The composer conducts - badly?

In the summer of 1919 John Barbirolli was a member of the orchestra for Diaghilev's second post-war season of the Russian ballet ... His particular memory of this season, apart from the pleasure of playing in Stravinsky's Firebird and Petrushka, was of Diaghilev's insistence that Manuel de Falla should conduct his own ballet, Tricorne. Despite the composer's protestations that he was not competent to do it, Diaghilev almost dragged him to the pit at rehearsal. After a few bars they reached some cross-rhythms. Falla stopped beating so the orchestra stopped. 'No, no,' he cried, 'you go on.' He was totally unable to conduct the rhythms he had devised - from Barbirolli the authorised biography by Michael Kennedy.

No, my header photo is not Manuel de Falla; it's Michael Tippett conducting in St Louis in 1968. On March 2 I am playing a recording of Tippett conducting his Second Symphony on my Future Radio programme. Composers have rather a chequered history of conducting their own music, and Elgar, Stravinsky and Copland all received varying reviews for performances of their own works. In his autobiography Those Twentieth Century Blues Tippett confesses "But I don't have the real conductor's technical proficiency ... the main hazard I find is that I begin to listen to the playing as a composer and not as a conductor - which means I can lose my objective control of the performance: and I have to train myself not to go that way".

Tippett's Second Symphony is a notoriously difficult work to perform and the first performance in 1958 under Sir Adrian Boult actually broke down when the BBC Symphony Orchestra's string section lost its way in the complex first movement. But despite the difficulties and his own reservations about his conducting technique Tippett's own version, which was made with a somewhat more secure BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1993, has the Beethovenian energy that is manifestly lacking in Richard Hickox's later, and acclaimed, interpretation on Chandos. But, although Tippett's own recording is very fine, it wouldn't be my first choice; that accolade would go to Colin Davis' electrifying 1968 performance which still sounds fantastic on my Philips LP pressing. The timings of the two versions says it all, Tippett 36' 54", Davis 33' 29"

But judge for yourself how the composer conducts at 5.00pm Sunday March 2 UK time on Future Radio, with a transatlantic friendly repeat at 12.50am Monday March 3. The coupling with Tippett's Second Symphony is Arcangelo Corelli Concerto No 8 in G Minor 'Christmas Concerto'. Check the right-hand side-bar for the audio feed.

YouTube offers Tippett conducting The Midsummer Marriage, Stravinsky conducting The Firebird and best of all Elgar conducting the Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1.
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). Listen on Future Radio at 5.00pm every Sunday and 12.50am every Monday UK time in real time here (convert to local time zones here). Windows Media Player doesn't like the audio stream very much and takes ages to buffer. WinAmp or iTunes handle it best. Unfortunately the royalty license doesn't permit on-demand replay, so you have to listen in real time. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Simple Gifts on internet radio

My Future Radio programme at 5.00pm UK time on Sunday November 25 has an all American theme for the Thanksgiving Holiday, but with an East Anglian twist. Aaron Copland’s first set of Old American Songs was commissioned by Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears for the 1951 Aldeburgh Festival here in East Anglia. There are five songs in the set, and the fourth is the traditional Shaker tune Simple Gifts, and that melody appears in different guises in all the works in the programme. I am playing Susan Chilcott's performance of the Old American Songs accompanied pianist Iain Burnside. Tragically Susan Chilcott died of cancer at the age of 40 just a year after this recording was made.

Simple Gifts has appeared in many different versions over the years, including one by Wilson Picket. But for the central sequence of the programme I'm going back to the song in its original version. It is sung by the Shakers of Sabbathday Lake in Maine augmented by the Schola Cantorum, Boston in a sequence of five Shaker chants and spirituals. The recording I am playing is a real find, read about it here.

For the final music in the programme I turn to one of the most celebrated re-imaginings of Simple Gifts. Aaron Copland's ballet Appalachian Spring was commissioned by the Martha Graham Dance Company, and uses the Shaker melody in the scene where the newly-weds are blessed. The ballet was first performed in Washington DC in 1944, and my header photo is from the original production.

Listen by launching the Radeo internet player from the right side-bar, or direct from the audio stream at 5.00pm on Sunday November 25. Convert to local time zones here. My programme of Simple Gifts is dedicated to Maurice Béjart who died on November 22, 2007, aged 80.

