Why no Requiem atonal?

Today is Remembrance Sunday in the UK, when we remember all those who lost their lives in the struggle for peace and freedom. Remembrance Sunday has many musical connections, ranging from Benjamin Britten through Arvo Pärt, to George Lloyd, who was himself traumatised in action.

Next Saturday I will be at a performance in Norwich Cathedral of Herbert Howell's 1936 Requiem. This is an economic, intense and moving work that lasts for little more than fifteen minutes, and is scored for SSAATTBB and organ. There is an excellent recording of it on Naxos by the Choir of St Johns' College, Cambridge directed by Christopher Robinson. The CD also includes Take him, earth, for cherishing, the motet composed by Howells to mark the assasination of President John F. Kennedy. We will be remembering that sad event just five days after the Norwich Cathedral performance of Howell's Requiem.

My footer photo is a reminder of one of the more obscure musical connections to Remembrance Sunday. It shows the Cenotaph in Whitehall where the nation remembers the war dead today. The stark monument was designed by the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, whose daughter we caught recently walking with Stravinsky. And that mention of 'Twelve-tone Lizzie' brings me to an important question that lies behind my scepticism about the current media hype surrounding John Foulds' World Requiem. Why does our public music of remembrance have to be 'accessible' and not too challenging? Why does it have to be so 'Classic FM'?

If you must have your Nimrod, but you like to be tonally challenged, why not try Thomas Adès' first string quartet Arcadiana? This was first performed at the Cambridge Elgar Festival in 1994. It is quintessential Adès, and you definitely won't hear it on Classic FM. But the sixth movement is titled O Albion, and for seventeen devotissimo bars in E flat, the key of Nimrod, it movingly pay homage to the time of Elgar and those that died in the trenches of the Somme. But if you come from the World Requiem 'big is beautiful' school why not try Geoffrey Burgon's 1976 Requiem, and give your loudspeakers a real workout? More on Geoffrey Burgon here.

In his peerless War Requiem Benjamin Britten stressed reconciliation as well as remembrance by specifying (but not obtaining) a British, German and Russian soloist for the work's first performance in Coventry Cathedral, the preserved ruins of which are seen below. If, like me, you value reconciliation as well as remembrance, and are uncomfortable with the jingoism associated with the Albert Hall, I give you two personal choices of music for Remembrance Sunday.


Toru Takemitsu's Requiem (for string orchestra) was written in 1957 in memory of the Japanese film composer Fumio Hayasaka. It is a slow, elegiac work lasting a little over ten minutes. The three movements are marked Lento, Modére and Moins lent. Disarmingly the composer later explained "I was never able to write an Allegro ..."

I write this waiting for the start of the BBC broadcast from the Cenotaph. A CD is playing that moves me even more than the Nimrod that will be played in a few minutes. Eleven young choristers from the famous Kreuzchor were among more the 25,000 killed in the British and American bombing of Dresden on February 13th 1945. As well as the terrible loss of its choristers, the famous choir also lost its its neogothic choir school on the Georgplatz, its library of sheet music and archive, and its very raison d'être, the beautiful Kreuzkirche (Church of the Holy Cross) which dated from the 13th century.

The cantor of the Kreuzkirche, Rudolf Mauersberger, completed his Dresden Requiem in 1961. It is a profoundly moving memorial to the victims of the bombing of Dresden. But it was also a living symbol of Dresden's resistance to the repressive political regime in the GDR until Die Wende in 1989. There is an excellent recording of the Dresden Requiem by the Kreuzchor on the German Carus label. My header image is a session photo from the recording in Dresden's Lukaskirche in 1994. This has been the venue for many famous recordings, including Herbert von Karajan's 1970 Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.

Rudolf Mauersberger's Dresden Requiem was written for the boy's voices of the Kreuzchor. Much of the singing is a capella, but the score also uses a small ensemble of organ, celeste, trombones, double basses and percussion. It is certainly not atonal, but neither is it 'Classic FM'. And it has been performed in Dresden every year since its premiere more than fifty years ago.

You can read the full story of the Dresden Requiem, and listen to samples, here. To my knowledge it has never been performed in London. Let us remember the dead of the bombing of Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki today, as well as all other victims of war. And let us hope for a London performance of Rudolf Mauersberger's Dresden Requiem in the future.

