Glenn Gould re-engineered

'Whatever I have written, whether published by me during my lifetime or as part of my literary papers still existing after my death, shall not be performed, printed or even recited for the duration of legal copyright within the borders of Austria, however this state identifies itself.'

This extraordinary clause in the will of the Austrian novelist Thomas Bernhard, who died in 1989, was the final event in an extraordinary life. He was born in Holland in 1931 and studied at the Akademie Mozarteum in Salzburg before becoming an author. I have been reading Bernhard's remarkable novel The Loser (Der Untergeher). It tells the story of a fictional relationship between Glenn Gould and two of his fellow students who abandon their own musical ambitions in the face of Gould's incomparable genius.

In The Loser Bernhard unashamedly re-engineers Gould's biography to suit his own ends, and there is no claim to historical authenticity. But as a meditation on success, failure, genius and fame the book is absolutely authentic, and it has the approval of Gould experts who have drawn parallels with Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus. Bernhard himself explained his re-engineering of fact in these words.

'What matters is whether we want to lie or to tell the truth and write the truth, even though it never can be the truth and never is the truth.'

The Loser is quite unmissable. But we haven't yet finished with the extraordinary. The novel is one hundred and seventy pages long and it is written as a single paragraph. Which even outdoes that 'king of the paragraph' Bernard Levin.

Follow this link for a fascinating article on Thomas Bernhard's house. Watch out for a review of another new Glenn Gould book, Katie Hafner's A Romance on Three Legs, here shortly. And more on copyright and the great pianist re-engineered here.
The Loser is published by Vintage Books, ISBN 1400077540. The beautiful cover design for the US edition is by Eva Brandstotter. 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

The art of the animateur

I am a great fan of the late John Drummond, and have quoted him, here, many times. But, I blame Drummond for the present decline in presentation standards on BBC Radio 3. In 1987, when he became controller of the network, Drummond changed the role of the presentation team from 'neutral' announcers to presenters who, in his own words, could "communicate enthusiasm and knowledge".

Drummond's change was well intentioned, but terribly misguided. It has been responsible for a disastrous sequence of presenters from Paul 'music for lovers' Gambaccini in the 1990s to Petroc Trelawny and his colleagues today, whose idea of communicating enthusiasm and knowledge is to regurgitate half-digested chunks from a children's encyclopedia of music. The disease isn't just confined to the radio. BBC TV's Classical Star, which is fronted by Radio 3 presenters Charles Hazlewood and Chi-chi Nwanoku, has been described by an eminent musician as 'an obscene pantomime that plays games with the feelings of young, talented and vulnerable people'.

What John Drummond failed to see was that presenters who can communicate enthusiasm and knowledge for classical music without turning it into 'an obscene pantomine' can't be trained. They are born with the skill, and they are very few and far between. 'Presenter' is an inadequate and devalued word for describing such a rare person. Instead I suggest the French word 'animateur' - someone who really brings their subject to life.

Radio 3 should abandon its present crop of 'classical jocks'. It should return to an enthusiastic but neutral presentation style. It should learn from Radio 4, which has avoided the 'chummy' presenter trap, and by so doing has retained its integrity, and its audience. Radio 3 should allow the music to speak for itself. Which is something it has forgotten how to do. And it should search for a few great animateurs to bring classical music back to life, both on radio and television.


The BBC need look no further than their own archives to identify the DNA of a great animateur. David Munrow's Pied Piper radio programme was broadcast four times a week for five years in the 1970s. Munrow (above) delivered enthusiasm and knowlege in huge quantities without compromising scholarship or integrity. Pied Piper brought early music to life for a generation, and I, and many others, are indebted to him for that. Munrow also branched out into television with his very successful Ancestral Voices programme, and he started to develop a career as a conductor. Munrow did so much as an animateur of classical music, and he promised so much more. Alas, he took his own life in 1976, aged just thirty-three.

Television was the medium of choice of another great animateur, André Previn, whose BBC TV programmes reached millions without sinking to the depths of Classical Star. The photo below shows Previn with Carlo Maria Giulini on the set of the television programme 'Who needs a conductor?' Previn also animated classical music in the States with his 'Previn and the Pittsburgh' TV series.