Now read how Aaron Copland found 'tis the gift to be free.
No photo credit, just who owns Martha Graham? Windows Media Player doesn't like the audio stream very much and takes ages to buffer. WinAmp or iTunes handle it best. Unfortunately the royalty license doesn't permit on-demand replay, so you have to listen in real time. If you are in the Norwich, UK area tune to 96.9FM. 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

Lots of fallout from Doctor Atomic Symphony

Length was also a problem in the brand new John Adams work. By default, this turned out to be the world premiere of the Doctor Atomic Symphony - the scheduled premiere in St Louis last March was postponed because the score had taken Adams longer than he anticipated.

But in creating a four-movement, 45-minute span by recomposing music from his 2005 opera, Adams seems to have trusted the original material too implicitly. Without the narrative and text to provide a spine, the result is all surface, lacking in rigour and any genuinely striking ideas, save for the trumpet solo that appears in the final section, which lingers in the mind through its sheer sentimentality.

It was no help to either of Adams's works that the playing of the BBC Symphony Orchestra left such a dreary impression of routine. The whole concert, beginning with a drab account of the suite from Aaron Copland's ballet Billy the Kid, was of a programme left one rehearsal short of a top-quality result.

Andrew Clements reviews the BBC Proms premiere of the Doctor Atomic Symphony in today's Guardian. Sounds like the BBC Symphony Orchestra needs a decent rehearsal facility

Header image shows the first Atomic explosion, July 16, 1945, Trinity Site, New Mexico; July 1945. Photo credit Yellowstone National Park. 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 other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Alan Hovhaness - Mysterious Mountain

Robert Fisk writes in today's Independent ~ "There is nothing so infinitely sad - so pitiful and yet so courageous - as a people who yearn to return to a land for ever denied them; the Poles to Brest Litovsk, the Germans to Silesia, the Palestinians to that part of Palestine that is now Israel. When a people claim to have settled again in their ancestral lands - the Israelis, for example, at the cost of "cleansing" 750,000 Arabs who had perfectly legitimate rights to their homes - the world becomes misty eyed. But could any nation be more miserably bereft than one which sees, each day, the towering symbol of its own land in the hands of another?

Mount Ararat (photo above) will never return to Armenia - not to the rump state which the Soviets created in 1920 after the Turkish genocide of one and a half million Armenians - and its presence to the west of the capital, Yerevan, is a desperate, awful, permanent reminder of wrongs unrighted, of atrocities unacknowledged, of dreams never to be fulfilled. I watched it all last week, cloud-shuffled in the morning, blue-hazed through the afternoon, ominous, oppressive, inspiring, magnificent, ludicrous in a way - for the freedom which it encourages can never be used to snatch it back from the Turks - capable of inspiring the loftiest verse and the most execrable commercialism."

Alan Hovhaness was born in Boston in 1911. His Armenian father came from Adana, which is now in Turkey, and his mother was of Scottish descent. Hovhaness trained at first in the New England Conservatory, and was organist at St. James Armenian Church in Watertown, Massahusetts, (see photo below), where he was influenced by the music of the composer/priest Komitas Vartabed. Listen to MP3 samples of Vartabed's music sung by the Yerevan Chamber Choir here.

In 1942 Hovhaness won a scholarship to study at Tanglewood with Bohuslav Martinu. But Hovhaness did not fit into the Tanglewood clique dominated by Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein. The official Hovhaness web site says that his compositions were ridiculed by the Tanglewood set, and that Bernstein called it "ghetto music." After leaving Tanglewood Hovhaness developed his unique composing style, and continued to be influenced by Armenian, as well as Indian music. After rejection by the Tanglewood group of composers his champions included fellow mavericks John Cage and Lou Harrison.

Hovhaness wrote 67 numbered symphonies, the second of which was composed in 1955 and titled "Mysterious Mountain." Those who believe that youth is a time of life should note that Hovhaness wrote his first symphony aged 25, his second aged 40, and his last aged 81. It would make the perfect overgrown path if the title "Mysterious Mountain" referred specifically to Mount Ararat, but sadly this is not the case. The title refers to mountains in general rather than one specific peak, and the apocryphal story is that the title came about because Leopold Stokowski asked the composer to give the symphony a name.