* Update - read here how the World Requiem un-Foulded.


Follow this path to see Dresden restored from the ruins.
Image credits. Header Carus, middle Wikipedia, footer Ministry of Defense 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

Estonian chamber choir - small is beautiful

'Man is small, and, therefore, small is beautiful' famously wrote E. F. Schumacher. Friday night's opening concert of the 2007 Norwich and Norfolk Festival by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and Paul Hillier was small, both in forces and duration, and it certainly was beautiful. This was one of those rare evenings when the planets align. The programme of Nikolai Kedrov, Arvo Pärt, Tchaikovsky, Cyrillus Kreek and excerpts from Rachmaninov's All-Night Vigil was sublime. The choir demonstrated their peerless authority in the Baltic repertoire, and Paul Hillier demonstrated why he has built such a reputation as a musician's conductor.

The venue was Norwich's far from small Norman cathedral, but despite the towering architecture this was very much a chamber performance where, refreshingly, individual lines did not take second place to overall effect. We had bought top price seats in the second row as we know from experience that separate lines become confused in the reverberant cathedral when heard from further down the nave. As a bonus our front seats also allowed us to observe Paul Hillier's unique taste in conducting footwear, he has certainly found a schumacher with style.

In his provaocative book, What We Really Do (The Musical Times ISBN 0954577701), another fine choral conductor, Tallis Scholars founder Peter Philips, argues that sacred choral music is best performed in modern concert halls because both the sound and the amenities are better. Despite this view the Estonian Choir hedged their bets on this current tour. Two of their four concerts are in modern halls, Manchester's Bridgewater Hall, and the superb new 1200 seater Perth Concert Hall in Scotland. Incidentally, both these magnificent looking and sounding concert halls were built in the last fifteen years, which is enduring evidence that, despite the gloom merchants, classical music is very much alive and kicking today.

The other two concerts by the Esonian visitors and their English conductor are in traditional churches in, Norwich and Edinburgh . At Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh it must have been a surprise for the choir to find themselves swapping the turbulent politics of 21st century Estonia for the turbulent politics of 21st century Scotland.

Performance venues are an essential part of live music-making, so are commissions for new music. I have already written here how Arvo Pärt's I am the true vine was commissioned by Norwich Cathedral in 1996. Credit should be given to the patrons of two more works by Pärt performed by the Estonian choir in the cathedral on Friday evening. Da pacem Domine was commissioned by that musical life-force Jordi Savall, while Bogoroditse dyevo (Mother of God and Virgin) was written for King's College Choir, Cambridge in 1990.

Those mentions of King's College Choir, Cambridge and the Mother of God and Virgin bring this overgrown path full circle. On Friday evening we were privileged to hear the Estonian choir in Norwich. The following afternoon we viewed the Balkan (not Baltic!) Icons exhibition at the Michaelhouse Centre in Cambridge, and the icon above of the Virgin Mary with infant Christ painted by the Serbian artist Todor Mitrovic in 2002 is from that exhibition. Do explore the images via this link, they are simply stunning. And from the immensely moving icons exhibition it was just a few steps to choral evensong in King's College Chapel.

E.F. Schumacher also wrote ~ 'Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology towards the organic, the gentle, the non-violent, the elegant and beautiful '. Amen to that.

We are now off to Monteverdi's 1610 Vespers followed by jazz from the Bobo Stenson Trio. If you can't be there why not read about Monteverdi in Cambridge?
My header image is from the Balkan Icons exhibition which is touring internationally. I will be featuring more images from this wonderful exhibition in the future. 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

Paul Hillier and mystery of missing movements

Hard on the heels of my post about concerts getting shorter comes the mystery of the missing movements in Rachmaninov’s All-night Vigil. On Friday (May 4) the 2007 Norwich & Norfolk Festival opens with a concert in Norwich Cathedral by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir conducted by Paul Hillier (pictured above).

The first half of the concert is a treasure-trove of Orthodox church music, Kedrov, Pärt, Tchaikovsky and Kreek, although at 28 minutes it is not the most generous of programmes. But then comes the mystery. The second half is the Rachmaninov All-night Vigil Op. 37 with the first two sections of the Matins service (The Six Psalms and Praise the Name of the Lord) omitted. This cut removes just over four minutes of music from a 55 minute work.