Leopold Stokowski pioneered the role of the animateur in the States, and he worked his magic in the days before television dictated the media agenda. Disney's full length 1940 feature film Fantasia brought classical music to life for millions, and is still regarded today as pivotal in introducing a new audience to serious music. Fantasia was Stokowski's brainchild, and he appeared on screen in a sequence which is seen being filmed in the photo below. (Picture credit Disney Productions).


When television replaced the movies as the entertainment medium of choice Leonard Bernstein took over from Stokowski' as animateur par excellence. Bernstein's famous Young Person's Concerts attracted huge television audiences for an extraordinarily wide range of repertoire, with his broadcast on Christmas Day 1967 reaching an astonishing twenty-seven million viewers.

I have in front of me the programme for the November 2 1963 telecast of a Young Person's Concert - Moussorgsky Prelude to "Khovantchina", Randall Thompson Scherzo from Symphony No. 2, Walter Piston Suite from "The Incredible Flautist", and Brahms Academic Festival Overture. Contrast that with this perceptive comment from fellow blogger Jessica Duchen about BBC TV's Classical Star - 'The most depressing thing about the programme is the way that the music itself is sidelined and chopped up. Evidently our friends at the Beeb don't think that viewers can cope with a whole movement of Mendelssohn.' My header photo shows Bernstein with members of the audience after a Young Person's Concert, and they don't seem at all phased by a whole movement of Randall Thompson. Lenny was a true animateur if ever there was one.

Glenn Gould was also both a great musician and a great animateur, and I have already written about his love affair with the microphone. His radio programme The Art of Glenn Gould ran for forty-eight weeks in the mid 1960s in Canada, and covered everything from the Moog synthesizer to Mozart, and in 1974 he produced a ten week series on Schoenberg. In the late 1960s he turned to television, starting with a series of four Conversations with Glenn Gould in a co-production with the BBC. His television work became as arcane as his radio documentaries, with the hour long The Well-Tempered Listener creating a complex visual montage of Bach's music. Gould's main succeses were in the technically more flexible medium of television. In 1970, in a neat tribute from one great animateur to another, Gould produced the acclaimed Stokowski: A Portrait for Radio. The photo below shows him at work in the recording studio.

Sadly one match of animateurs that seemed to be made in heaven didn't work out for Gould. In April 1962 he played the Brahms' D-minor concerto with Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic. Conductor and soloist disagreed over Gould's spectacularly slow tempi, prompting Bernstein to deliver an apparently critical pre-performance talk. The two animateurs never performed together again, although this was due as much to Gould's self-imposed exile from the concert hall as to any long-term animosity between the two flamboyant musicians.


Last week I told the story of Radio 3 presenter Sarah Walker, who was caught out (in more ways than one I suspect) when a helpful CD player added a fifth movement to Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony. Ms. Walker's CV tells us that in 1995 she completed a PhD in English experimental music. That's the problem. She, and her fellow BBC presenters may have the right qualifications on paper. But, in practice, they fail dismally; both as neutral announcers in the manner of the great Cormac Rigby, and as animateurs in the manner of David Munrow. It's not me that's saying it. It is the audience statistics.

The composer Jonathan Harvey knows a thing or two about experimental English music. He has worked at IRCAM and written a study of the music of Stockhausen. His Mortuos plango, vivos voco for eight channel tape was created at IRCAM, and uses computers to manipulate the sound of the great bell at Winchester Cathedral. It is one of the masterpieces of electronic music, and in the notes for it the composer writes:

In entering the rather intimidating world of the machine I was determined not to produce a dehumanised work if I could help it, and so kept fairly closely to the world of the original sounds. The territory that the new computer technology opens up is unprecedently vast: one is humbly aware that it will only be conquered by the penetration of the human spirit, however beguiling the exhibits of technical wizardry; and that penetration will be neither rapid nor easy.

We're all trying to be too clever. We've forgotten the importance of the human spirit, except when we are trampling it underfoot on BBC TV's Classical Star. We've missed the point that digital technologies, new books, internet radio and blogs alone are never going to attract a new mass audience for classical music. But great animateurs can.

