Europe's very own digital concert hall launched

Another 'digital concert hall' has been launched. Dutch media company CommuniServe B.V. are promoting http://www.monteverdi.tv/ (above) as a resource offering 2,500 hours of classical concerts, blogs, reviews, a downloadable music catalogue and several classical radio stations.

A different take on the digital concert hall 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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

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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Czech out free Bach downloads

Hello Mr Pliable, Here's something that I think you and your blog readers will enjoy.

To continue your treasure trove of music downloads series, here's Czech Radio's recent musical offering - http://www.rozhlas.cz/d-dur/download_eng

It's JS Bach's complete Brandenburg Concertos with the early music ensemble Musica Florea (photo above), freely available for download. A very worthy effort, especially since visitors have the option of downloading in lossless FLAC format.

Cheers from the Philippines - Joshua A

Many thanks Joshua, but let's hear both sides of the argument.
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 and a wider audience

I've uploaded the full text of Nicholas Kenyon's 2007 Hesse Lecture today. It's a very long read, and there are some gems hidden in it, particularly for a download doomsayer like me. Here is the condensed read:

"The cosmopolitan world will challenge every idea of a musical canon as never before, but it has huge potential. What we have now is: 1.4 million downloads of Beethoven symphonies from the BBC website, a free offer taking the message of classical music to a wider audience some of whom had never encountered it before, stimulating the market and encouraging listeners to buy CDs. In fact Radio 3’s initiative was so successful, that the new BBC Trust, the successor to the BBC Governors, has prevented it happening again. In a recent ruling it has forbidden the BBC to include classical music in any of its free downloads, even short extracts of works, on the grounds that it is distorting the marketplace --thus at a stroke undermining the BBC’s historic commitment to use every enlightened means to make great music available to all. (As the Director General of the BBC has disagreed with that ruling publicly, I reckon I can do so too.)"

Pliable's note - just so everyone is enlightened this is what the BBC Trust actually said: "There is a potential negative market impact if the BBC allows listeners to build an extensive library of classical music that will serve as a close substitute for commercially available downloads or CDs."

Photo of a wider audience by Pliable at 2006 Proms. 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

Stravinsky - the cricket wearing spats

'It was November, extremely cold with an east wind. I crossed the Channel and called on Stravinsky. He was living in the Fauborg St Honore, in a very elegant apartment. He was spruce and gnome-like, immaculately dressed, and looking more like a business executive than a composer. But this impression changed as we sat talking: he was precisely like a cricket wearing spats. Just as a cricket will stay immobile, then suddenly bound into the air with a spring of compressed energy, so I had the feeling that Stravinsky might bound through the ceiling at any moment. He looked alert, nervous though not neurotic, as though he had just emerged from one of those baths where you are rubbed with ice and beaten with birch-sticks.

... Suddenly...the cricket sprang, 'I want to show you something,' he said, and led me into his study. It was a small room, clinically tidy with an upright piano. Stravinsky went straight across the room to a shelf beside his piano and took down a portrait bust which he gave me to hold. I held the bust, which I did not recognise, and Stravinsky stood beside me as though he were observing a two minute's silence. 'Webern is the greatest composer of this century,' he said finally. He took the portrait from me and put it back on the shelf.

From that moment our relationship was less formal. He told me he always composed at the piano: he had to hear the note to be absolutely certain it was precisely the sound he wanted. Dozens of kinds of pencils, paper-clips, contraptions for punching papers and threading them together littered a side-table. The room was full of gadgets or desk-toys which he believed made him more efficient.

Stravinsky was pathetically pleased that I had called on him. He feared my generation 'had got lost in Sibelius and had never heard of his music'. I told him how much I admired the Symphony of Psalms and his Octet for Wind Instruments - especially. I said, the very last part of it. He picked up a score and went to the piano. 'You mean from here?' he asked. 'Precisely.' 'Yes,' he said., 'I joined that bit on. I wrote it originally as an epitaph for Debussy.'

I tried to interest him in Britten, but he was too self-absorbed to be aware of anybody else's work. He was interested only in Webern, somebody he could use. I mean nothing derogatory in that.'

Ronald Duncan describes a 1936 meeting with Stravinsky in his book Working With Britten (The Rebel Press ISBN 0900615303). Duncan was the librettist for The Rape of Lucretia and also worked on Peter Grimes.

