Goodbye conductor - hallo composer

Overgrown Path's web logs over the past few days showed little uplift in traffic to my wide range of Herbert von Karajan articles. Most of the increase that happened came either from searches for the conductor's political and sexual predilections or from Japan, which has always had a special love affair with him. This analysis was mirrored in the mainstream media where, despite strong promotion from Deutsche Grammophon and EMI and some unashamed puffery from Simon Rattle, there was little interest in the Karajan anniversary other than tabloid-style trash from Norman Lebrecht and Ivan Hewett. The music industry loves an anniversary and two years ago we celebrated Shostakovich to death. So why did Herbert's birthday party fall so flat?

Many will say it was because of Karajan, but I disagree. Love him or hate him Karajan was a very high profile conductor who has never struggled in the past for column inches. Nobody came to the party this week-end because our love affair with the conductor is finished. The twentieth-century was the age of the maestro, and the big industry names held a baton - Walter, Toscanini, Furtwängler , Karajan, Boult, Beecham, Barbirolli, Klemperer and others. But as the millenium approached new names emerged, and they were holding a pen instead of a stick. The three 'Bs' of Britten, Bernstein and Boulez were on the cusp, and they have been followed by Stockhausen, Reich, Adams (header photo), Maxwell Davies, Adès and many more. Crucially, a number of these composers are, or were, fine conductors not just of their own music but also of composers as far back as Bach.


As we say goodbye conductor and hello composer major festivals such as the 1938 London Music Festival built around Toscanini (programme above) and the Salzburg Easter Festival created as a vehicle for Karajan have become things of the past. Their replacements are events like the South Bank Centre's Messiaen celebration (poster below), and try finding the conductors (one of who is Pierre Boulez) on that poster.

None of this means conductors will disappear. Orchestras need them just like they need concert masters. But how many readers can name the concert master of the Los Angeles Philharmonic? The celebrity conductor is a dying breed and it is interesting to speculate what that means. The record companies (again) stand to lose most as they depend on personalities to sell CDs. It is almost impossible to get composer/conductors such as Thomas Adès to work the press. Which explains the increasingly shrill attempts to promote increasingly young conductors who are only too willing to co-operate in photo opportunities. When they finally read the writing on the wall (which will probably take as long as it did for them to realise the impact of MP3s) will we see labels signing exclusive deals with composers instead of conductors? And before anyone tells me that contemporary composers don't sell I'd remind them that Naxos' second best selling album in 2007 was Philip Glass' Symphony No. 4 (23,000 units) and the fourth best seller was John Adams' Piano Music (14,000 units). Remember that it took four years for Glenn Gould's 1955 of the Goldberg Variations to sell 40,000 units.

Will we see back catalogue exploitation of neglected conductor/composers of the past such as Antal Dorati? Will we see Thomas Adès recording Mozart concertos directing from the keyboard, and Peter Maxwell Davies recording Mahler and John Adams Beethoven from the podium? Will more composers follow the example of Philip Glass (Orange Mountain Music) and Peter Maxwell Davies (MaxOpus) and establish their own record labels? Your guess is as good as mine. But it is definitely goodbye conductor and hallo composer. Watch this space.


Read more about an artist extraordinaire here.
Toscanini programme from my personal collection and (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008. 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

Where is the Chinese Shostakovich?

BBC News reports today - A prominent activist who publicised human rights abuses across China has been convicted of subversion and jailed for three-and-a-half years. Hu Jia, 34, was convicted of "inciting subversion of state power and the socialist system", his lawyer said. He has long campaigned for the environment, religious freedom and for the rights of people with HIV and Aids.

In 1997 Adrian Abbotts wrote - Over thirty million people are estimated to have disappeared through China's gulags since 1949. Fox Butterfield's all too valid critique that when a dissident was sent to a prison camp in the Soviet Union it was headline news, but when it happened in China no-one cared came instantly to mind. The former Soviet Union was for years subjected by the West to the propganda attacks of the Cold War while China, though worse in many ways than the USSR, remained a curiosity shop on the edge of the universe.

It is changing a little now, but names such as Wei Jingsheng amd Phuntsok Nyidron (A Tibetan nun serving nine years for demonstrating, whose sentence was increased by a further eight years in 1994 for singing a song of independence while in jail - she is on the right in the photo below) do not yet trip so easily from the tongue as Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn, and China remains a blind spot in the eyes of the West, visible only when it comes to trade.

Chinese troops can kill hundreds of pro-democracy demonstrators in Lhasa or the centre of their own capital, live on television with running commentary, yet 'favoured nation' trading status is not withdrawn by the United States, and British towns twin happily with Chinese cities in a way that would have been unthinkable with the Soviet Union or South Africa a decade earlier. This is all apart from the evidence linking Western companies with the export of precision-made torture instruments to China, none of which have been prosecuted.

It is curious to think that the adults involved in such decisions, presidents and prime ministers included, who are themselves instrumental in perpetuating the worst excesses of totalitarianism this planet has yet produced, would be horrified should their child return from school having been told that the Holocaust was a good thing.


Will we find the Chinese Shostakovich here?
Second quotation from Naked Spirits, A Journey into Occupied Tibet by Adrian Abbotts; out of print, but well worth searching out. Photo credits: Hu Jia European Parliament, Phuntsok Nyidron with fellow dissident Ngawang Sangdrol from Tibet Chine Actualité. 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

Here's another bottle of third-pressing Mahler

The debate as to whether there is such a thing as third rate music attracted a record number of comments. And it is not just music critics who rate composers. Pierre Boulez once described Shostakovich's output as "third-pressing Mahler" in an allusion to the process used to extract the cheapest and most bland olive oil.

But according to John Drummond Shostakovich rated Boulez more extra virgin than third-pressing - 'Boulez's first concert in Moscow with the BBC Symphony Orchestra was unforgettable. Nothing of the Second Viennese School had been heard there since the early 1920s, and he conducted Webern's Five Pieces for Orchestra, Berg's Wozzek fragments and Altenberg Lieder and his own Eclat.

All the young Soviet composers were sent to a mythical conference in Kiev to keep them out of the way, but Oistrakh sought me out and took me to a box at the back of the Conservatoire Hall, where behind a curtain sat the ashen-faced Shostakovich. I asked if he would give me an interview. Blue around the mouth and with shaking hands he refused, but he was not at all unfriendly. I did not ask what he thought of Boulez's music, but he told me how much he admired his conducting of Berg'.

Delightfully informal header photo shows Pierre Boulez at the bar of his house in Baden Baden. Image credit from Joan Peyser's out of print but well worth getting hold of Boulez - composer, conductor, enigma (Schirmer ISBN 00287117007); Shostakovich merits just one mention in the book's index, Berg receives eighteen. Book quotation from Tainted by Experience by John Drummond (Faber ISBN 0571200540, also out of print). More priceless Drummond 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

Secret symphonies on internet radio

My Overgrown Path radio programme on Future Radio on Sunday Oct 14 at 5.00pm UK time features two secret symphonies which are rarely heard either in the concert hall or in broadcasts. Fashion is as important as merit in contemporary music today. Which probably explains why the symphonies of Dmitri Shostakovich and Henryk Górecki are heard so often, and why those of Malcolm Arnold and Paul Creston languish in obscurity.

Sir Malcolm Arnold (above) is, by far, the better known of the two composers. His film music, English Dances, and Guitar Concerto have already featured on my radio programme. But his gritty and uncompromising symphonies stay resolutely out of fashion, and out of performance, despite their considerable merit.

Arnold’s Eighth Symphony dates from 1978 when it was written to a commission from an American Foundation, and was given its first performance in the States by the Albany Symphony Orchestra. The critic John Amis described the symphony as the composer’s masterpiece. The three movements are pure Arnold with an Irish marching tune in the first, an elegiac slow movement, and an ambiguous finale.

The neglect of Arnold's symphonies is underlined by the fact that the 1991 world premiere recording of Malcolm Arnold’s Eighth Symphony is no longer available. But I will be playing it on Sunday, with that great champion of British music Vernon Handley conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.


After Britain’s Malcolm Arnold I am presenting music by America’s Paul Creston (above). Born in New York City in 1906, Creston was the son of a Sicilian house-painter. His musical abilities emerged at a young age, and he studied with the composer Henry Cowell, and received two Guggenheim Scholarships.

In the 1950s and early 1960s Paul Creston’s music was widely performed in America, and he achieved considerable success composing for television. But in the late 60s both the style of Creston’s music, and his right-wing political beliefs fell out of favour, and his compositions are rarely heard today.

I am trying to rectify that by webcasting his Second Symphony which dates from 1944. This is a work of considerable merit. In fact Grammy winning conductor John McLaughlin Williams has gone on record as describing this as the greatest ever American symphony.

That is considerable praise, and you can judge for yourself when I play a performance by the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine conducted by Theodor Kuchar. Paul Creston’s Second Symphony has two movements, the first is titled Introduction and Song, the second Interlude and Dance.

Click on the image below to listen to the secret symphonies in real time at 5.00pm UK time on Sunday Oct 14.



Listen to the Future Radio audio stream here. Convert Overgrown Path radio on-air times to your local time zone using this link. Windows Media Player doesn't like the audio stream very much and takes ages to buffer. WinAmp or iTunes handle it best. Unfortunately the royalty license doesn't permit on-demand replay, so you have to listen in real time. If you are in the Norwich, UK area tune to 96.9FM. 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

Elgar - as much or as little as you require

The Dream of Gerontius and the two symphonies are Edward Elgar's masterpieces. But in this his 150th anniversary year, these works are missing completely from the BBC Proms, the self-styled 'world's greatest classical music festival'. Yet the same festival finds space for even more 'third pressing Mahler' (not my words) after last year's abundant crop.

But over in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, the Bard Music Festival (photo above) manages to include both The Dream of Gerontius and the E flat Symphony to huge acclaim, as part of a visionary celebration of Elgar's music.

Elgar once said "There is music in the air, music all around us, the world is full of it and you simply take as much as you require." Clearly upstate New Yorkers require more of it than London concert goers.

Now read about Elgar carrying on Beethoven's business.
Header photo shows the stunning Frank Gehry designed Fisher Centre for the Performing Arts at Bard College, NY. Photo credit Bard.edu. 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

Now that's what I call music blogging ...

So much quality music had been unfairly forgotten and so much tat put on a pedestal. Top of my tat-list is Dmitri Shostakovich. I personally can't wait for his flatulent 'sarcastic' bubble to burst. A close second and third on the tat-list are two more po-faced Soviet gits, Alfred Schnittke and Sofia Gubaidulina (left). When will that old witchy bore Gubaidulina shut up? When, EH? And when will the quieter craftsmen composers, Edison Denisov, Valentin Silvestrov and Dmitri Smirnov, get their dues?

Igor Toronyi-Lalic reminds us what music blogging should be about on the Telegraph website. And he links to my Elizabeth Maconchy article. Priceless, but I'm not so sure about Silvestrov.

Now read how Soviet blacklist fatigue sets in.
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

Theremin and variations on the moon

The total lunar eclipse on March 3 2007 will be visible over the eastern Americas, Europe, Africa, and western Asia. So here, to celebrate, is An Overgrown Path exclusive on a lunar story that has fascinating musical connections.

Notoriously taciturn first man on the moon Neil Armstrong reveals his choice of fly-time music in a recently published book. And his musical tastes open up undreamt of connections to Russian government research projects, Soviet agents and Communist propaganda films. Moon Dust by Andrew Smith is a new study of how the lives of the Apollo astronauts were changed by their lunar experience. Most of the nine surviving astronauts agreed to be interviewed for the book, but true to form the first man on the moon did not. But in an email exchange Armstrong identified the cassette of ' strange electronic-sounding music' that fellow Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins had reported him taking to Luna.

The cassette in question was transcribed from Neil Armstrong's own LP of Music Out of the Moon featuring Dr Samuel Hoffman. Author Andrew Smith decribes the theremin played by Hoffman on this album, and gives a short history of this unique instrument which mainly relates its use in rock music. But he completely misses out on a fascinating Russian connection. The story is too good to miss, so here it is.

The theremin was an early electronic instrument invented by a young Russian physicist called Léon Theremin, and came about as a side-product of Russian government-sponsored research into proximity sensors shortly before the outbreak of the Russian Civil War in 1919. The theremin (left) is the original 'hands free' instrument and requires no physical contact from the player. The player moves his hands close to two antenna, the right hand controls the pitch and the left hand determines volume. A variety of effects can be produced ranging from glissandi to staccato, but the instrument needs to be played from memory as notation is impossible.

The invention was enthusiastically received in Russia, and was personally demonstrated to the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin who went on to take lessons. But America won the ideological struggle and Léon Theremin moved to the US where he patented his invention, and it was put into production by RCA with limited success. But fact then gets stranger than fiction. Theremin was alledgedly kidnapped from his Mannhatan apartment by Soviet KGB agents who returned him to Russia where he was imprisoned for years, apparently for political reasons. After his release Theremin developed military and espionage devices for the KGB (logo to right), before going to work at the Moscow Conservatory of Music, where he built theremins and taught music for ten years. He did not return to the US until after the collapse of Communism.

Shostakovich's second film score Odna (1931) uses a theremin among the huge orchestral forces. The film was made shortly after the declaration of Stalin's first five-year plan, and it embraces the positive aspects of Communism including teaching, collectivism and modern technology. The theremin had other exponents in the classical field, most notably Clara Rockmore who was famous for her transcriptions for the instrument which included Bach and Bloch's Schelomo. Mrs Rockmore's recording of the Concerto for Theremin and Orchestra by the American composer Anis Fuleihan conducted by Leopold Stokowski has been reissued on CD, as has her The Art of the Theremin which was produced by Robert Moog in 1977.

The Ondes-Martenot, which was invented in 1928 and used so effectively by Olivier Messiaen, as well as Pierre Boulez, Edgar Varèse, Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger, Bohuslav Martinů and André Jolivet (who wrote a concerto for it in 1947), is a cousin of the theremin that uses similar heteroyne oscillators controlled by a keyboard.

The theremin was popular in America for a time after the Second World War, but it was then eclipsed by the new generation of electronic instruments. The best known of these is the Moog synthesizer, whose inventor Robert Moog started his career selling theremin kits. Despite technology improvements the theremin continued to have its advocates. These included Brian Wilson (left) who had to accept a hybrid Electro-Thermin for the recording of the Beach Boy's 'Good Vibrations' in 1966 due to the non-availabiltiy of the real thing. Three years later the best selling album 'Led Zeppelin ll' featured a theremin solo on the opening track 'Whole Lotta Love'.

The other-wordly sound palette of the theremin makes it a natural for film scores. Probably the best known film appearance is in Bernard Herrmann's 1951 score for The Day the Earth Stood Still. The unusual scoring is for a small orchestra combining the acoustic and electric sounds of brass, reed organ, Hammond organs, pianos, percussionists, electrically amplified strings, and cello, and bass and two theremins which play in opposition to create disorienting swirls.

Dr Samuel Hoffman, who recorded the theremin album which started us down this fascinating Overgrown Path, was an American chiropidist turned musician. He met Léon Theremin while playing in a dance band in the 1930s and became an enthusiastic exponent of the electronic instrument. Among Dr Hoffman's claims to fame are playing the theremin part in Miklós Rózsa's score for Hitchcock's Spellbound. His Music Out of the Moon is a Capitol album dating from 1947, and was written by classically trained light music composer Harry Revel, with arrangements and conducting by easy listening king Les Baxter.

Apollo 15 Commander Dave Scott and his crew were permanently grounded by NASA for the $6000 trust funds for their children paid for by a German stamp dealer as a reward for carrying unauthorised first day covers to the moon. I wonder what the FBI would have done had they known about the Russian connections of Neil Armstrong's on-board music? Fortunately Music Out of the Moon has passed the test of time better than J Edgar Hoover, and it is still in the Basta catalogue. So here to end is a 30 second audio sample, which is probably quite enough ....

Now read about contemporary music for the theremin, and about the early music that travelled on the Voyager space craft.

Theremin web resources * Wikipedia theremin article * New book on the history of the theremin - Theremin Ether Music and Espionage from University of Ilinois Press (ISBN 0252025822), there are also more theremin audio files on this site * Dr Samuel Hoffman * Clara Rockmore * Moon Dust by Andrew Smith * DVD Theremin - An Electronic Odyssey * Moog's history of the theremin *

First published On An Overgrown Path on March 26th 2006. Audio file from Amazon.com. Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

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

Soviet blacklist fatigue sets in

BBC Radio 3 is currently running a commercial radio style promotional trailer for their Sofia Gubaidulina festival next weekend, and this trailer uses Soviet blacklisting as a positive feature of Gubaidulina's music. Now I am a huge fan of Sofia Gubaidulina, and have already praised the festival here. But using Soviet blacklisting as an endorsement is a dangerous path to go down. Among the other contemporary musicians who could claim this particular endorsement are Village People (above), Donna Summer and Julio Iglesias. And does the fact that the Soviet state concert agency Goskoncert actively promoted Shostakovich's music from 1955 reduce his claim to be a great composer?

Now read about The frustration of the classical music industry
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

I am a camera - Dresden

In July 1960, Dmitri Shostakovich visited Dresden, which was then in the communist German Democratic Republic, to write the score for a film, 'Five Days, Five Nights'. This was the first time he had seen the devastation caused by the Allied bombing raids on February 14th 1945. The experience directly inspired his Eighth String Quartet, Op 110, which was written in just three days, and dedicated to the victims of fascism and war. The quartet became a musical symbol of the devastated city.

In the same way the rubble of the beautiful Frauenkirche (above), which was consecrated in 1734 and collapsed two days after the 1945 attacks, became a visual symbol of the ruined 'Florence on the Elbe.' The cathedral's famous organ by Gottfried Silbermann was also totally destroyed. It had been played by Johann Sebastian Bach in a recital in December 1736. The acoustics of the cathedral were said to have inspired passages in Wagner's Parsifal, and he conducted the first performance of his Biblical scene Das Liebesmahl der Apostel, Op. 69 there in 1843.

But a miracle has taken place. The Frauenkirche has risen like a phoenix from the ashes after sixty years, and the meticulously rebuilt cathedral with its restored Silbermann organ was re-consecrated in October. Last week we made a pilgrimage from Berlin through the former DDR to the restored cathedral. Here are some of my photos. Feast your eyes for this is truly a miracle.

Exterior of the restored Frauenkirche, taken from the left of the statue of Martin Luther seen in the top photo. 8400 outer facade pieces, and 87,000 internal masonry blocks recovered from the ruin were mapped onto a computer, and re-used where possible in their original locations in the rebuilding. The recovered stones can be seen as black blocks in the new facade. Photo - On An Overgrown Path

Above is the beautifully rebuilt interior of the dome. Below is the restored altar originally created by the Dresden sculptor Johann Christian Feige the Elder, and recreated from more than two thousand pieces of rubble. Above it is the magnificently restored Silbermann organ which has already been captured on CD. Photos - On An Overgrown Path


Anyone who doubts the ability of our culture to regenerate itself should make this pilgrimage.

The three colour pictures were taken by me on an 'old-school' Nikon F50 on 25th November 2005 (by an extraordinary coincidence 300 years to the exact day that the Silbermann organ was originally dedicated). The interior shots were hand-held using 200 ASA film. Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk Image owners - if you do not want your picture used on this site please contact me and it will be replaced
Now take An Overgrown Path to Dresden Requiem for eleven young victims

* This article was originally published on December 3, 2005, and is reblogged here as part of On An Overgrown Path's second anniversary celebration of Music beyond borders. Follow this link to read the comments posted to the original article.

Britten – music does not exist in a vacuum

Three Overgrown Paths converge. Antoine Leboyer wrote about the role of hall acoustics in creating good ensemble, sfmike asked about live performances of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, and the Middle East is a recurring nightmare here, and everywhere. This convergence sent me back to the inspirational speech Britten made when he accepted the first Aspen Award in the Humanities in 1964:

And then the best music to listen to in a great Gothic church is the polyphony which was written for it, and was calculated for its resonance: this was my approach in the War Requiem – I calculated it for a big, reverberant acoustic and that is where it sounds best. I believe you see, in occasional music, although I admit there are some occasions which can intimidate one – I do not envy Purcell writing his Ode to Celebrate King James’s Return to London from Newmarket. On the other hand almost every piece I have ever written has been composed with a certain occasion in mind, and usually for definite performers, and certainly always human ones.

When I am asked to compose a work for an occasion, great or small, I want to know in some detail the conditions of the place where it will be performed, the size and acoustics, what instruments or singers will be available and suitable, the kind of people who will hear it, and what language they will understand – and even sometimes the age of the listeners and performers. For it is futile to offer children music by which they are bored, or which makes them feel inadequate or frustrated, which may set them against music forever; and it is insulting to address anyone in a language which they do not understand. The text of my War Requiem was perfectly in place in Coventry Cathedral – the Owen poems in the vernacular, and the words of the Requiem Mass familiar to everyone – but it would have been pointless in Cairo or Peking.

During the act of composition one is continually referring back to the conditions of performance – as I have said, the acoustics and the forces available, the techniques of the instruments and the forces available, the techniques of the instruments and the voices – such questions occupy one’s attention continuously, and certainly affects the stuff of the music, and in my experience are not only in a restriction, but a challenge, an inspiration. Music does not exist in a vacuum, it does not exist until it is performed, and performance imposes conditions. It is the easiest thing in the world to write a piece virtually or totally impossible to perform – but oddly enough that is not what I prefer to do; I prefer to study the conditions of performance and shape my music to them.

Where does one stop, then, in answering people’s demands? It seems that there is no clearly defined Halt sign on the road. The only brake which one can apply is that of one’s own private and personal conscience; when that speaks clearly, one must halt; and it can speak for musical or non-musical reasons. In the last six months I have been asked several times to write a work as a memorial to the late President Kennedy (Pliable – don’t forget this was written in 1964). On each occasion I have refused – not because in any way I was out of sympathy with such an idea, on the contrary, I was horrified and deeply moved by the tragic death of a very remarkable man. But for me I do not feel the time is ripe; I cannot yet stand back and see it clear. I should have to wait very much longer to do anything like justice to this great theme. But had I in fact agreed to undertake a limited commission, my artistic conscience would certainly have told me in what direction I could go, and when I should have to stop.

Benjamin Britten received the first Robert O. Anderson Aspen Award in the Humanities to honour ‘the individual anywhere in the world judged to have made the greatest contribution to the advancement of the humanities’. Although the Aspen Award never achieved the currency of the Nobel prizes there were similarities, not the least being that Alfred Nobel made his fortune from explosives, and Robert O. Aspen made his from petroleum.

The header photo shows the unique, and sublime, performing space that Britten created in the Snape Maltings (image credit Jeremy Young via Architecture Week). Britten was a true humanist. As well as being one of the 20th century's most important composers he was responsible for the post-war opera revival in Britain, advocated Purcell and other neglected early composers, started a festival that showcased contemporary music, and built (and rebuilt) one of the world's finest concert halls. His love for the Suffolk coast, portrayed so vividly in the Four Sea Interludes, predated today's environmentalism by decades. He lived in an openly homosexual relationship in the dark days when such arrangements were still illegal in the UK, and in the War Requiem made one of the great pacifist statements of our time. He was an international standard pianist and conductor, championed Russian music and artists during the Soviet Unions darkest hours, and was the dedicatee of Shostakovich's Fourteenth Symphony. Britten's music most certainly does not exist in a vacuum.

Britten never composed a memorial to J.F. Kennedy. But Herbert Howells wrote his sublime motet Take Him, Earth, for Cherishing which I wrote about recently. And, of course, Leonard Bernstein's Mass was commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy in honour of the slain President, and the fallout from that work still resounds in my article Critical Mass, and elsewhere. Bernstein's music most definitely did not exist in a vacuum, and I can confirm from one of my own encouters with Lennie that he was certainly larger than life. Britten met Bernstein when he attended the US premiere of Peter Grimes in Tanglewood in 1946 which Bernstein conducted. Humphrey Burton takes up the story in his biography of Bernstein:

Within hours of the conclusion of the premiere Bernstein was playing boogie-woogie at the cast party. As Eric Crozier, the English director, remembered, Bernstein was more interested in talking to Auden, whom he revered, than to Britten, who was no great shakes as a party-goer. Reciprocally, perhaps Britten did not warm to his flamboyant interpreter and never invited him to perform at the Aldeburgh Festival, which he founded two years later.

But, despite this, Bernstein retained his affection for Britten's music. Bernstein's last concert, given in Tanglewood with the Boston Symphony Orchestra just months before his death in 1990, included a heart-stoppingly slow, but immensely moving, performance of the Four Sea Interludes. Which brings this particular Overgrown Path full circle, and back to where we started in Aldeburgh, Suffolk.

Any copyrighted material on these pages is used in "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
Read more about the Snape Maltings concert hall pictured above in Music will rise from the wreckage..... and Easter at Aldeburgh

I am a camera - Dresden

In July 1960, Dmitri Shostakovich visited Dresden, which was then in the communist German Democratic Republic, to write the score for a film, 'Five Days, Five Nights'. This was the first time he had seen the devastation caused by the Allied bombing raids on February 14th 1945. The experience directly inspired his Eighth String Quartet, Op 110, which was written in just three days, and dedicated to the victims of fascism and war. The quartet became a musical symbol of the devastated city.

In the same way the rubble of the beautiful Frauenkirche (above), which was consecrated in 1734 and collapsed two days after the 1945 attacks, became a visual symbol of the ruined 'Florence on the Elbe.' The cathedral's famous organ by Gottfried Silbermann was also totally destroyed. It had been played by Johann Sebastian Bach in a recital in December 1736. The acoustics of the cathedral were said to have inspired passages in Wagner's Parsifal, and he conducted the first performance of his Biblical scene Das Liebesmahl der Apostel, Op. 69 there in 1843.

But a miracle has taken place. The Frauenkirche has risen like a phoenix from the ashes after sixty years, and the meticulously rebuilt cathedral with its restored Silbermann organ was re-consecrated in October. Last week we made a pilgrimage from Berlin through the former DDR to the restored cathedral. Here are some of my photos. Feast your eyes for this is truly a miracle.

Exterior of the restored Frauenkirche, taken from the left of the statue of Martin Luther seen in the top photo. 8400 outer facade pieces, and 87,000 internal masonry blocks recovered from the ruin were mapped onto a computer, and re-used where possible in their original locations in the rebuilding. The recovered stones can be seen as black blocks in the new facade. Photo - On An Overgrown Path

Above is the beautifully rebuilt interior of the dome. Below is the restored altar originally created by the Dresden sculptor Johann Christian Feige the Elder, and recreated from more than two thousand pieces of rubble. Above it is the magnificently restored Silbermann organ which has already been captured on CD. Photos - On An Overgrown Path


Anyone who doubts the ability of our culture to regenerate itself should make this pilgrimage.

The three colour pictures were taken by me on an 'old-school' Nikon F50 on 25th November 2005 (by an extraordinary coincidence 300 years to the exact day that the Silbermann organ was originally dedicated). The interior shots were hand-held using 200 ASA film. Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk Image owners - if you do not want your picture used on this site please contact me and it will be replaced
Now take An Overgrown Path to Dresden Requiem for eleven young victims

Recycling Shostakovich and Beethoven

In Avignon last week I was fortunate enough to catch two of the concerts in a cycle of the Shostakovich Quartets by the young French Debussy Quartet.

Any cycle of these magnificent works is an important event. But there are two particular reasons why the Avignon cycle is worth commenting on, quite apart from the excellent performances by these talented young players. First, the cycle was played on three consecutive evenings in three different venues. Like my local city of Norwich, Avignon is blessed with a surfeit of historic buildings which can be used for concerts. The organisers of the cycle, the enterprising L'Opéra-théâtre d'Avignon, took full advantage of his by combining wonderful music-making with privileged visits to architecturally important buildings in this wonderful and civilized city, which in the 14th century was the capital of the Christian world, and home to the Popes.

The first evening's performances were in the Galerie Vernet of the Musée Calvet among the art treasures. The next night's the cycle visited the Chapelle des Pénitents blancs with its 17th century facade, which is now a permanent Avignon Festival venue. The final venue was the 18th century Chapelle de l'Oratoire, an extraordinary performing space with vertical dimensions exceeding the horizontal, and really excellent acoustics apart from the occasional traffic noise. I was fortunate to attend concerts in both the Chapelle des Pénitents blancs and the Chapelle de l'Oratoire.

The second unusual feature of this peripatetic Shostakovich cycle was that the three evenings were each divided into 'mini concerts', with separate tickets (and often a different audience) for each. The first two evenings each consisted of two 'mini concerts', with the first starting at 7.00pm. The last evening was a marathon of three concerts, starting with Quartet No 6 at 7.00, and ending with the final quartet at 10.45! I was in the Chapelle de l'Oratoire for Quartets No 2 and 15 in that late evening finale. The final quartet, with its six linked Adagio movements, held the audience spellbound as the Epilogue simply faded away into the dark and distance recesses of the 18th century Chapelle. Just unforgettable.......

The Debussy Quartet's (photo below) innovative programmming started me thinking about the different options for scheduling quartet cycles. The two usual options are to play them chronologically, for convenience, or play them mixed by different periods to give variety - which is what the Debussy Quartet chose. The order for the quartets is usually the call of the performers. But not if you are lucky enough to be invited to play in the famous Slee Beethoven Cycle in Buffalo.

Frederick Caldecott Slee was a prominent corporate lawyer in that city, and together with his wife was a great supporter of chamber music. An endowment was established for an annual cycle of the Beethoven Quartets at Buffalo University. Within the terms of the endowment Mr Slee prescribed the order in which the quartets are to be played, together with the number of concerts (6) - and no variation is allowed. And that is exactly how they have been performed annually for the last 50 years, with many famous quartets including the Tokyo, Guarneri and Muir performing the cycle in the prescribed order. In fact the Guarneri were so taken with the programme of the Slee cycle that they use it in all their complete Beethoven Quartet performances.

And here is the Slee sequence used in Buffalo, which unusually does not end with a late Quartet:

Concert I:
Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 127
Quartet in F Major, Op. 18, No. 1
Quartet in C Major, Op. 59, No. 3

Concert II:
Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 74 ("The Harp")
Quartet in G Major, Op. 18, No. 2
Quartet in C-sharp minor, Op. 131

Concert III:
Quartet in D Major, Op. 18, No. 3
"Grosse Fugue", Op. 133
Quartet in F Major, Op. 59, No. 1

Concert IV:
Quartet in F minor, Op. 95 ("Serioso")
Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 18, No. 6
Quartet in A minor, Op. 132

Concert V:
Quartet in A Major, Op. 18, No. 5
Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 130

Concert VI:
Quartet in C minor, Op. 18, No. 4
Quartet in F Major, Op. 135
Quartet in E minor, Op. 59, No. 2

And now for something completely different. Visit the really cool website of Le Fruitier de Saint Agricol, the little delicatessen just round the corner from the Chapelle de l'Oratoire - they ship their olive oil and other goodies all over the world, and the photo below is their wonderful shop.

Image credits:
Debussy Quartet - Wentworth Associates
Avignon - Avignon Culture
Le Fruitier de Saint Agricol - Le Fruitier
If you enjoyed this post take an overgrown path to Rare Romantic Requiems in Avignon