The good news is that the art of the animateur is not dead. The opening of this autumn's Lincoln Centre season in New York was transmitted live on network television. The TV presenter was that indominatable human spirit Itzhak Perlman (photo below, credit Allegro films), and his words about the telecast are a lesson for all of us.

"Television was how I came to the States (to appear on the Ed Sullivan show - Pliable) and I've always felt very comfortable doing it. Of course, there are battles. Television will always err on the side of making something not quite as classy as it could be. I try to put my foot down because people in the mass media often don't give audiences credit. To bring a large audience to a piece of serious music and make it accessible does not mean reducing it in any way. And I've learned that if something is good, even if it is a little difficult, people will get that it is good."

Writing in the Cambridge Review in October 1957 Peter Laslett, founder of the Open University, described the BBC Third Programme as "a sevice which is literally the envy of the world". Fifty years later the service is in danger of becoming the laughing stock of the world. It doesn't need rocket science, or expensive technology, to reverse the decline. It just needs John Drummonds ill-judged presentation changes to be reversed. And it needs the BBC to remember the words of that great animateur Itzhak Perlman - "If something is good, even if it is a little difficult, people will get that it is good."


Now read how John Drummond and Leonard Bernstein just didn't hit it off.
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

Best damn record he never made

Last year I wrote about the record which Glenn Gould (above) described as the 'best damn record we've ever made' - his LP of Tudor consorte music. Today I am writing about the best damn record he never made.

Zenph Studios' "re-performance" of Glenn Gould's 1955 Goldberg Variations was released a couple of months back. I didn't dream up the word "re-performance". Zenph Studios did, and here is their definition - 'A “live realization of the original interpretation.” Zenph Studios takes audio recordings and turns them back into live performances, precisely replicating what was originally recorded. Our software-based process extracts every musical nuance of a recorded performance, and stores the data in a high-resolution digital file. These re-performance files, represented in a computer as MIDI files, contain every detail of how every note in the composition was played, including pedal actions, volume, and articulations – all with millisecond timings.'

Glenn Gould in Re-performance has some big fans. They include Stereophile Magazine, who made it their recording of the month, the Glenn Gould Foundation, and Gould's recording producer Lorne Tulk. When the "re-performance" CD was released most of the coverage came from the audiophile press. The music media, including this blog, didn't get too excited. The view was that this was just an interesting technical exercise similar to the reprocessed stereo that was around when two channel LPs were launched. But we were wrong. Read this from the 'record labels and recording studios section of the Zenph website:

The Diversity of Copyright Laws

The USA has strong copyright laws; sound recordings essentially don't go into the public domain until well into the 21st century. But, in the European Union (EU), for example, recordings go into the public domain 50 years after their first release. Small recording companies in the EU already re-issue CDs of historical mono recordings in volume. That's been a small concern to the labels, but in 2006 the situation gets troubling. 1956 was the start of early stereo, which is how we still listen nowadays. Starting in 2006, the "good stuff" from 1956 forward starts going into the public domain. Year by year, labels will lose European rights to the most prized, profitable recordings in their archives. With global retailing, CDs made in the EU are readily available anywhere.

The way around this is to create new, highly-desirable music recordings, which establish a new copyright. A modern re-recording can be a premium product, protected with the latest Digital Rights Management (DRM). For a modern re-recording to be acceptable to discerning jazz, classical, and pop listeners, it must be faithful, note-perfect, and identical to the original performance. That’s our business."

And this from Zenph's Investors section:

"In our contracts we look like a cross between an artist and a record producer, receiving a combination of fixed fees and a portion of the royalty stream of the release."

Are Zenph Studios "an entertainment technology company that specializes in software and processes for understanding - and re-creating - precisely how musicians perform"?

Or are they a vehicle for "establish(ing) a new copyright ... protected with the latest Digital Rights Management (DRM) ... receiving a combination of fixed fees and a portion of the royalty stream of the release"?

The jury is out. But the copyright date on my CD of Gould's 1955 Goldbergs is 1956, which means it is among "the "good stuff" from 1956" which has entered the public domain in the EU. Today, here in the EU, the "re-performed" Goldberg's on the Sony Classical label retail for £14.99 ($30.52), and the original mono 1955 recording is available on Naxos for £5.99 ($12.20).