Igor Stravinsky was born in Oranienbaum (now Lomonosov), Russia at noon, June 5th 1882 in the old Russian calendar. This birthdate is usually translated as June 17th in the new calendar, but sometimes as June 18th, and even June 19th by Naxos. Whichever day, happy birthday Igor!

Now read about Stravinsky's Tibetan connection. View Stravinsky videos on YouTube via this link, and here is a 3 minute copyright cleared sample from his 1944 Mass - .

The photo shows Stravinsky in his Paris studio in 1929. The audio sample is via Boosey & Hawkes and is performed by the Gregg Smith Singers and Columbia Symphony Winds & Brass from Sony SM2K 46301. 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

Glenn Gould - the ultimate download

My personal overgrown path is leading back to the radio studio, and that has set me thinking recently about how to create programmes that are distinctive, inclusive and personal.

Over in Holland the creator of Big Brother, Endemol, has its own formula for distinctive broadcasting, and this week launches De Grote Donorshow (The Big Donor Show) which gives three dialysis patients the chance to win a dying woman's kidney - or not.

Back in 1969 Glenn Gould took a different approach to producing great broadcasting when he created his 'contrapuntal radio documentary' The Latecomers. The main subject was the new Canadian province of Newfoundland, but there was a second subject of solitude, isolation and non-conformity seen from a cultural perspective.

The Latecomers, with its basso continuo of the ocean, is both a land-mark in twentieth-century broadcasting and a seriously neglected aspect of Gould's work. Now, thanks to reader Walt Santner, you can hear the whole documentary via an MP3 download. Walt contributed to previous features here locating downloads of historic, Stokowski and recording history MP3 files. He is now back surfing the net after some health problems, welcome back Walt.

Genn Gould's The Latecomers runs for 53 minutes, you can download it from this website, note copyright health warnings may apply.

Now view the 'score' for The Latecomers and read more about Glenn Gould's love affair with the microphone.
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 under different stewardship

"I read with interest Martin Kettle's review of Norman Lebrecht's new book, Maestros, Masterpieces and Madness, (Vanishing acts, G2, April 3). The impression given by the piece is that the classical-record industry is in its death throes, which is far from the reality. While it's true the major record companies have markedly reduced their classical output, shifting significantly into "crossover" projects, it is the vibrant independent sector (comprising Naxos and many other labels) which is as active and creative as ever in the production of new classical recordings.

Kettle's statement that "production is down to just 100 new discs a year - many in the crossover repertoire ..." is belied by the profusion of new classical releases which come into the market each month. In 2006 Naxos released 238 new classical recordings and new issues from other independent labels easily numbered in excess of 1,000. All these recordings - and the large number of back-catalogue titles - are now available to the public not only through high street stores, but also through retailers and, in many cases, digital downloads or online streaming: consumer accessibility and choice is broader then ever before.

It is undeniable that the past business models of the major record companies have been shown to be unsustainable and have been abandoned, but the inference that the industry is dead is as illogical as it is untrue. Other record companies run successfully on a quite different basis - without the excesses depicted in Lebrecht's book. Far from being "on the verge of disappearing", the classical recording industry is alive and well, but just under different stewardship."

Anthony Anderson managing director Naxos UK writes in today's Guardian:

But now read a view on how Naxos dumbs-down technical standards, how we have to pay the piper, and how we are moving towards music like water.
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Serial downloaders click here

My research for yesterday's Mendelssohn article uncovered a website that is going to delight the many serial downloaders among my readers. Carolina Classical has been created by Charles Moss for the music students he teaches at two universities in South Carolina. There are lovingly constructed articles on a range of composers from Palestrina to Zemlinsky, and many of these are liberally illustrated with music downloads: try one by clicking the image above - and it's not the Eminem Show!

But serial downloading at Carolina Classical doesn't end with audio files. There is also a host of downloadable scores, including many Bach cantatas and Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words, the latter in what are identified as public domain scores in Adobe Acrobat format.

So, serial downloaders are in clover - but, a health warning is needed. We all know that there are very few free lunches in the world of downloads, so I fired off a quick email asking for reassurance from Professor Moss as to the provenance of his downloads. Here is his reply, so I must qualify this feature with the audio download equivalent of caveat emptor.