The reason for the cut completely escapes me, and a call to the festival organisers came up with no explanation. The newly released recording of the All-night Vigil by the same forces on Harmonia Mundi is, of course, complete. Can any reader solve the mystery of the missing movements?

Stop press: just as I was about to upload this post the following email was received - I'll keep you posted:

Hi Bob, I’m chasing Paul Hillier, the Estonians’ conductor, for the answer to your question about the Rachmaninov.

Meanwhile, I’m delighted that you remain such an avid supporter and follower of the Festival! When I see articles like the one in the Guardian a few weeks ago bemoaning Norwich’s lack of arts festival – despite the fact that we are now one of the dozen largest city festivals in the uk – it takes the support of people like you to remind me why we do it. Thank you.

Best, Jonathan
Jonathan Holloway
Festival Director
Norfolk & Norwich Festival

* On the same path I offer you the ultimate time travel. After the Norwich concert Paul Hillier and the Estonian choir travel to the superb new Perth concert hall in Scotland. On Monday they give a lunchtime concert, the programme is the All-night Vigil!

Now read about another unorthodox take by Paul Hillier on a familiar work
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

How long is long enough?

Three wonderful concerts in just over a week left me wondering how long is long enough? At Norwich Cathedral last Friday Stephen Layton with Polyphony, Trinity College Choir and the Britten Sinfonia offered a concert of glorious Poulenc and Messiaen lasting 64 minutes excluding the interval. The second half comprised just the Poulenc Gloria, which lasted 27 minutes. The duration of 64 minutes is, of course, the length of a CD, which is no coincidence as the programme will be recorded by Hyperion in the next few days for future CD release.

But 27 minutes doesn't take my prize for the shortest programme half. Just eight days before at Snape, the up and coming Russian Alexander Polianichko conducted the Britten Pears Orchestra in a stunning second half of just the 1919 version of Stravinsky's Firebird. Now at little over 20 minutes that takes my prize for the shortest ever programme half. Can any readers beat it?

Just hours after the fleeting Firebird we experienced programme planning going too far the other way at nearby Blythburgh Church. Now this is a very famous venue, not the least for Benjamin Britten's performances which I wrote about here. Blythburgh is a glorious church with glorious acoustics, but it does have its problems as a concert venue. There are no, what they call at Disney Hall, amenities. The car park is a grass field which becomes a bog in wet weather. And the rest rooms, as they call them over on Sequenza21, are two agricutural sheds down a grass slope at the rear of the church. But the fact that that Ben and Peter used these very urinals gives a whole new meaning to the word resonance.


To historic Blythburgh and its agricultural amenities came the brilliant young vocal group Exaudi (who featured in my Elisabeth Lutyens article) and viol consort Fretwork with a suitably sombre programme of sacred music for the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Day. Now Good Friday is a fine time to do penance. But twelve o'clock on a Saturday is not so good for 90 minutes of Christian Geist, Heinrich Schütz and Arvo Pärt (his exquisite Stabat Mater in the arrangement by Macolm Bruno for viols) without an interval.

As the excellent performance progressed it was clear that the great and good among the Aldeburgh Easter Festival goers had booked lunch in nearby Southwold's trendy restaurants. In order not to lose their tables the audience was slowly slipping away, just like the North Sea tide that you see in my accompanying photos. Exaudi's young director, James Weeks, rose to the occasion like a true professional, and announced that the eight verses of Christian Geist's Es war aber would be truncated to two in the interests of gastronomy, and we were released into the glorious Easter sunshine with Schütz's mercifully short motet Die mit Tränen säen ringing in our ears.

But this Overgrown Path has a happy ending. We would never leave a concert early for something as mundane as a restaurant booking. After relishing the superb Blythburgh concert to its proper conclusion we enjoyed our tasty picnic (and just a little wine) at nearby Aldeburgh. The photos of Iken Church (the village of Iken is the setting for Britten's The Little Sweep) and the Alde estuary which accompany this article were taken near our picnic site. With views like this long can never be long enough.