Whatever the derivation of the title Hovhaness' Second Symphony, like all of the composer's music, should be heard more often. I will be playing the symphony in my Overgrown Path programme on Future Radio tomorrow (Sunday August 5). This is a test webcast, and will be broadcast between 5.00pm and 6.00pm British Summer Time, and is available on web radio. Convert on-air times to your local time zone using this link. Click here for the audio stream. Windows Media Player doesn't like the stream very much and takes ages to buffer, WinAmp or iTunes handle it best. Unfortunately the royalty license doesn't permit on-demand replay, so you have to listen in real time. If you happen to be in the Norwich, UK area tune to 96.9FM.

On Sunday week (August 12) I will be playing William Alwyn's Fifth Symphony which featured in Brain music. Lou Harrison championed Alan Hovhaness. I will be webcasting an all Lou Harrison programme on September 23, and you can read an interview with him in Going Buddhist with Lou Harrison.


Listen via internet radio to Armenian Radio here. Photo credits. Mount Ararat from Wikipedia. St James Armenian Church, Watertown, Mass from church web site. 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 other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Complete Stravinsky at a crazy price

Columbia have released a new compilation of the Works of Stravinsky conducted by the composer and Robert Craft. I paid £29.95 ($60) at Prelude Records for the box, you may find it cheaper online. The twenty-two CD's comprise all the stereo recordings made for Columbia with the composer conducting, one CD with Robert Craft conducting and Stravinsky in attendance, and several older recordings of works not remade in stereo by the composer. The remastering and sound is excellent, far better than earlier issues of these recordings.

When Eugene Gossens conducted Les Noces in its London premiere with the Ballet Russe in 1926, the four pianists were composers Vittorio Rieti, Georges Auric, Francis Poulenc and Vladimir Dukelsky (Vernon Duke). Stravinsky wanted to replicate this for the 1961 recording included in this set, and the pianists were the composers Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, Lukas Foss and Roger Sessions. When invited, Lukas Foss accepted on the condition that he played Piano Number One, while Roger Sessions insisted on the easiest part. For the record (literally) Pianos One and Three were played by Lukas Foss and Samuel Barber, Two and Four by Aaron Copland and Roger Sessions.

This starry line-up was bettered by a 1966 New York performance of The Soldier's Tale which Stravinsky conducted with the speaking parts of the Narrator, the Devil, and the Soldier taken by Aaron Copland, John Cage and Elliott Carter respectively. Sadly this performance isn't in the Stravinsky box.

I'll be dipping into this set on the Overgrown Path radio programme in the autumn, Requiem Canticles (or 'Requicles' as Robert Craft called them) will be top of the list. The Works of Stravinsky are a delight from start to finish. Buy it before Sony realise they made a mistake with the price.

Now follow this path for another unmissable bargain box of CDs.
Anectdotal information from the controversial And Music at the Close: Stravinsky's Last Years by Lillian Libman (Macmillan ISBN 333143043). Photo (c) On An Overgrown Path, taken on the living room carpet a few minutes ago! 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 other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

The greatest American symphony?

The comment below was posted on a recent article. It deserves to be run as a separate post, and I've added the photo and some links to paths that are well worth following.


Pliable, I would love to see the BBC Proms program Paul Creston's (above) Symphony No.2, which is IMO the greatest American Symphony. Just by a hair though, because there are so many that are great! Peter Mennin's 7th also comes to mind as does Nicolas Flagello's 1st. The above along with Aaron Copland's 3rd would be my leading choices for any symphony based American program. Then maybe Walter Piston no.6, George Frederick McKay's Symphony for Seattle, and a whole bunch more. I'm sure Garth and I could go on all day like this.While they're at it, why not call me to do them? I've wanted to do a Prom since like forever! - John McLaughlin Williams

If you want to hear music by the composers mentioned above John's discography includes several CDs of music by Nicolas Flagello and George Frederick McKay.
Photo credit Paul Creston Collection UKMC. 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 other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Holiday weekend - upstate New York

Benjamin Britten, Aaron Copland and Peter Pears in upstate New York during the summer of 1939. Peter Pears (right) is obviously thinking 'tis the gift to be free.
Photo from Humphrey Carpenter's excellent Benjamin Britten, A Biography (Faber ISBN 0571143253). 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 other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Nice one BBC Radio 3

Nice that my article Classical music - revolutionary, elitist, popular supplied the closing moments for this morning's BBC Radio 3 programme on the French presidential elections. Even nicer that presenter Iain Burnside name checked On An Overgrown Path twice, and credited, my translation of Nicolas Sarkozy's comment. You can hear the programme here until 29th April; you need to listen at 1 hour 54 minutes, and there is a fast-forward facility.