Dear Sir - The Mendelssohn scores are 100% in the Public Domain, being late 19th Century editions (mostly European) that have long been out of print, and their 75-year copyright now long expired and not renewed since the publishers no longer exist either. The scores and sound files on my Web site are either recorded by me, my friends, or used in RealAudio format with permisson of the copyright owners. No one objects to the use of RealAudio content since it has a far lesser sound quality than MP3. To be blunt, RealAudio offers a small file size with "passable" quality that does not compete with CD-quality audio at all. It merely offers listeners a "sound image" to use when selecting material that they may wish to purchase on CDs.

I teach for two colleges: The University of South Carolina at Sumter and Saint Leo University at Shaw Air Force Base. My Web articles were really written for the use of my college students in my music classes. So now you will understand the motivation of my Web site. I do not make a profit of any kind from this site.

Sincerely, Charles K. Moss




While elsewhere in the US, the indefatigable Walt Santner has uncovered a veritable vault of downloads of complete operas recorded in Bulgaria that don't appear to need any health warnings. Full length Russian works to download are Borodin Prince Igor, Dargomizhsky Rusalka, Mussorgsky Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina, Andrey Petrov Peter I, Prokofiev Betrothal in a Monastery, Rachmaninoff Aleko, Rimsky-Korsakov Boyarinya Vera Sheloga, The Golden Cockerel and The Snow Maiden, Shostakovich Katerina Ismailova, and Stravinsky Mavra and Renard.

There are also downloads of complete operas by little known Bulagarian composers including Atanasov, Goleminov, Goleminov, Hadjiev, Iliev, Pipkov, Stoyanov, Vladigerov. While back in the mainstream the complete Bulgarian National Radio performances include Bizet Les pêcheurs de perles, Verdi Don Carlo, and Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer. The Bulgarian downloads come from a University of Pittsburgh site, and include cast lists and singer biographies.

For obvious reasons I haven't listened to many of these recordings. So reader reviews and experiences while on today's download path are very welcome.

Caveat emptor, and serial downloaders enjoy!

Now, for more Walt Santner discoveries click over to another 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

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

A treasure trove of Stokowski downloads

A Japanese site has a treasure trove of recordings by the legendary conductor Leopold Stokowski ranging from 1917 acoustic recordings to 1953 electric recordings. All were 78rpm shellac releases, and the site claims they are copyright free. There are a lot of very fine things to listen to including two complete Tchaikovsky symphonies, a complete 1941 No 4 recorded with the NBC Symphony in 1941, and a 1940 Symphony No.6 'Pathetique' with the All American Youth Orchestra. Thanks go to US reader and internet sleuth Walt Santner whose research uncovered these, and the Norwegian historic MP3s, for us, and to the unknown Japanese webmaster for making them available.

Stokowski was the role model for today's jet set maestros. Born in North London in 1882, a short distance from what was to become EMI's famous Abbey Road Studios, he started his musical career as organist in St James' Church, Piccadily. He moved to the US in 1905, and ten years later became a naturalized American. He took over the Philadelphia Orchestra (see my article Reflections on the Philadelphia Orchestra), and it was here that he built his reputation as orchestral trainer, contemporary music champion (including the first performance and recording of Charles Ives' Symphony No. 4) , pioneer of new technology, and womaniser. He is remembered for many things, most notably his wonderful recorded legacy, his Bach orchestrations, and his work with Walt Disney on the film Fantasia. Do listen to the audio files that Walt Santner has done us all a great favour by uncovering.

* The biography Leopold Stokowski by Preben Opperby was published by Hippocrene Books in the US and Midas Books in the UK (ISBN 0882546589 & 0859362531) but is now out of print.

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
If you enjoyed this post take an overgrown path to Rhythm Is It! - the new Fantasia?

Treasure trove of historic MP3 downloads

The Finnish national broadcaster YLE Radio 1 has the most extraordinary treasure trove of historic MP3 downloads on their website. I can't even list the riches available, but the artists include Dinu Lipatti, Pablo Casals, Alfred Cortot, Kirsten Flagstad , Yehudi Menuhin, Arturo Toscanini, and many, many more. There are lots of downloads for each artist, and the technical quality is very good. The whole site is in Finnish, but navigation is intuitive. Just select the artist from the left hand side list, then select the Real Audio or MP3 hyperlink under the composition. Each download has a spoken introduction of around 20 seconds in Finnish, but don't let that put you off.

This is an extraordinary discovery. I am listening to Toscanini conducting the adagio molto e cantabile from Beethoven's 9th as I write - beautiful. Here is the link, and many thanks to reader Walt Santner for the heads-up.

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
If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Discovered - the online Arnold Schoenberg jukebox