Now talking of sacred music, read about L'Orgue Mystique
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

Classical music flowers in springtime Britain

Academy of Ancient Music, Chief Executive - £na
The Conservatoire, Director of Music - £32k
Scottish Ballet, Head of Development - £32 - 38k
Music at Oxford, General Manager - £na
London Symphony Orchestra, Head of LSO Discovery - £38 - 43k
Britten Sinfonia, Marketing Director - £na
London Sinfonietta, Development & Marketing Managers - £na

It's a beautiful spring day here, and the header photo was taken five minutes ago in our garden. On BBC Radio 3 this afternoon was a stunning performance by Martyn Brabbins and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra of that British masterpiece, Elgar's Symphony No 2 in E flat major. Today's Media Guardian lists the music vacancies above. Last Saturday we heard the Pergolesi Stabat Mater and Rachmaninov Vespers in Norwich Cathedral. On Friday it's Prokofiev and Stravinsky at Snape, and on Saturday Schütz and Pärt in Blythburgh Church.

But it's all a mirage. Read here about the death of live classical music, and here about the death of the recording industry.
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

All this ….. and what for?

The terrible raids on Dresden by British and American bombers took place on the nights of 13th and 14th February 1945. But the photographs here are not of Dresden, they show the damage inflicted by the German bombing of Norwich, where I live. 1432 people were killed or injured in Norwich by air raids between 1940 and 1943, and 85% of the housing stock was damaged. During April 1942 Norwich was one of the English cathedral cities heavily bombed in the "Baedeker raids" which targeted cultural centres selected from the eponymous German guide book. The photographs accompanying this article are taken from the official account of the air raids on Norwich published in 1944. This remarkable document, and remember it was written while World War 2 still raged, ends with the words below written by the novelist and war poet R H Mottram:


So the long tale of violence and attempted intimidation drags to its close, and as these words are written the seemingly endless vigil is being relaxed. Whatever we may suffer from “Revenge” weapons, we no longer anticipate organised attack. We have laid aside the steel helmet that so often oppressed our brow, and the respirator that we tested and tried on, hangs on its peg accumulating dust. We no longer look with trepidation for children who linger on their way home from school, nor do we stagger sleepily through the black shadows or the ghoulish light of flares to take up our posts of duty.

We hope soon to be replanning Norwich, and only the broken-hearted can fail to hope that a better and finer city may arise on these ashes. Perhaps a new Germany will help to patch our gaping places and re-site our streets. But no skill will bring back those who lie under the long row of crosses that line the cemetery rail. These, who bore no malice, are a sacrifice to the evil forces still at work in the world. One may be tempted to recall the last lines of the play, appropriately entitled Strife, by John Galsworthy: “All this …. and what for?”

It is for a new generation to provide the answer.


Now playing - Arvo Pärt’s I am the true vine, (Paul Hillier directing the Theatre of Voices, Harmonia Mundi 90407). The photograph above shows the destruction in the Cathedral Close in Norwich, with the cloisters of the Benedictine Abbey in the foreground. The photo was taken from a vantage point on the magnificent Norman cathedral. Unlike the Frauenkirche and Thomaskirche in Dresden, Norwich Cathedral survived the terrible bombing despite two direct hits from incendiary bombs, and in 1996 Arvo Pärt was commissioned to write I am the true vine to celebrate the Cathedral's 900th anniversary. The work is an English setting of St. John 15:1-14, in which Jesus likens himself to "the true vine" and commands his followers to love each other.

Arvo Pärt now lives in Berlin, another city that suffered terrible war damage, and the CD I am listening to also contains his moving Berliner Messe. Writing in 1944 R.H. Mottram expressed the hope that: “a new Germany will help to patch our gaping places and re-site our streets”, and this is precisely what happened, although the writer could not have anticipated the four decades of agonizing delay caused by the Cold War. In 1989 the collapse of Communism was triggered by events in Leipzig, just a few miles from Dresden. This allowed the creation of a new Europe which now includes many countries that were part of the USSR.

Arvo Pärt was born in Estonia, one of several countries that threw off the Soviet shackles in the early 1990s, and became part of the new Europe. Today the region around Norwich is home to a large community of migrants from these Baltic countries. On Saturday we celebrated their culture with our first Baltic States Festival, thankfully confirming that a new generation of Europeans is starting to provide the answer to the question "All this .... and what for?"