With thanks to IP detective extraordinaire Carol Murchie. 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

Glenn Gould - The Solitude Trilogy

Much interest in my recent article about Glenn Gould's contrapuntal radio documentary The Latecomers made for CBC. This is one of the three pioneering radio documentaries that Gould made that comprise The Solitude Trilogy. Excerpts from all three documentaries, The Latecomers, The Idea of North, and The Quiet in the Land, plus a wealth of other Glenn Gould material, are available from the CBC website.

Here is the accompanying note posted on the CBC site: These "radio documentaries", or "oral tone poems", examine both the real and imagined effects of geographical or cultural isolation on people. Glenn Gould, to whom innovation came naturally, used a technique which he called "contrapuntal radio" - a process where sound counterpoints his ideas. The programmes, viewed as revolutionary in their concept when they were first broadcast in the 1960's and 1970's, remain fresh and reflect the soul of Glenn Gould himself, the performer, the thinker, the philosopher, the composer, and indeed, someone who himself lived in isolation.

Now read about Glenn Gould's love affair with the microphone.
Photo credit CBC. 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

Glenn Gould - the ultimate download

My personal overgrown path is leading back to the radio studio, and that has set me thinking recently about how to create programmes that are distinctive, inclusive and personal.

Over in Holland the creator of Big Brother, Endemol, has its own formula for distinctive broadcasting, and this week launches De Grote Donorshow (The Big Donor Show) which gives three dialysis patients the chance to win a dying woman's kidney - or not.

Back in 1969 Glenn Gould took a different approach to producing great broadcasting when he created his 'contrapuntal radio documentary' The Latecomers. The main subject was the new Canadian province of Newfoundland, but there was a second subject of solitude, isolation and non-conformity seen from a cultural perspective.

The Latecomers, with its basso continuo of the ocean, is both a land-mark in twentieth-century broadcasting and a seriously neglected aspect of Gould's work. Now, thanks to reader Walt Santner, you can hear the whole documentary via an MP3 download. Walt contributed to previous features here locating downloads of historic, Stokowski and recording history MP3 files. He is now back surfing the net after some health problems, welcome back Walt.

Genn Gould's The Latecomers runs for 53 minutes, you can download it from this website, note copyright health warnings may apply.

Now view the 'score' for The Latecomers and read more about Glenn Gould's love affair with the microphone.
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

Naughty but nice

What are your musical equivalents of chocolate cake? - the performances you know you really shouldn't be enjoying, but do. Here is my menu of 'naughty but nice' music dishes:

Uri Caine's Wagner E Venezia - yes, I know it is a serious taste crime to admit to enjoying the Prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg played in the Piazza San Marco by an ensemble that includes accordion, piano and acoustic bass. But I do. Quite appropriately the recording was made live at the Gran Caffé Quadri, Piazza San Marco, Venice, and is complete with authentic background café sounds which provide a splendid counterpoint to the Tristan Liebestod. If you've never sampled this lovingly crafted, and packaged, chocolate torte from Uri Caine (photo above) I warmly recommend ordering a portion.

Karl Münchinger's Art of Fugue and Musical Offering with the Stuttgarter Kammerorchester reminds us of how Bach used to be performed before musical scholarship moved on. As one reviewer said: "This lush performance of Bach's complex Art of Fugue is as emotional as Barber's Adagio for Strings." But these 1976 recordings still blow me away. Stunning playing recorded in classic Decca sound in the Liederhalle, Stuttgart by the legendary team of producers Ray Minshull and James Mallinson, and recording engineers James Lock and Martin Fouqué.

Wagner makes his second appearance on my ultimate 'naughty but nice' disc. This is Glenn Gould playing his own transcriptions of Dawn and Siegfried's Rhine Journey and the Prelude to Die Meistersinger. This reissue is worth the price for these two transcriptions alone. The disc also includes Gould conducting members of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in a painfully slow Siegfried Idyll, which at almost twenty-five minutes outstays even Knappertsbusch's interpretation by several minutes. This conducting debut was the last thing Gould recorded before he went on tour with Bach, and it leaves us thankful that he didn't give up the day job. (Photo above shows a young Gould with one of his first teachers).

