On An Overgrown Path

Christopher Lyndon-Green 's cycle of Valentin Silvestrov's orchestral works for Naxos is remarkable in several ways. His conducting of the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra does full justice to the music of one of our greatest living symphonists. But there is more. For the new release of Silvestrov's magnificent Symphony No. 8 and Violin Concerto with soloist Janus Wawrowski , Christopher Lyndon-Green contributes an essay that expresses what many of us feel, but with an eloquence we cannot match. Here is an extract:  Is Silvestrov a Postmodernist Composer?  What, exactly, is meant by the term ‘postmodernism’ has yet to be satisfactorily defined.   Jean-Jacques Nattiez has famously written, in his great essay about Boulez’s Répons , ‘Modernism created a gulf with the public, and postmodernism wants to bridge that gap.’  Such a ‘definition’ would seem to give free reign to the all-too-often superficial neo-Romanticism of much contemporary composition, to mim...

In a latest desperate attempt to generate street cred for our monarch, the royal spin doctors have created an Apple Music playlist for King Charles. Leaving aside concerns that supporting a rapacious streaming service is hardly the best way to help the UK's creative industries , Charles has a somewhat worrying track record as a music influencer.  When a leading orchestra proposed programming Michael Tippett's innocuous Suite for the Birthday of Prince Charles at a concert to be attended by the future monarch, the Suite was vetoed because the orchestra's managing director was told "Charles hates it". The dangers of King Charles' creative myopia were chronicled by the inimitable John Drummond in his autobiography :  I have always found [Prince Charles'] lack of interest in anything to do with the arts in our time depressing, since all his opinions get so widely reported. It seems to me that he has had unrivalled opportunities to get to understand the tw...

When listening to BBC Radio 3's broadcast of Berg's Violin Concerto and Schubert's Ninth Symphony with Simon Rattle, the London Symphony Orchestra and soloist Leonidas Kavakos, I was struck by how engaging the sound was. Engaging is not the same as life-like, and the sound captured in LSO St Luke's - a repurposed 18th century Hawksmoor church - was not what would be heard in a conventional concert hall. But the separate voices - both sections and soloist - within the orchestra could be clearly and separately heard, without compromising the overall integrity of the sound picture**. If I can find a word to describe the sound it was 'commercial'. In this context I am not using commercial as a pejorative; but as a description of a sonic experience likely to engage ears attuned to recorded sound from beyond the classical world - and that is classical's target market. If classical music wants a wider audience, it must engage new listeners. So it is difficult...

When I was at university in the late 1960s hitchhiking was my preferred mode of transport. I remember thumbing it out of Reading headed for the Gower Peninsula in South Wales, only to be stranded at a roundabout outside Cardiff as dusk approached. In desperation I tried another exit and scored a lift – complete with ferry crossing – to the Isle of Wight where I spent the weekend on the beach. Another summer was spent thumbing around the Netherlands in a giant circle with the Paradiso in Amsterdam at the centre. In those hitchhiking years serendipity prevailed in the form of chance meetings and destinations, and as a result my life was infinitely enriched. Similarly cultural hitchhiking was my preferred method of musical education in those far-off years. Sticking my thumb out on BBC Radio 3 brought a chance encounter with Boulez while travelling to Beethoven in the concert hall took me via Berg . Thumbing it in record shops opened up the world of Eastern music and a chance encounte...

Will the new royal baby be named Prince Alban in honour of his grandfather's favourite composer ? Photo credit Mixmag . 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). Also on Facebook and Twitter .

'I am absolutely delighted that HRH The Prince of Wales has agreed to become our Patron. He has been the most tremendous supporter of us all and it is wonderful that he has agreed to deepen his relationship with us even further' ~ chief executive of the Royal Opera House Tony Hall announcing HRH's appointment as Patron . 'I have always found the Prince's lack of interest in anything to do with the arts in our time depressing, since all his opinions get so widely reported. It seems to me that he has had unrivalled opportunities to get to understand the twentieth century, but he has rejected it without hesitation. Both Denys Lasdun and Colin St John Wilson of the British Library , found work hard to get in the UK in the aftermath of the Prince's criticisms'~ former BBC controller of music and Proms & Edinburgh Festival director John Drummond . I await the next Covent Garden Lulu with interest . Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as ...

Question - what is the link between Alban Berg and Enid Blyton? Answer - the result seen above , which is returned when you search for the terms ' Alban Berg Enid Blyton' on amazon.co.uk Thanks to reader John Shimwell. But you can't call that music. 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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Charles Ives , Umberto Giordano , Osvaldo Golijov , Paul Hindemith and Alban Berg all wrote music for accordion. So did Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky; in fact he wrote a score that calls for four diatonic button accordions. Tchaikovsky's Suite No. 2 for Orchestra is not as well known as the Suite No. 4 'Mozartiana' . Which is surprising: as they say on Amazon, if you like Tchikovsky's ballets you will like his Suite no. 2. Or is it because, as they say in the music director's office today: - if your score needs four accordions don't expect us to programme it? I have Michael Tilson Thomas' recording with the Philharmonia Orchestra; which also includes 'Mozartiana' . The performance is excellent as is the sound. The latter is explained by CBS sub-contracting the recording to EMI. The venue was Abbey Road Studio One in 1981 with EMI's Neville Boyling at the mixing desk. My research indicates that this CD of the two orchestral suites is currently only ...