Suffering knows no side in time of war, now read about the Dresden Requiem for eleven young victims
My thanks go to Helen Yates for her grandmother’s copy of Assault Upon Norwich (published by Norwich Corporation 1944). The location of the photographs in descending order are Rampant Horse Street, Westwick Street, and Cathedral Close. 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

Britten shows how everybody can make music

'Everybody can make music. Everybody can compose, somehow. When you want to teach children sports, they play football, or get given a tennis racket, they don't simply watch. But when we want them to be involved in music, we ask them to sit passively. This is surely not the right concept' - Simon Rattle tells it like it is in today's Observer, in an article about the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra's dance project with marginalised children. How true, and I read those words while still on an emotional high from making music for the first, and probably last time in a Britten performance in Snape Maltings under the baton of Stephen Layton.

Tomorrow (December 4th) is the thirtieth anniversary of Benjamin Britten's death. Last night I was at a performance of his cantata St Nicholas as part of Aldeburgh's Britten Weekend, and my music making was a vocal contribution to the two congregational hymns in that wonderful work. They may only be congregational hymns, but the audience were given the sheet music, and in a pre-performance rehearsal Stephen Layton even reprimanded us for not observing the pianissimo marking for the first entry of God Moves In A Mysterious Way.

What an uplifting evening. Not just for the communal music making of almost one thousand voices celebrating Britten's genius, but also for Aldeburgh's continuing commitment to nurturing young musicians. Specific praise goes to the exquisite performance of the Ceremony of Carols by the high voices of the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge, and the contributions of the young harpist Sally Pryce and the outstanding young tenor Allan Clayton who sung Nicholas, surely a star in the making? The full programme is given below, and the first half was performed as a continuous sequence, without applause. It ended as the bell tolled for the last time in Arvo Pärt's Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten with the capacity audience holding their collective breath and the bows of the Britten Sinfonia violins frozen in mid-air. A moment of sheer musical, and emotional magic.

But my special Britten champagne moment came even before the music started. To the side of the Snape auditorium is the box that Britten and Pears created for themselves. To call it a box is too grandiose term, it little more than a slit in the raw brickwork of the Maltings. The boy soloists for St Nicholas watched the first half of the evening from Britten's box. Before the concert started the four very young trebles from Ely Cathedral Choir, immaculately dressed in school uniform, leant over the front of the box laughing and waving to friends in the audience. It was a pure Britten moment. Their faces radiated youth, exuberance, total innocence, and above all a dazzling hope for the future.

Programme for Snape Maltings Concert Hall, December 2nd 2006

Frank Bridge (1879-1941)
Sir Roger de Coverley (A Christmas Dance) (1922)

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
A Hymn to the Virgin (1930; Rev 1934)
A Ceremony of Carols, Op. 28 (1942; rev. 1943)
Theme from 'A Boy was Born', Op. 3 (1932-3; rev 157-8)

Arvo Pärt (b. 1935)
Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten (1977), for string orchestra and one bell

Interval

Britten
Saint Nicholas, Op. 42 (1947-8)

Britten-Pears Chamber Choir
Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge
Holst Singers
Britten Sinfonia
Boy soloists from Ely Cathedral Choir
Allan Clayton tenor
Sally Pryce harp
Stephen Layton conductor

Now read how music rose from the wreckage at Snape
Header photo shows choristers of Coventry Cathedral with Britten in rehearsal for his War Requiem in Ottobeuren Basilica, West Germany in 1964.
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

Mahler beats Britten with finale knockout

In the first half we had Benjamin Britten's Violin Concerto, premiered in 1940 by Antonio Brosa and the New York Philharmonic conducted by John Barbirolli. The structure of the concerto is three movements with the final Passacaglia marked Andante Lento (un poco meno mosso). Its opponent in the second half was another 20th century masterpiece dating from 37 years earlier, Gustav Mahler's Symphony No 5 in C sharp minor, with its Rondo Finale marked Allegro - Allegro giocoso.

The venue for last night's contest was Britten's own magical Snape Maltings, and the orchestra was the BPO. Everywhere else in the world BPO stands for Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, but Aldeburgh is a parallel musical universe where the BPO is the Britten Pears Orchestra, a crack orchestra of young professionals whose spontaneous music-making puts to shame the autopilot efforts of the big name bands. Yes, they do take risks, as the early horn entry in the attaca between the last two movements of the Mahler showed, but give me ten of those for one of the current autopilot performances by the BBC Symphony. Conductor was man to watch Paul Daniel who conjured up memories of Sir Adrian Boult with a crystal clear stick technique, feet kept firmly on the podium, and violins divided across the stage. The outstanding violin soloist in the fiendishly difficult, and exposed, Britten Concerto was Thomas Bowes whose task was made even more difficult as he took over the part as a last minute substitute for the indisposed Janine Jansen.

