The Rite of Spring

Photo taken at the Lost Garden of Heligan, Cornwall. Now playing - Fazil Say's recording of the four-hand piano transcription of the Rite Of Spring. The starting point of this CD is Stravinsky's own four-hand score for the Rite, but the finishing point is some way away from the composer's original. Not only does Say use multi-tracking to play both piano parts, but he builds up further layers with his own additions to the score mimicking percussion and cymbals, with the different layers using different microphone perspectives.

As if this is not enough Say does a Glenn Gould and offers an interview with himself in the sleeve notes justifying his approach and also justifying releasing a full price CD containing just 31 minutes and 12 seconds of music. (He does threaten a coupling of his take on Verklärte Nacht, but thankfully refrains). Not so much Stravinsky as a technical tour de force, and, surprisingly, it is still in the catalogue at full price eight years after release. Certainly not a first choice or even tenth choice Rite but a fascinating musical and technical curiosity if you don't mind few bangs for your bucks.

More interesting orchestration in my Future Radio programme this Sunday (March 9 - check sidebar for details) in Lou Harrison's Concerto for Violin with Percussion Orchestra with a score that includes 12 brakedrums, 6 flowerpots, dustbins, a double bass laid on its back and tin cans. The recording is a new one by Madeleine Mitchell and Ensemble Bash.

No short change with this excellent Signum release (sleeve below) which offers 66 minutes of music from Anne Dudley, Tarik O'Regan, Stuart Jones, and Simon Limbrick and a traditional Sengalese drumming piece which I will finish the programme with. An excellent release, but the Fiddlesticks title, with no mention of Lou Harison on the cover, doesn't do it justice. Retailers are saying it would sell far more copies if it had been marketed as a Lou Harrison recording and filed in the browser under 'H'. Signum are best known for their choral recordings, but are doing some interesting things in contemporary music including a new recording of the complete Philip Glass String Quartets.


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

The feminine point of view

The feminine point of view is a complementary one to the masculine ... the woman's approach presents a different emphasis. I think that women contribute a great deal to this understanding through the visual arts and perhaps especially in sculpture, for there is a whole range of formal perception belonging to feminine experience - Barbara Hepworth


All photos taken at the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden in St. Ives, Cornwall. Dame Barbara Hepworth lived at Trewyn Studio from 1949 until her death in 1975 at the age of 72.


Barbara Hepworth had many musical connections. She designed the costumes and sets for the premiere of Michael Tippett's The Midsummer Marriage at Covent Garden in 1955. One of her sculptures stands in front of Britten's Snape Maltings concert hall and in 1969 she was invited to the first ever Ladies' Night at London's Royal Academy of Arts together with Elisabeth Lutyens.


The composer Priaulx Rainier (who deserves an article to herself) was a close friend and helped her design the sculpture garden at Trewyn Studio seen in my photos. After hearing Rainier's music William Walton (a notable chauvinist) commented that Miss Rainier must have barbed-wire underwear. In 1953 Hepworth and Rainier organised a music festival in St Ives to which Tippett contributed a fanfare. The festival included madrigals sung from a boat in the harbour. In his autobiography Tippett recalls how the two ladies forgot to check the tides, during the performance the tide went out taking with it a boatful of inaudible singers.


Barbara Hepworth married twice. Her first marriage was to the sculptor John Skeaping, her second marriage to the painter Ben Nicholson ended in divorce in 1951. After the Second World War Hepworth became a pacifist and joined CND and the Labour Party. The American artists Mark Rothko and Mark Tobey visited her in St Ives. She achieved international recognition and her 1964 tribute in sculpture to her friend UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld stands in the United Nations Plaza in New York.


Now read how Iannis Xenakis composed in glass
Photos (c) 2008 On An Overgrown Path. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Gone fishing

Well not exactly, but I'm away from the keyboard and off to the fine county that was the birthplace of composer George Lloyd, home to Malcolm Arnold who wrote a set of his English Dances there in the 1960s and the location of the castle that inspired Arnold Bax's Tintagel. Back soon, there may be a delay in uploading comments but keep them coming. In the meantime please support other music blogs here and here and don't forget Elliott Carter and Michael Tippett on Future Radio.

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