As I've written here before Iain Burnside's Sunday morning programme is a shining example of intelligent radio, together with Michael Berkeley's Private Passions. It is surrounded by a rising tide of mediocrity, and is one of the few Radio 3 time-slots not yet infiltrated by 'classical joc' of the moment, the dreadful Petroc Trelawny. But for Iain's sake I hope BBC Radio 3 Controller Roger Wright didn't catch the mentions of On An Overgrown Path.

Not only is Iain Burnside an uncommonly intelligent radio presenter. He is also a very fine pianist who plays on one of my all time favourite CDs, Copland's The Gift to be Free, sung by the late-lamented Susan Chilcott - read the full story here.
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 other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

The first twelve-tone protest song

Andrew Murray, of the Stop the War Coalition, says that every week he is sent new anti-war songs, but they are mainly in a traditional folk style, and he has not yet come across a new song that has quite the anthemic, rallying resonance of Fixin'-to-Die or War. He said that the anti-war movement has had plenty of support from writers, actors and artists, but not quite as much as he would have hoped from the musical fraternity. Ms Dynamite was at the big 2003 rally, Damon Albarn (right) has also attended protests, and Nigel Kennedy and Brian Eno have been active - but Murray says there is a gaping hole for a new song - as Saturday's Guardian reports. Perhaps the Composers Collective could help?

Arriving at the apartment of Charles and his new wife Ruth Crawford Seeger, Peter found them leaving to hear Aaron Copland (below) speak at the leftwing Pierre Degreyter Club. The couple took the boy to an unheated loft in Greenwich Village. As Peter watched from the back of the room, two dozen prominent New York composers arrived, dressed in corduroys and leather jackets, carrying scores and instruments. Trained in the best music schools in the country, they were the renegades of the Philharmonic, passionately political. “The social system is going to hell,” they told each other. “Music might be able to do something about it. Let’s see if we can try. We must try.”

Charles had finally found a way to mix music and activism. He belonged to a group within the DeGeyter Club, the Composers Collective, which tried to compose songs for picket and unemployment lines. . As devotees of the new dissonance, however, the musicians sought to uplift workers’ musical tastes while stirring up revolution. The Composers Collective was probably the first group in the world to attempt to compose a twelve-tone protest song.

Peter did his best to follow Copland’s address, but neither the politics nor the music made sense to him, what with the talk of German composer Hanns Eisler (below) and the slogan, “Music is a weapon in the class struggle.” He did sense how important the Collective’s mission was to his father; Charles now wrote music columns for the Daily Worker under a pseudonym. Peter later heard about his father’s entry in a contest for the best May Day song. When the submissions were played through, the Collective chose Copland’s “Into the Streets May 1st,” with its loud rhythmic chords on the piano. Charles agreed that musically, Copland’s song was best; but his was more singable, he insisted. These were marching songs, after all, and how were workers going to carry a piano on a march?

New York 1932 pictured in David Dunaway’s excellent biography of Pete Seeger (Da Capo ISBN 0306803992). Seeger is not just the guy that brought us ‘If I Had A Hammer’ and other inspirational songs. He was investigated for sedition by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, harassed by the FBI and CIA, blacklisted, picketed, and stoned by conservative groups, and received the support of none other than Benjamin Britten, as I described recently.

And bringing this Path full circle, in 1950 Aaron Copland was asked by Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears to arrange a group of American songs which they could perform in Aldeburgh. Copland responded with a set of five Old American Songs, which were first performed in October 1951 by Britten and Pears. Which links to another story about music and American politics - 'Tis the gift to be free.

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

A treasure trove of music recording history

An interesting, and rewarding, recent development On An Overgrown Path recently has been the interest in the recording process and sound quality, an interest also reflected in other new blogs including the excellent The Crunch. Recording history is a particular area of interest for me as I worked for both the BBC and EMI in my time in the music industry, so I was delighted this week when our internet sleuth Walt Santner sent me details of a veritable treasure trove of recording history links.

The links are part of the University of San Diego's project documenting the history of recorded sound. The timeline only currently goes up to 2005, so it doesn't yet cover topics such as SACD in depth, but there is some really interesting material there including a history of microphone development. But the real gem is the extensive list of internet resources and links. And please don't think this is just for geeks, there is important musical and cultural material there as well.

