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Thousands of people in East Anglia have been advised to evacuate their homes amid fears a storm surge from the North Sea will cause severe flooding. The Environment Agency has warned flood defences in Norfolk and Suffolk may not be able to cope. The storm surge is expected to peak there at 0700 GMT today. Norfolk Police are advising people in 7,500 Great Yarmouth homes to leave and hundreds of Suffolk homes are at risk - from BBC News.
For back story see East Anglia 1953 - New Orleans 2005, and for playlist see Britten and Stravinsky - After the Flood. Photo of north Norfolk coast by Pliable (c) On An Overgrown Path 2007.
Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Finally the rains have stopped, and summer has arrived in East Anglia. Photographs taken this morning as I cycled out of our village.
Benjamin Britten's wrote Noye's Fludde here in East Anglia, and it was first performed at the 1958 Aldeburgh Festival. It is Britten's most substantial work for children, and is based on one of the 16th century Chester Mystery Plays using an edition by Alfred W. Pollard. The main vocal parts are written for children, with the exceptions of the adult parts of Noye himself, Noye’s wife and the Voice of God. Noye's Fludde is scored for strings, recorders, bugles, handbells and a range of percussion, and also calls for home-made instruments including sandpaper blocks and slung mugs. Every CD collection should include the definitive 1961 recording made in Orford Church.
Igor Stravinsky wrote the musical play The Flood in California to a commission from CBS television. The libretto is a compilation of texts by Robert Craft from the Book of Genesis and the Chester Mystery Plays. The Flood, with choreography by Balanchine, was premiered in June 1962 as a CBS telecast, and received a hostile press reception. The composer's own recording, made in Hollywood in March 1962 for the telecast, is included in the newly released Works of Stravinsky, which also should be in every CD collection.
Now take the same path to Spring Symphony.
Photographs (c) On An Overgrown Path. 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 playing ~ Benjamin Britten's Spring Symphony on a Decca Jubilee LP, with Britten himself conducting, and with stunning 1961 pre-digital Kingsway Hall sound. Commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, but premiered by the Concertgebouw Orchestra under Eduard van Beinum in Amsterdam in 1949, the Spring Symphony is about the reawakening of the earth and the new life which that brings. It is a hybrid work, part symphony, part oratorio and part song-cycle, and sets texts by several poets for the large forces of soprano, contralto and tenor solos, chorus, boys' choir and orchestra. The texts are boisterous, and include John Clare's inimicable The Driving Boy. Britten's setting of the last lines of the poem are always sung with particular relish:
Cracking his whip in starts of joy
A happy, dirty, driving boy.
My photos were taken yesterday around our house here in Britten's East Anglia, where we are currently basking in temperatures hotter than the Mediterranean. The photos reflect the Spring Symphony's last chorus - Sumer is icumen in. Here is the politically correct modern English version of the opening lines of that bawdy 13th century English round:
Summer has arrived,
Loudly sing, Cuckoo!
Seeds grow and meadows bloom
And the forest springs anew,
Sing, Cuckoo!
Now read about Britten's champagne moment
Britten's recording of the Spring Symphony is, of course, also available on a Decca CD. The lower picture is of St Nicholas' Church, Bracon Ash. the header was taken across the road from the church. This part of rural Norfolk has many links with America, see this article. 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
Good to see fellow blogger Alex Ross' forthcoming book listed on Amazon. Good also to report that my much more modest volume (left) is still selling well on Amazon.com after quite a few years. Yes, it is a cycling book, but one with a difference. I bet it is the only cycling guide that recommends, among other things, a Naxos CD of E.J. Moeran's chamber music.
Moeran grew up here in East Anglia where his father was Rector at the Parish Church in Bacton, a village now overwhelmed by a massive natural gas terminal. The composer's 1937 Symphony in G minor is well worth exploring. Which allows me to turn what could have been been a gratuitous plug for my own somewhat tangentical book into a topical CD recommendation. Just this week Lyrita has re-issued Sir Adrian Boult's classic recording of Moeran's Symphony on CD. I haven't heard the CD release, but as I write my original LP pressing from 1975 plays on the trusty Thorens TD125, and if the remastered CD sounds half as good it would still be a strong recommendation. Pity thought that the gorgeous LP sleeve with Turner's 'Storm Clouds: Sunset' didn't make it onto the CD.
Boult was a true gentleman, and a great conductor. His repertoire was wide-ranging, including the first British performance of Schoenberg's Variations in 1931. He was unflagging in his commitment to new music, but I can't help but end with this description by Constant Lambert of Boult's interpretation of Schoenberg's Five Orchestral Pieces - 'played with the touch of embarassment and circumspection shown by a really polite Protestant who has found himself involved in a religous ceremony of some totally different creed.'
Now read why the rest is downhill.
And yes, those are my daughter and son on the book cover. 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
