On An Overgrown Path

Photo taken at the festival of lessons and carols in Blythburgh Church sung by the Blythburgh Singers on December 22nd, 2007, a church which has many connections with Benjamin Britten . Have a peaceful Christmas everyone, and a musical New Year. 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

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 prog...

What a blog! A big hurdle to be overcome: music's use to further distinguish, even exalt, a given class distiction. Even in ancient Greece, there was 'elitist' music. Today, rap a genre of primarily non-eltitist society, occupies a powerful vantantage point for influence. Well funded and world wide, rap is turning music, eltism, and influence, on its head. But what is built on sand gets pumelled by the storm of time. Posted by Sostenuto ( sic ) to my article Music and politics . Whenever a thoughtful comment like that is added I click through to the poster's own blog. Sostenuto describes himself as 'a violinist in his early stages as a composer. I consider my musical influences to be Bach, Messiaen, Monteverdi (early music in general,) Schoenberg, Hindemith, Stravinsky, Mozart, Glass and the like. I'm currently studying music performance with Mathias Tacke of the Vermeer Quartet along with compositional studies.' With those musical influences he'd pro...

Steel works, Snape Maltings fire: mixed media by Cavendish Morton linked from Island Arts It was a dark night, but as we came over the brow of the hill the sky was lit up by an orange glow, with a trial of thick smoke. If this was dramatic, seen from close to it was positively theatrical. Above our heads the black shell of the Maltings loomed like the flank of a stricken liner..... In the foreground, silhouetted against the bright lights, members of the English Opera Group chorus were collapsing into each other's arms. It was a devastating event, of course, but one whose aftermath - the triumphant rescue of the Idomeneo premiere at Blythburgh, and the Maltings rebuilding for the very next Festival - swiftly became part of the Aldeburgh legend. In 1965 the expanding Aldeburgh Festival urgently needed a purpose built concert hall. After much searching Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears found a disused maltings at Snape on the River Alde four miles upstream from Aldeburgh . Archit...