Bach sung in English may well be considered 'naughty.' But not only is my next nomination 'nice', but it is high up in my list of the greatest recordings ever made. Benjamin Britten set down his account of Bach's St John Passion in April 1971. With performers including Peter Pears, Gwynne Howell, John Shirley-Quirk, HeatherHarper, Alfreda Hodgson, Robert Tear, and the Wandsworth School Boys' Choir you know this is going to be something special. The English Chamber Orchestra reads like a Who's Who of instrumentalists. Kenneth Sillitoe is leader, Richard Adeney (flute), Cecil Aronowitz (viola) and Adrian Beers (double bass). Philip Ledger plays the harpsichord continuo originally prepared by Britten and Imogen Holst. And the 'naughty' English translation is made by none other than Peter Pears and Imogen Holst.

This recording of the St John Passion was made by Decca in Snape Maltings. It has to be said that if there is a weakness it is the engineering which falls somewhat short of Decca's signature Snape sound. Also watch out for the intrusive low frequency 'thumps' in the opening chorus which producer David Harvey really should have covered from alternative takes. But one factor places this performance in that stellar group of the greatest ever made - Britten's interpretation. Some of the tempi are surprisingly brisk, but this is one of those rare performances where musicality and humanity meet as equal partners. Naughty, but simply sublime.

Purists will consider any Bach transcription 'naughty but nice.' But my third Bach nomination comes just about as close to the spirit of the original as it is possible to get with a transcription. Paolo Pandolfo (right) was a founder member of early music group La Stravaganza, and is recognised as one of the leading exponents of the viola de gamba. His transcription of Bach's six Cello Suites (BWV 1007-12) on the enterprising Spanish Glossa label is really more of a re-interpretaion that a transcription. Four of the six keys are transposed, the well known G major Suite No. 1 is played in C major, the C minor Suite No. 5 is played in D minor, and so on. But this is done simply to make the most of the range of the viola de gamba, and it works beautifully allowing the warm tone of the gamba to really ring out. These are personal interpretations, and Pandolfo's reshaping of some of the lines will not be to everyone's taste, but this is wonderful music making.

To conclude with a 'naughty but nice' piece that I always find inexplicably moving - the finale to Bernstein's Candide, 'Make Our Garden Grow'. This is classic Lenny, over the top, superbly written, and absolutely heart on sleeve. One reviewer wrote of "its soaring sentimentality". I find it absolutely irresistible - just like chocolate cake. And if you want the recipe for the example seen in my header photo here it is.

Now read about my first classical record
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

Glenn Gould's love affair with the microphone

One Sunday morning in December 1950, I wandered into a living-room-sized radio-studio, placed my services at the disposal of a single microphone belonging to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and proceeded to broadcast "live" - tape was already a fact of life in the recording industry but, in those days, radio broadcasting still observed the first-note-to-last-and-damn-the-consequences synodrome of the concert-hall - two sonatas, one by Mozart [K.281], one by Hindemith [No. 3]. It was my first network broadcast...a memorable one...that moment in my life when I first caught a vague impression of the direction it would take, when I realised that the collected wisdom of my peers and elders to the effect that technology represented a compromising, dehumanising intrusion into art was nonsense, when my love affair with the microphone began.

Glenn Gould describes the start of his love affair with the microphone. My source is Kevin Bazzana's highly recommended Wondrous Strange, The Life and Art of Glenn Gould (Yale University Press ISBN 0300103743). The header image shows a page from Gould's score of Hindemith's song cycle Das Marienlebenwhich he recorded with the Ukrainian born soprano Roxolana Roslak in 1977. As is usual for Gould there are very few interpretive markings, but the page is covered in editing notes - left click on the images to enlarge them.

The graphic below is very interesting, and it is not a score for a contemporary music composition. It shows CBC technician Lorne Tulk's plan for the epilogue of Gould's radio documentary The Latecomers (1969). The documentary was commissioned to promote CBC's new FM stereo service, and the central line shows the movement of the narrator from right to left of the soundstage. Much attention has been given to Gould's work in the music studio, but his pioneering and innovative "contrapuntal radio documentaries" are sadly neglected. Time for reconsideration perhaps?


