz had more comebacks than Lucifer.' If this is a serious book on an important subject, it should look to its own standards."

Which is precisely what many of us have been saying for some time. Just glad the critics didn't review Peter Maxwell Davies' speech to the Incorporated Society of Musicians. Its style suggests that Max has been reading too much Norman Lebrecht.
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Composer's gay Orkney wedding derailed

Today's Scotsman reports - Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (left), the Master of the Queen's Music, is considering legal action after he was banned from having a "gay wedding" on the Orkney island of Sanday. The celebrated composer, who has lived on the island for the past nine years, had planned to have a civil ceremony performed by his neighbour, Charlie Ridley, the registrar for the island, but has been forbidden by Orkney Islands Council.

Sir Peter, 72, and his partner of six years, Colin Parkinson, 52, a builder, had planned to tie the knot at the Sanday Light Railway, a tourist attraction built by Mr Ridley, 47, over seven years in the garden of his croft. They hoped to arrive by train, driven by Mr Ridley, who would then perform the ceremony. The composer, who officially opened the railway in August, was even composing a piece called Sanday Railway for the ceremony, which was expected to draw guests across the world of classical and pop music.

But when Mr Ridley applied for permission to perform the civil ceremony, he was told that only the registrar based at Kirkwall was authorised to carry out a civil partnership. This would force Sir Peter and his guests to travel 90 minutes by boat to the Orkney mainland. In the same letter Mr Ridley was told he now had to comply with public entertainment licensing regulations for his railway, which would cost £5,000 a year. As a result Mr Ridley, who spent £50,000 building the railway, has started to tear it down and insisted he would abandon the island.

Sir Peter, acknowledged as one of the foremost modern composers - and whose works, ironically, include An Orkney Wedding (below) - said he and his partner still wanted to marry on Sanday with Mr Ridley performing the ceremony. He said: "I am taking legal advice. We are under the impression that a local registrar can conduct civil ceremonies. Everybody can get married where they live except me, it seems. It would not have the same meaning to get married elsewhere, but I will not give the council the pleasure of me marrying in Kirkwall. We will do it elsewhere in the UK if we cannot do it on Sanday." He continued: "Everybody on the island is in a terrible state over what has happened to Charlie. If he leaves we will lose our main tourist attraction. Why has it taken the council seven years to throw these bills at Charlie?"

Meanwhile, Mr Ridley accused the council of anti-gay "discrimination" and said he was still determined to wed the pair on Sanday. "In the same letter they linked the need for a public entertainments licence even though I have never charged a penny for the railway. I cannot afford the £5,000 a year and all the other administration and regulations involved. So I have closed the railway and I am leaving. But not before I marry Peter and Colin here."

Orkney Islands Council (OIC) said that in common with all the other home-based registrars in its registration district, the Sanday registrar is not authorised to carry out civil partnership ceremonies. "The OIC has taken the decision, in line with guidance from the Registrar General, that the only registrar authorised to carry out civil partnership ceremonies is at Kirkwall Registration Office. OIC will be discussing this situation with all those concerned to find an acceptable solution."

From today's Scotsman - now listen to Max's Orkney Wedding.
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Farewell to Stromness

A comment on my Judith Weir article by regular reader Henry Holland quite correctly pointed out that Peter Maxwell Davies isn't really a Scottish composer as he was born in Oldham in England, and studied in Manchester. Henry's thoughtful comment set me off down a few personal Overgrown Paths which I share here, and which will eventually explain the mystery photograph above.

Despite his Lancashire origins I have a particular fondness for Max's more Scottish music, and first heard his exquisite 'An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise', with its memorable part for Highland Bagpipes (below), played in the MacRobert Arts Centre in Stirling, Scotland when we lived there in the 1980's. The MacRobert auditorium on the University of Stirling campus was a regular venue for BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra broadcasts on BBC Radio 3. I remember a very young Nigel Kennedy sitting in the back row listening to the second half of a concert after playing the Walton Violin Concerto in the first half. He was waiting for the orchesta bus to take him back down the motorway to Glasgow. These days a personal helicopter would be hovering outside as the last bars of the Walton died away - if the BBC Scottish could ever afford 'Nige's' fee.

I have to guiltily confess that one of my favourite compositions by Max, in fact one of my favourite pieces of music by any composer, is his distinctly non-avant garde five minute solo for piano Farewell to Stromness. I have put it on the CD player as I write, and yes, it still sends shivers down my spine. The story behind this piece is worth airing. Farewell to Stromness and Yesnaby Ground are piano interludes from The Yellow Cake Revue, a sequence of cabaret-style numbers first performed at the St. Magnus Festival, Orkney in Scotland, by Eleanor Bron, with the composer at the piano, in June 1980. The Yellow Cake Revue took its name from the popular term for refined uranium ore, and the revue was written to highlight the threat of a proposed uranium mine to the economy and ecology of the Orkney Islands. Stromness, the second largest town in Orkney (pop. 1500, photo to right), would have been two miles from the uranium mine's core, and the centre most threatened by pollution. Yesnaby is the nearby clifftop beauty spot under whose soil the uranium is known to lie. Farewell to Stromness also exists as a guitar arrangement, and once appeared in a soft-rock version. It had the questionable distinction of being arranged for strings by Rosemary Furniss (not by Max I note) for the blessing of the marriage of Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall at St. George's Chapel in Windsor Castle in 2005, Max of course being the Master of the Queen's Music, of which more below. Note to any jazz pianists reading this - here are two pieces just waiting to be translated into a jazz idiom.

If you do not know Farewell to Stromness or Yesnaby Ground you are missing something seriously beautiful, here linked from the excellent MaxOpus web site are audio files:

Farewell to Stromness -

Yesnaby Ground -

All of which gives me a reason to tell my very favourite Maxwell Davies story. Earlier this year Max was investigated by the police for making terrine from a dead swan found on his property in the Orkneys. The swan had hit power lines, so was dead on arrival in a very Parsifal kind of way. As the swan is a protected species a police investigation followed complete with search warrant. No charges were brought, but if they had been it would have been interesting as all swans in the UK come come under the prorogative of the Queen, who employs an official swan keeper. And the Queen happens to be Max's employer. See this link for the full story.

And yes, I know you are all asking what has the header photo got to do with this story? Well, there are personal connections with the Orkney Islands which explain it. During the Second World War my late father was a gunnery instructor with the RAF Regiment attached to the USAF. He spent much of the latter part of the war in the relative safety of an Orkney Islands training base teaching the American crews of B-17 Flying Fortress crews to shoot-down German night fighters, while my poor mother suffered the worst of the bomb raids in central London where she worked. A string of celebrity air crews attached to the US 8th Army Air Force passed through the Orkney base, and one of them was Clark Gable, star of Gone with the Wind (right) and many other classic films. The previously unpublished photo found among my father's papers shows Clark Gable working on a B-17 in the Orkneys, rather than working on a film set.

Of course Gone with the Wind also has strong musical connections. The composer of its Oscar-nominated score was Max Steiner. He was born in Vienna where his grandfather was a musical impresario, and his godfather was Richard Strauss. Like Peter Maxwell Davies he was something of a child prodigy, and reputedly graduated from Vienna's Imperial Academy of Music at the age of 13 after completing an eight-year course in one year. He took conducting lessons from Gustav Mahler and made his concert debut at 16. After a short time in Britain he emigrated to the United States in 1914. He became a Warner Bros staff composer in 1936, and remained there until his retirement in 1965. Steiner (right) personally scored more than a hundred films, and contributed material to several hundred others. By far his best known work is his 1939 score for Gone with the Wind (my header picture of Clark Gable must have been taken a few years after the film was made).

So here to play this post out in style is Hollywood's answer to Farewell to Stromness - the original soundtrack version of Max Steiner's Tara's Theme, which also still manages to pass An Overgrown Path's 'shivers down the spine' test -

And this, of course, is where the credits roll .......

Pictures - header, copyright On An Overgrown Path. This photo is one of several of Clark Gable taken when he was with the US 8th Army Air Force. I don't think they have been previously published. Any Gable biographers or interested parties should contact me for more details.
Orkney Wedding performance - BBC
Stromness – Visitorkney.com
Gone with the Wind - Amazon
Max Steiner - The Columnists
Music - Farewell to Stromness and Yesnaby Ground are on the excellent disc of Max's music A celebration of Scotland (see, he was a Scottish composer) on Unicorn Kanchana
Audio stream - Maxwell Davies works from MaxOpus, Tara's Theme from Reel Classics
Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. If bandwidth is a problem with your permission I will host your image.
Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Memories of the USAAF 389th Bomb Group at Hethel, the Green Dragons

Dog eats dog....

In the classical music world musician owned record labels are all the rage, and my post MaxOpus was about Sir Peter Maxwell Davies' innovative web site, which is complete with music downloads.

Michael Nyman of 'The Piano' fame is the latest to join the bandwagon (pun intended). Neglect by his corporate label Warner Classics is the accusation, and MN Records is Nyman's own label.

But Warner Classics are not taking the accusation lying down, here is their letter from today's Guardian.

There is one very simple reason that Michael Nyman is starting his own label: no one else will release his records any more. He blames the low profile of Facing Goya and Sangam on "inadequate marketing by Warner's". Sadly for him, the real reason was inadequate music which is, I imagine, a harder pill to swallow.

Matthew Cosgrove, Director, Warner Classics