Britten was, of course, a great admirer of Mahler. He had received the score of the Ninth Symphony as a present from Peter Pears in 1938, and the Violin Concerto is clearly influenced by that great work, ending in a beautiful coda that struggles ambiguously between the desolation of D minor and the possibility of D major. An outstanding performance faded away last night, and the capacity Snape audience hesitated - had the work really finished, or was there another movement to follow to resolve the ambiguity? There were no such questions in the second half, the barnstorming Rondo Finale of the Mahler accelerated to the final bars leaving the audience in no doubt that this was the triumphant conclusion. The audiences responded with an ovation, and it was clear that Mahler had won with a knockout in the finale.

The status of these contrasting masterpieces from two of the 20th century's greatest composers mirrors the reaction of last night's audience. There are few recordings of the Britten in the catalogue (the finest of which remains the composer's own), and it is rarely heard in the concert hall. Searching Mahler 5 on Amazon returns 320 hits, and the work is a warhorse of the auto-pilot orchestras with the peripatetic Minnesota Orchestra riding it into town this summer for a BBC Prom. Why the difference in popularity?

Visconti's 1971 film Death in Venice was the PR dream come true for the Mahler. I still cannot hear the Adagietto without seeing a heavily made-up Dirk Bogarde, and to understand the film's inspiration just compare the photo here of Bogarde as Gustav von Ascenbach with the header image of Mahler. And talking of von Aschenbach the opening work of the 2007 Aldeburgh Festival is a new production of Britten's opera Death in Venice directed by Yoshi Oida with the Britten Pears Orchestra conducted by last night's conductor Paul Daniel. While the Mahler symphony was undoubtedly boosted by Visconti's dramatisation of Thomas Mann's novella, the Britten Violin Concerto is unpopular with today's autopilot soloists who find it difficult to learn and in little demand from the equally as autopilot concert planners.

But is there an additional explanation for the differing popularity of the two works in the form of their finales? Granted there are many examples of frequently played works with equivocal endings ranging from Maher's Ninth Symphony to the Rite of Spring and Gottedamerung. But these are outnumbered many times over by the popular works with rousing and uplifting conclusions, including Mahler's own First Symphony (have you ever heard a performance that didn't get a standing ovation?), Beethoven's Ninth and numerous other examples. So is there a lesson here for contemporary composers? - please your publisher and get more performances by writing a rousing finale.

* A timely reminder that December 4th 2006 is the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Benjamin Britten. The composer was a friend of admirer of Shostakovich, and it is an irony that this important musical anniversary looks likely to be overshadowed on the BBC and elsewhere by the current Shostakovich saturation. Britten was a great composer, conductor and pianist, a musical visionary, pacifist and humanitarian whose legacy not only survives, but grows with the work of the Britten Pears Foundation which embraces young performers and composers. Many of Britten's admirers, including me, will be attending a concert at Snape on December 2nd by the Britten Sinfonia and Britten Pears Chamber Choir. This will include Britten's 1948 cantata St Nicholas and Arvo Pärt's Cantus In Memoriam Benjamin Britten. We are also fortunate to be seeing the acclaimed new Glyndebourne Touring production of the Turn of the Screw here in East Anglia in November.

* I mentioned the impact of the film Death in Venice on the popularity of Mahler's Fifth Symphony. We should also not forget that films were important in popularising Britten's music. He composed scores for GPO Film Unit productions including Night Mail and Coal Face in conjunction with WH Auden (pictured together left). And of course Britten's best known work, The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (1946), was composed to accompany Instruments of the Orchestra, an educational film produced by the British government, which was narrated and conducted by Malcolm Sargent.

Britten's Violin Concerto was first performed in 1940 with John Barbirolli conducting the New York Philharmonic, now follow this link for more on new music in New York at that 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 other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

What exactly is a 'classic'?