I've only just started to explore the resources, but already I've been fascinated by the Aaron Copland Collection from the Library of Congress, America's Jazz Heritage from the Smithsonian Institution, a discussion of recording and gender, an audio file of Stokowski talking about orchestra seating layouts, a very good summary of sound recording copyright, and one for the geeks - an illustrated history of world payphones. There are also a lot of downloads, check out the 44 recordings of Omaha Indian music, and Stokowski downloads of ten audio and two video files.

Ideal browsing for an autumn holiday weekend - enjoy!

* That wonderful header photo is from the the HybridSoundSystem.com website, and shows the Seattle Session Orchestra being recorded in Bastyr University Chapel - do check out the HybridSound site for the interesting audio samples.

For more Walt Santner discoveries visit a Treasure trove of historic MP3 downloads
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 other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

'Tis the gift to be free

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free
'tis the gift to come down where you ought to be
And when we find ourselves in the place just right
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gained
To bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed
To turn, turn will be our delight
'Till by turning, turning we come round right
Simple gifts (Shaker song) from Aaron Copland's (above) Old American Songs, set 1, composed in 1950

Tuesday, May 26, 1953
U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
of the Committee on Government Operations,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to Senate Resolution 40,
agreed to January 30, 1953, at 2:30 p.m. in the Office of the
District Committee, the Capitol, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy
presiding.

The Chairman. Could I ask you now about some of your activities. As I said, according to the records, you have what appears to be one of the longest Communist-front records of anyone we have had here. Is it correct that you signed some statement to President Roosevelt defending the Communist party?
Mr. Copland. I have no memory of that but I may have.
The Chairman. Was that your feeling at that time? Did you feel the Communist party should be defended?
Mr. Copland. Well, it would certainly depend on what basis.For example, if someone wanted to have them outlawed to go underground, I might have. I don't think they should be outlawed to go underground, but left above board.

Mr. Copland. I don't think that is a fair summary of my feeling. I have never sympathized with Communists as such. My interest in Eisler was purely as a musician.I think he is, in spite of his political ideas, a great musician and my signing of the concert sponsorship was in relation to that feeling.
The Chairman. Concert sponsorship? It is the petition I am talking about. Do you use the same term so many witnesses use? Do you refer to political beliefs--do you consider the Communist party as a political party in the American sense?
Mr. Copland. In the American sense? Not since the designation of the Supreme Court.
The Chairman. Was this a benefit for Eisler at which you appeared on February 28th, 1948?
Mr. Copland. I don't remember.Pardon me. Will you repeat the question?
The Chairman. Did you appear at an Eisler program at Town
Hall, New York, on February 28, 1948?
Mr. Copland. No, I did not. That was purely sponsorship.
The Chairman. Did you sponsor that?
Mr. Copland. I was one of the sponsors.
The Chairman. Did you know at that time he was in difficulty with the law enforcement agencies of this country for underground or espionage activities?
Mr. Copland. I may have known that, but my sponsorship was in terms of music only and him as a musician.

The Chairman. One final question.
Quoting Hanns Eisler (right), is this a correct description of you by Eisler:
'I am extremely pleased to report a considerable shift to the left among the American artistic intelligentsia. I don't think it would be an exaggeration to state that the best people in the musical world of America (with very few exceptions) share at present extremely progressive ideas.
Their names? They are Aaron Copland.'
Would you say that is a correct description of you?
Mr. Copland. No, I would not. I would say he is using knowledge of my liberal feelings in the arts and in general to typify me as a help to his own cause.
The Chairman. Just for the record, this quotation from Eisler appears in the House Un-American Activities Committee Hearing, September 24, 25, 26, 1947, pages 36, 38, 39.
I have no further questions. How about you Mr. Cohn?
Mr. Cohn. No, sir.
The Chairman. Senator Mundt?
Senator Mundt. No.
Mr. Cohn. You are reminded that you are still under
subpoena and will be called again within the next week, I would
assume.
[Whereupon the hearing adjourned.]

Hanns Eisler had been forced to leave the U.S. in 1948. For the full text of Aaron Copland's 1953 closed hearing follow An Overgrown Path to Aaron Copland's McCarthy hearing.

Photo credits -
Aaron Copland - Fanfaire.com
Senator Joseph McCarthy - Eve's magazine
Hanns Eisler - Gesine-Heinrich
Report broken links, missing images, and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk