The best record store in the world?

Let's celebrate the best record stores in the world before they are all submerged beneath characterless web sites and anonymous file downloads. One of the truly great stores is shown in my photos here. Rombaux at Mallebergplaats 13 in Bruges, Belgium opened as a piano retailer in the early 1920s, and has remained an independent store which is now run by the third generation of the original owners. The piano origins of the business can be seen in the legend over the door in the final photo in my sequence.


Despite retaining its traditional look Rombaux's store has moved with the times. It has recently been completely refitted with floor to ceiling CD browsers to hold their massive range and their is a separate room for opera recordings with auditioning equipment. The company also continues to sell pianos and other instruments and the store next to the current one has been acquired for a new instrument showroom.


This is a classical music store, but jazz and world music are also stocked. There is no discounting, so given the current strength of the Euro prices reflect the quality of the store. Visit the Rombaux web site here. Despite the prices I defy anyone to visit this store and not leave with a pile of CDs. Below are details of just two of the new recordings with local connections that I bought there.


Hans Neusidler - music for renaissance lute played by Bart Roose. Flanders has a particularly rich musical heritage and continues to be home to a thriving music scene. The emphasis is on early music but, like the country itself, tastes are catholic and we were in Bruges for the John Cage Happening. Lutenist Bart Roose was born in Ostend in 1962, studied in Ghent and Antwerp and now teaches at the Conservatoires of Aalter and Gentbrugge and lives in Bruges. Hans Neusidler was a leading figure of the German lute school of the sixteenth century, and the music on this recording dates from the 1530s. Released on the Belgian Passacaille label this CD is beautifully played and atmospherically recorded in the Maria-Aalter Chapel 'De Brooders van Liefde' in Flanders. Wonderful late night listening.


Joseph Haydn - Harpsichord Concertos in F and G and Divertimento in F played by Ewald Demeyere with La Petite Bande directed by Sigiswald Kuijken. Another home team, young Belgian harpsichordist and regular bande member Ewald Demeyere studied in Antwerp while Sigiswald Kuijken was born in Brussels and studied in that city and at the Bruges Conservatoire. A typically spikey performance from La Petite Bande finely captured in the Doopsgezinde Kerk, Haarlem across the border in Holland. (Interestingly Doopsgezinde Kerk is a member of the Universal Mennonite Congregation - the Mennonites are a group of Christian Anabaptist denominations named after Dutchman Menno Simons [1496-1561] and are one of the historic peace churches committed to nonviolence and pacifism.) This excellent CD is released on the Accent Records label, which appropriately was founded in 1979 by the the Belgian maker of baroque recorders and transverse flutes Andreas Glatt.


Rombaux in Bruges is undoubtedly one of the best record stores in the world. Other examples of this much-needed but sadly threatened species gratefully received On An Overgrown Path. In the meantime I'll relish those few wonderful hours in Bruges when record shopping was fun again.

* Another candidate for best record store in the world is Prelude Records in Norwich. In a pleasing convergence of independent retailer and independent record label Jordi Savall will be in Prelude this Saturday (May 17) at 11.30am not only signing his discs but also playing his viola da gamba ahead of his evening Norwich Festival concert. Music to the ears of the independents!

All photos (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Ysaye listening on Future Radio

There is a rare chance to hear one of Eugène Ysaÿe's sonatas for solo violin on Future Radio this Sunday. My Overgrown Path programme takes a journey from Bach to Belgium and frames Ysaÿe's Sonata No. 2 in A Minor with Bach's Sonata No. 1 in G minor and mighty Partita No 3 in E major. The Ysaÿe Sonatas are inspired by Bach, and the juxtaposition of Ysaÿe's Second Sonata with the E major Partita in the programme mirrors the Belgium composer's statement and restatement of themes from the Bach work. Thomas Zehetmair plays the Ysaÿe and the two Bach works are performed by Mark Lubotsky from Brilliant Classic's invaluable Bach Edition which offers all the composer's works on 155 CDs at a very affordable price. Listen at 5.00pm UK time on April 27 with a repeat at 12.50am on April 28.

Ysaÿe was born in Liège in Belgium in 1858, and after graduation became principal violin of the Benjamin Bilse beer-hall orchestra, which found a home in a disused roller-skating rink and became the Berlin Philharmonic - music was more fun back then. You can hear music from another composer from the Low Countries on Future Radio on May 11 when I play extracts from another rarely heard work, the Missa Pro Defunctis by the 16th century Flemish composer Jacobus de Kerle. The performers are the Belgium based Huelgas-Ensemble directed by Paul Van Nevel who featured here last year in the story of the work that inspired Tallis' Spem in alium. And there is new music from Belgium here.

Photo from the souk in Marrakech, Morocco (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Straussian modernism and Viennese Schmaltz

'It is worth noting that the novel's last scene, with it's off-stage procession, tumultuous church-bells and climactic murder, itself resolves a very inward drama in the convention of grand opera. A fact not lost on the twenty-three-year-old Erich Wolfgang Korngold, whose opera Die tote Stadt (premiered simultaneously in Cologne and Hamburg in December 1920) is based indirectly on Bruges-la-Morte, and is now the form in which the novel is most widely known.

Its immediate source was Le Mirage, the four-act theatrical version of Bruges-la-Morte which Georges Rodenbach prepared at the end of his life, but never saw staged. In dramatising his book he found himself driven to just those kinds of explication through dialogue that the novel pointedly avoids. Korngold, in following him, and in wrapping the play in his precocious melange of Straussian modernism and Viennese Schmaltz, prolonged and broadened the fame of this recondite novel - but at the cost of what makes it so singular and unforgettable.'

Those words are from novelist Alan Hollinghurst's introduction to the new edition of Georges Rodenbach's novel Bruges-la-Morte. It is essential reading and I know many readers will disagree about the Viennese Schmaltz and say that Korngold's opera is also essential listening. Die tote Stadt is available in several versions including one from Naxos. I took the photos of Bruges in February when visiting that evocative city for something well beyond Strauss modernism, the John Cage happening.

Talking of Richard Strauss I will be playing the rarely heard string septet realisation of his Metamorphosen on Future Radio on May 4 as part of a programme marking the anniversary of the surrender of German forces in Europe on May 7, 1945. The main work in the programme will be the equally rarely heard Violin Concerto by Benjamin Frankel. Born in London in 1906 of Polish-Jewish parents Frankel studied in Germany and London, and his 1951 Violin Concerto is sub-titled 'In Memory of the Six Million'.

Two weeks later, on May 18, I will be presenting a programme of works by musicians in exile. The music will be Bohuslav Martinů's Concertino for Piano Trio and String Orchestra, then a very rare treat in the form of Peter Paul Fuch's Five Miniatures in a performance from a private tape made available by the composer's widow and finally the String Quartet No. 5 by Fuchs' teacher Karl Weigl. It is a great privilege to be able to showcase these composers, and my thanks go to Future Radio for making it possible to bring this music to thousands of happy new ears.


Photos (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

John Cage was really happening in Bruges

happening - a gathering of people at which something happens. A party or function where people indulge in activities contrary to the social norm.
~ from John Basset McCleary's Hippie Dictionary.


If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all ~ John Cage


The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason ~ John Cage.


Which is more musical: a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?
~ John Cage


As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency ~ John Cage


There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear ~ John Cage


John Cage was really happening in Bruges, Belgium on February 17, 2008 as my photos show. The one above was taken on the margins of available light in the Concertgebouw's main hall during the performance of Cage's 4' 33" and yes, my digital camera was in 'silent' mode. The amplified cactus, which provided a suitably mystical conclusion to the happening, can just be seen to the left front of the musicians. The Concertgebouw was built for the Bruges' tenure as European City of Culture in 2002. The main hall is acoustically adjustable to suit opera or symphonic/choral music and was also used for a performance of Morton Feldman's Rothko Chapel.


My photo above shows the stunning lantaantoren (‘lantern tower’) which is used for chamber music and amplified events. The new Concertgebouw provides a wonderful choice of flexible performing spaces. But, despite the claims of the project consultants Arup Acoustics, the isolation from external noise in the chamber music venue leaves a lot to be desired. But I'm sure John Cage would have approved of the traffic noise in his Hymns and Variations and the marching band in Sonatas and Interludes.


The Cage happening also included music by Earle Brown. Seen in my photos are the musicians who made it happen, Daan Vandewalle piano, Arne Deforce cello, Jean-Marc Montera electric guitar, Chris Cutler percussion, Aimé Lombaert carillon; Cage's Radio Music (photo 2) was performed by students from the Conservatories of Ghent and Bruge. Lunch (photo 5) was 'indeterminacy cooking' with individual menus decided by a random number generation programme. This was a true happening - a gathering at which something happened contrary to the social norm. Other concert planners, broadcasters and record companies please take note.


'I have nothing to say
and I am saying it
and that is poetry
as I needed it'
~ John Cage

All photos (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at tmail dot co dot uk

New music is Europe's hot ticket

The all day John Cage Happening in Bruge, Belgium this Sunday (Feb 17) is a complete sell-out. On An Overgrown Path will be there and also at Morton Feldman's Rothko Chapel two days before. Adventurous programming and new music is certainly pulling in the European audiences, and the next hot ticket looks to be the happening previewed below, and we will be there as well:

spnm’s experimental music night The Sound Source returns to Kilburn’s Luminaire (see footer photo) on 12 March with an unusual and creative response to the work of Karlheinz Stockhausen. Headlining the event are Belgian pianist Daan Vandewalle, who will perform Klavierstücke I-IV, and drummer and percussionist Chris Cutler, who will join him for a version of Kontakte. Electronic artist Scanner completes the line-up with some Stockhausen-inspired works. Rounding off the evening, the three will team up to perform a newly commissioned tribute to one of Stockhausen’s hidden gems, Stockhoven/Beethausen.

The event begins with an Open Source slot, in association with Music Orbit, offering emerging British artists the chance to showcase their work. A CD of the results will be given to audience members at the end of the night.

Chris Cutler is an English percussionist, composer, lyricist and music theorist. After working in the ‘70s with English avant-garde rock group Henry Cow, he founded Art Bears, News from Babel and Cassiber, and joined the American band Pere Ubu. In addition to special projects for stage, theatre, film and radio he still works consistently with Fred Frith, Zeena Parkins, Jon Rose, Tim Hodgkinson, David Thomas, Peter Blegvad, Daevid Allen, Hugh Hopper, Daan Vandewalle and Stevan Tickmayer and has toured the world as a soloist with his extended electrified kit. Other recent projects include Out of the Blue Radio - a daily year-long soundscape project for Resonance FM and p53 for Orchestra.

Belgian pianist Daan Vandewalle enjoys an international reputation as a new music specialist, with a strong focus on 20th century American piano music. He studied at the Conservatory of Ghent, Belgium with Claude Coppens and at Mills College, California with Alvin Curran. His recitals and projects have become increasingly more diverse and challenging, and his programmes are often highly unusual, both on a technical and intellectual level, often combining the classical repertoire with premieres of new works written especially for him e.g. Frith, Newman, Curran, Rzewski. As an improviser he has collaborated widely with David Moss, Fred Frith, Han Bennink, Chris Cutler and Tom Cora amongst others.

British artist Robin Rimbaud, aka Scanner (see header photo), traverses the experimental terrain between sound, space, image and form, creating absorbing, multi-layered sound pieces that twist technology in unconventional ways. From his early controversial work using found mobile phone conversations, through to his focus on trawling the hidden noise of the modern metropolis as the symbol of the place where hidden meanings and missed contacts emerge, his restless explorations of the experimental terrain have won him international admiration from amongst others, Bjork, Aphex Twin and Stockhausen. Scanner has collaborated with artists from every imaginable genre, including Bryan Ferry, Radiohead, The Royal Ballet, Merce Cunningham, Michael Nyman and Luc Ferrari.


Read about other 'hot ticket' new music festivals here and here.
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Honey I shrunk the soloist

Youth was the musical 'must have' in 2007. Could marriage be the musical 'must have' in 2008? My favourite Christmas disc this year was Ton Koopman playing Christmas Carols on the baroque Van Peteghem organ in St. Martinuskerk, Haringe, Belgium. Wonderful music from Sweelink, Buxtehude, Bull and Bach, wonderful playing by Koopman on the 1778 organ, with wonderful sound from producer Tini Mathot, who just happens to be Mrs Koopman, and the CD really is a family affair as it is released on Koopman's own Antoine Marchand record label. Tini Mathot is a distinguished keyboard player in her own right, and she is seen above playing alongside her husband. I last heard them together several years ago playing the Art of Fugue on two harpsichords ago in the peerless acoustics of St George's Brandon Hill, Bristol.

Tini Mathot and Ton Koopman are the latest in a distinguished line of couples who have worked together as performers and producers. There are Isabella de Sabata and John Eliot Gardiner at Soli deo Gloria, and Montserrat Figueras and Jordi Savall at Alia Vox (photo below), like Mathot and Koopman both couples work in the early music field, what is it about gut strings? They were preceeded by Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge, and of course Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Walter Legge. Reminders of other husband and wife performer and production teams please. And yes, I know about Joyce Hatto and William Barrington-Coupe, while Carla Bruni and Nicolas Sarkozy don't count, even if the bling-bling President's son is a hip hop producer.


Judging by the number of mentions in recent weeks Belgium is the 'must have' country for 2008. Check out these links, and we are off there next month for John Cage, Morton Feldman et al.
Photo credit Trigonale early music festival. 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

Let the sunshine on Morton Feldman

Nice riff going over on today's post about 'noises off' on recordings, and a comment from Brussels arrived just as I was enjoying Stephane Ginsburgh's new CD of Morton Feldman's For Bunita Marcus.

This excellent CD is notable for two reasons. First, Stephane Ginsburgh is one of the new generation of 'smart' Euro-pianists who play contemporary music with their heads as well as their hands - Daan Vandewalle and Jeroen van Veen are others. Check out Ginsburgh's website to see what I mean.

The second reason to comment on this new release are the sleeve notes. There aren't any. Except for these words - 'recorded by Daniel Léon at Igloo Studio, Brussels, April 1st, 2006, a sunny day'. Looking at that date I suspect a joke.

We're off to Belgium in February to hear lots of Morton Feldman and John Cage. Meanwhile, hear more 'noises off' here and here.
'Let the sunshine in' is, of course, from the musical Hair, which opened in New York and London forty years ago in 1968. 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

Henri Pousseur serial continues

Dear Pliable. Just to put things right: The reader who told you that Henri Pousseur's birthplace Malmédy was German speaking, is not quite correct. While Malmédy is part of the so-called East Cantons (which were originally German, but became Belgian after the First World War), and which are now part of Wallonia, it is officially a French speaking town with language facilities for the German speaking minority there.

I promise this will be the last time I bother you with the Belgian situation. ;-) Great blog, by the way.

Cordially, Ivo Swinnen, As, Belgium

Ivo, please don't apologise. All this helps explain why Belgium hasn't been able to form a government for nearly six months. And this path took me to some wonderful graphics connected to Henri Pousseur. That's where my header image comes from, it's part of a portrait of Henri Pousseur by Maxime Godard. Thank you for helping us explore the labyrinth of serial 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 broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

A new serialist from the old world

Kyle has left a new comment on your post "New music from the old world":

I see that Belgian serialist Henri Pousseur is not mentioned. Or, perhaps, he has already been forgotten.

Not forgotten Kyle. Just wating for someone to fill in the details. Henri Pousseur was born in Malmédy in French speaking Wallonia in 1929. In the 1950s he was active in the international avant-garde music scene (dodecaphonic, serial, electronic, aleatoric music), together with Boulez, Stockhausen, Berio, and others, and like Boulez he was heavily influenced by Webern. The image above is a page from Pousseur's score for Electre (credit Universal Editions, Vienna).

After 1960 Pousseur rejected the narrow viewpoint of the avant-garde, and, in collabaration with the French writer Michel Butor, he adopted an inclusive approach which embraced a range of styles and viewpoints. Their 1962 opera Votre Faust forged a connection between contemporary music and history by casting the audience as performers. The influential Centre de recherches et de formation musicales de Wallonie (CRFMW) in Liège was founded by Pousseur in the 1970s. He also established the Institut de Pédagogie musicale de Paris in the 1980s, which is now integrated into Paris' Cité de la Musique.

Among Henri Pousseur's prolific output are the electro-acoustic music sequences for the 1961 production of Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels. The choreography for this opera was created by the great Maurice Béjart, who died yesterday (Nov 22, 2007) aged 80.

The English website of Henri Pousseur's publisher is here, his own French website is here. And read about yet another serialist from the old world 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

New music from the old world

Interesting article in French over on ConcertoNet.com about twentieth century music in general and Alex Ross' new book in particular. (Flaky machine translation here.) The writer is sometime Overgrown Path contributor Antoine Leboyer who highlights some overlooked contemporary European composers, and particularly recommends exploring Philippe Boesmans (above right), Guillaume Connesson, and Pascal Dusapin.

Connesson and Dusapin are both French, but Boesmans is Belgian. Today, Belgium has been without a government for 157 days, and as time ticks by the possibility of a permanent split between the country's Dutch and French speaking communities comes closer. It is a story that has attracted surprisingly little international media coverage, and that is not because Belgium is of little importance. It was the German invasion of the country in 1914 that caused Britain to enter the First World War, a conflict that changed the world political landscape for ever.

Since 1831, when the country was created by the Catholic Flemings and Walloons separating from the Protestant Netherlands, Belgium has had an identity crisis. This is shown by the following list of Belgium born figures from the arts who are commonly thought to be French, César Frank, Georges Simeon, Jacques Brel, and Renée Magritte, whose Ceci n'est pas une pipe (below) connects him with Simeon's Parisian detective Maigret.


Composer Philippe Boesmans was born in 1936 in Tongeren, in French speaking Wallonia. He worked as a producer of Radio-Télévision Belge de la Communauté Française (RTBF), and since 1985 has been resident composer at the Théâtre Royal de La Monnaie in Brussels. The 1993 premiere of Boesmans' opera Reigen was given at La Monnaie. This performance took place against a back-drop of possible federalisation, as this article from the New York Times recounts.

My header photo shows Boesmans (right) talking to director Luc Bondy during the production of the composer's new opera Julie at La Monnaie in 2005, and the lower photo is from that production. Julie is a one-act chamber opera is based Strindberg's play, Miss Julie, as is William Alwyn's eponymous opera from 1976. If you want to sample new music from the old world, Philippe Boesmans' Julie is available on Cypres Records in a live recording from La Monnaie.


More on new music in Europe here. And as Christmas is approaching why not visit Le village de Noël in César Frank's birthplace, Liège?
Image credits. Header and footer La Mediateque. Magritte from Wikipedia. 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