Gould was in love with the microphone, now read about the best damn record he ever made, and follow this link for audio recordings from the official Glenn Gould archive.
Both images from Glenn Gould Estate with full acknowledgements. 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

Joy of Music - a celebration of diversity

Joy of Music is a book by Leonard Bernstein based on the scripts he wrote for an educational TV series in the late 1950s. The book is a celebration of diversity, ranging from American music theatre, through Mahler and the importance of contemporary music, to Bach’s use of counterpoint in his chorale preludes.


My photographs are a visual celebration of the vibrant musical life beyond busking superstars, child prodigies and MySpace. The photos were all taken at Oxfam Books and Music, Norwich on 26th April 2007. Just left click on the images to enlarge, you'll see real diversity - everything from Monteverdi to Stockhausen, and there is even a record deck to audition them on. I’m now away for a few days, so do explore the joy of music through the wonderfully diverse mix of music blogs listed in my side-bar.


The sleeve above is Glenn Gould's Goldberg Variations, so why not read about the best damn record he ever made?
All photos copyright On An Overgrown Path, 2007. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included for "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

Click here for a Glenn Gould forgery

Or is it a forgery? Read here how digital technology helps build a virtual concert hall.
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

A very good year for vihuelists

Any CD with sleeve notes beginning like this gets my vote - '1536 was a very good year for vihuelists and lutenists in Europe. Luis Milan’s El Maestro (Valencia, Spain), Hans Newsidler’s Ein Newgeordent Kunst Lautenbuch (Nürnberg, Germany) and Francesco da Milano’s Intavolatura di Liuto (Naples, Milan, & Venice, Italy) were all published in 1536. This parallel outpouring of music created a wellspring of repertoire for aristocrats, merchants, students, and members of the mobile elite'.

This Gagliano Recordings CD takes its title from the year 1536, and features Portland based Jeffrey Ashton (right) playing the three works for vihuela and lute from that very good year. His wonderful recital flies in the face of current fashions. Look elsewhere for improvisation and realisation, but don’t expect authentic instruments either, because Ashton transcribes the music, and follows the example of Glenn Gould and many others by playing early music on a modern instrument, in this case a guitar by Jeffrey Elliott.

This is important music, lovingly transcribed, beautifully played, and with informative sleeve notes by the performer. My only minor niggle is that the sound from the Billy Oskay Studios in Portland, Oregon is a touch close and dry, this music really needs more air and reverberation. But that is a small complaint, and if you follow the previous link you will see that the view from the studio probably compensated for the dry acoustics.

This excellent disc from a small independent label sums up the conundrum of today’s market. You don’t need a rock star vocalist or an improvising percussionist to make a beautiful early music CD. But you do need them to sell it to today’s aristocrats, merchants, students, and members of the mobile elite.

Now follow this link for downloads of more beautiful guitar music
1536 is on the Gagliano Recordings label – GR536. I bought my copy from Amazon.com, it is not available in record stores in Europe. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included for "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

If you only buy thirty-four CDs - buy these ...

At the turn of the millennium BBC Radio 3 asked listeners to choose the greatest recording of the 20th century. The recording chosen was deservedly, but somewhat predictably, Solti's Ring cycle. The runners up were Carlos Klieber's interpretations of Beethoven's Fifth and Seventh symphonies, the Britten War Requiem conducted by the composer, and English String Music conducted by Sir John Barbirolli, which includes Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.

One recording that I considered to be a definite contender didn't even make the long list. But now the great news is my nomination has been re-released at budget price, and is easily my choice for the thirty-four best CDs of 2005.