Scholar and poet Mark Van Doren said: 'A classic is a book that remains in print'. So let's assume that a 'classic' music composition is one that receives regular performances. By this definition 'classic' status has been achieved by the Passion settings of Schütz, Haydn, and of course the incomparable St Matthew and St John Passions from the composer 'whose light blots out the feeble rays of other composers.' But which of the modern Passions will be performed regularly, and become 'classics'?

The trial has only just begun for Oswaldo Golijov's St Mark's Passion. But the verdict on Arvo Pärt's Passio was passed down soon after its 1982 Munich premiere - a contemporary masterpiece that endures today through live performances and recordings. Passio is a setting of St John scored for a quartet of soloists (SA/CtTB) as Evangelist, bass and tenor for Jesus and Pilate, a quartet of instrumentalists (violin, oboe, bassoon and cello), and choir. In it Pärt uses tintinnabuli, with the melody and the accompaniment fused into one. The work is remarkable for its use of silence, with the duration of the silences between the sections determined by the number of syllables in the final word of the preceeding sentence.

On Saturday night Norwich's soaring Norman Cathedral was the setting for a performance of Passio. The six immensely demanding solo roles were taken by members of Tonus Peregrinus, the instrumentalists were the principals from Chamber Orchestra Anglia, and the University of East Anglia Choir supplied the chorus and promoted the performance. Howard Williams provided incisive conducting which successfully maintained the balance between the soloists and the unusually large choir. 'Remaining in print' may seem a cruelly commercial criteria for judging a work of art. But Arvo Pärt's masterpiece, which is not yet 25 years old, held the large audience spell-bound in rapt silence for more than an hour, surely proof that Marc van Doren's definition is more than just a criteria for bean-counters?

Passio has been recorded several times. If you don't know this work look no further than Tonus Peregrinus' award winning, and very low priced, Naxos version (right) directed by Antony Pitts, and stunningly recorded in the Abbey Church of St Peter and St Paul in Dorchester-on-Thames, here in the UK. The principal roles are taken by Robert Macdonald (Jesus) and Mark Anderson (Pilate) - the same soloists as for the Norwich performance.

It is excellent news that there are several good recordings of Passio available. But recordings are not the equivalent of books in print. A healthy music scene depends on healthy composers, and healthy composers need royalty income, and that royalty income depends on live performance or broadcasts. Both the costs , and rewards, for making and distributing recordings have fallen sharply in recent years, while the cost of mounting concert performances has risen. This means generating royalties from live performances is more difficult than ever. Malcolm Arnold's (right) Ninth Symphony illustrates this difficulty. This work, dating from 1986, has been recorded by three major labels, Naxos, Chandos and Conifer, and has been described as a 20th century masterpiece. Yet there is not one single live performance, anywhere in the world, in the composer's 85th anniversary year. I do not suggest they are works of equal stature, but it is interesting to reflect that Elgar's First Symphony received more than a hundred performances within twelve months of its premiere in 1908, well before the era of music-like-water. By contrast, in the twenty years since its composition, Arnold's Ninth Symphony has received just three concert performances.

In Elgar's day regional performances were vitally important to the promotion of new music, and Elgar himself conducted the premiere of his Sea Pictures in Norwich Cathedral in 1899. Thankfully these regional performances do continue, albeit at a greatly reduced level. The performance of Passio is one example, the only US performance of the Arnold symphony is another. Of the latter a critic wrote: 'In March 2000 I attended the U.S. premiere of Malcolm Arnold's Ninth Symphony which was presented by the Susquehanna Symphony Orchestra, a fine community orchestra in northern Maryland, with Sheldon Bair on the podium. It was a highly emotional event; Sir Malcolm was present. However, as I listened I couldn't help but wonder why one of the major American orchestras wasn't presenting this major premiere.'

Although the difficulty of getting live performances is most acute for contemporary music, it also applies to some surprisingly established masters. The catalogue contains fine recordings of Passion settings by Obrecht, Vittoria, Guerrero (left), Byrd and the grossly under-rated, and elusive, Jacob Handl which are rarely, if ever, heard live today.

CDs and MP3s are wonderful things. But the error is to think that they are substitutes for live performance, either artistically or commercially.

The header image is of sculptor David Begbie's magnificent steelmesh Crucifix which I wrote about in Pilgrimage. 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 Is recorded classical music too cheap?