'Pierre Boulez is Mr. Cool - I'm surprised this look didn't catch on. It works for me'. That email came from Sergio Mims . It is a fascinating link, but I have some bad news for Sergio. You will see from the credits that John Drummond directed that wonderful BBC footage . But this passage in Drummond's autobiography Tainted by Experience recounts how the Mr. Cool image did not work for Pierre. 'Boulez was about to begin rehearsing a new production of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck in Frankfurt, to be directed by Wieland Wagner. He asked me to join him there. For a few days I stayed in a preposterous former grand-ducal hunting lodge in the Taunus hills outside Frankfurt, and drove back and forth with Boulez to the daily rehearsals. I cannot claim that Wieland Wagner made a great impression. He was certainly a great director, but not demonstrative. Most of his conversations with the Wozzeck, Walter Berry , were tête à tête and inaudible. I spent more time watching the ...

The BBC Suffolk website provides this photo and a report on yesterday's visit by Prince Charles and Camilla to Snape to view progress on Aldeburgh Music's new creative campus . I just hope nobody mentioned contemporary music yet alone Alban Berg during the royal visit . Photo credit BBC Suffolk . 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

'Interesting to listen once again to this 'historic' recording . I know the general public didn't really take to it, so that the people who sell these things clearly didn't make any profit (will it suffer the same fate as Berg's Concerto ?.) And why? Audiences (in every country) prefer to buy Bach - out of habit - and because, in doing so, they think they are showing 'greater musicality'. They undervalue Handel or else they ignore him completely. During their own lifetimes, it was exactly the opposite. Handel travelled everywhere in a carriage, while Bach humbly played the organ at the Thomas-Kirche . Now for Gavrilov and Richter. As soon as I started to listen, Gavrilov struck me as infinitely more interesting (in spite of a certain irreproachability to Richter's playing). Everything about his playing is fresher, more alive, freer. There's nothing studied about it. Only occasionally does he allow himself to be carried away by the fortissimo pa...

The debate as to whether there is such a thing as third rate music attracted a record number of comments. And it is not just music critics who rate composers. Pierre Boulez once described Shostakovich's output as "third-pressing Mahler" in an allusion to the process used to extract the cheapest and most bland olive oil. But according to John Drummond Shostakovich rated Boulez more extra virgin than third-pressing: 'Boulez's first concert in Moscow with the BBC Symphony Orchestra was unforgettable. Nothing of the Second Viennese School had been heard there since the early 1920s, and he conducted Webern's Five Pieces for Orchestra, Berg's Wozzek fragments and Altenberg Lieder and his own Eclat. All the young Soviet composers were sent to a mythical conference in Kiev to keep them out of the way, but Oistrakh sought me out and took me to a box at the back of the Conservatoire Hall, where behind a curtain sat the ashen-faced Shostakovich . I asked if he...

The format was supposed to have been badly wounded by the introduction of CDs and killed off completely by the ipod-generation that bought music online. But in a rare case of cheerful news for the record labels, the latest phenomenon in a notoriously fickle industry is one nobody dared predict: a vinyl revival. Latest figures show a big jump in vinyl sales in the first half of this year, confirming the anecdotal evidence from specialist shops throughout the UK. It comes as sales of CD singles continue to slide - and it is not being driven by technophobic middle-aged consumers. Teenagers and students are developing a taste for records and are turning away from the clinical method of downloading music on to an MP3 player. The data, released by the UK's industry group BPI , shows that 7in vinyl sales were up 13% in the first half, with the White Stripes' Icky Thump the best seller.Two-thirds of all singles in the UK now come out on in the 7in format, with sales topping 1m. ...

Recent reports that Sergei Rachmaninov's great-great-grandson is a control freak will come as no surprise to anyone who has read John Drummond's autobiography - it seems to run in the family. John Culshaw’s first foray into music, not long after leaving the RAF in the late 1940s, had been to write a very short book on Rachmaninov – at that time a deeply unfashionable figure, very little of whose music was played. The book was a triumph over the unavailability of material, and when the typescript was completed Culshaw went to see the composer’s widow in Switzerland. Ferried across Lake Lausanne in a private launch by a liveried servant, he was graciously received and asked to come back a week later, when Madame Rachmaninov would have read the typescript. Limited to twenty-five pounds ($48) in foreign currency, Culshaw had to explain that he could not wait that long. Grudgingly, Madame Rachmaninov agreed to a shorter time. When he returned, he was told to wait in the hall. Sho...

Today's big art story is that Prince Charles is joining great 20th century artists Joan Miró , Marc Chagall , Wassily Kandinsky , Andy Warhol , Salvador Dali , Pablo Picasso , and Francis Bacon as the designer of a label for a Château Mouton Rothschild wine vintage. You can view their labels by opening those preceeding artist links, the Royal artwork is above, and Charles' label for the 2004 vintage is here . This story would really have made the late John Drummond laugh, as the following anecdote explains: 'I have always found the Prince's lack of interest in anything to do with the arts in our time depressing, since all his opinions get so widely reported. It seems to me that he has had unrivalled opportunities to get to understand the twentieth century, but he has rejected it without hesitation. Both Denys Lasdun and Colin St John Wilson of the British Library , found work hard to get in the UK in the aftermath of the Prince's criticisms. I cannot believe i...