Scott Ross was a musical maverick. He was born in Pittsburgh in 1951, and following the death of his father moved to France with his mother in 1964. He studied harpsichord at the Conservatoires of Nice and Paris, and won the prestigous Concours de Bruges, at the Royal Conservatory in Antwerp in 1971. In 1971 he recrossed the Atlantic to begin a teaching career at the School of Music, Laval University, Quebec. While teaching there he made award-winning recordings of the complete Pièces de Clavecin by Rameau. Ross wore the same clothes as his students (even to perform), and his 'granny' spectacles aligned him more with John Lennon than Gustav Leonhardt. For a concert at Laval University, attended by the university chancellor and French Consul General, he wore jeans and a red lumberjack shirt. He was also self-effacing to a fault, explaining - "I started the Goldbergs 'cause I quit smoking and, to keep one's fingers busy, it's better than knitting".

He was a passionate collector of orchids, and his other hobbies included vulcanology, mineralogy, and mushrooms (!). His keyboard interests extended beyond the harpsichord. He played Debussy, Chopin and Ravel on the piano, and accompanied Schubert Lieder. The music of Brian Eno and Philip Glass were among his other passions, and he was a fan of the punk performance artist Nina Hagen. Comparisons with Glenn Gould are inevitable, but wide of the mark. In fact Ross had his own views on Gould, saying: "When I hear Glenn Gould, I say, he understood nothing about Bach. An artist who doesn't show himself in public has a problem. He's so much off-target that you'd need a 747 to take him back".

In 1983 Scott Ross took an indefinite sabbatical from Laval, and kicked it off with a recording of François Couperin's Suites pour le Clavecin. By now he had rented property in Assas, near Montpelier, in his beloved France. In 1984 he signed a five year recording contract with Erato , but also experierienced his first premonition of the illness that would ultimately kill him.

The main fruit of his new contract was the recording project that I consider to be one of the greatest in the history of recorded sound. The recording of the complete keyboard sonatas (555 in total) of Domenico Scarlatti started off as a broadcast project for Radio France to celebrate the composer's three hundredth anniverary in 1985. During the eighteen months of recording Ross (right) knew he had a fatal illness. Despite, or possibly because of, this he produced one of the great musical achievements of the 20th century. His playing is technically stunning, his scholarship is impeccable, but above this is a living, breathing and at times dancing testament. The whole staggering project is enhanced by superb recorded sound from the Radio France engineers, using three different venues and four harpsichords to avoid monotony.

Scott Ross began his recording of Scarlatti's 555 sonatas on 16th June 1984.

Ninety-eight sessions were required, and the last take was completed on 10th September 1885. In all, there had been eight thousand takes.

On 13th June 1989 Scott Ross died in Montpellier's Lapeyronie Hospital of an Aids-related illness, aged 38.

Ross' complete Scarlatti Keyboard Sonatas have been re-issued by Warner Classics in a thirty-four CD budget priced box. In the UK they are selling for around £90 ($160) which is very little to pay for one of the great musical achievements of the last century. In fact last week I saw the set in HMV in London for £50 ($89) - stupidly cheap. Included is an excellent 254 page booklet which includes notes on all the sonatas.

For more Scott Ross resources see harpsichord maker Michel Proulx's web site where a privately published English language biography is available, from which the quote in my article is taken. Follow this link for my article about this biography. There are also other French resources here.

Image credits: Harpsichord - Alan Gotto, Orchid - Mystic Arts Center , Scott Ross – Louvre.or.jp, CD pack - Warner Classics. 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
If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Instruments of extreme beauty

* This article was originally published on December 18, 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.

"The best damn record we've ever made"

The eclipse of live performance by CDs and MP3s means that a number of composers are familiar to us from recordings, but rarely receive live performances. One such is the late-16 century Dutch composer Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, and it was therefore a delight last Saturday to hear his variations on "Mein junges Leben hat ein End (My young life has an end)" played on the organ of St Michael's Church, Framlingham (above) in Suffolk. The occasion was the recital by Malcolm Russell given in memory of renown organ builder Noel Mander who lived nearby, and died in September 2005 aged 93.

I first came to know Sweelinck's music through Glenn Gould's (right) recording of Tudor consorte music which on the CD version (but not the LP) includes Gould's own piano transcription of the Fantasia in D. The placing of Sweelinck alongside William Byrd and Orlando Gibbons is totally appropriate as Sweelinck was a vital link, both geographically and musically, between the Tudor keyboard style and the Northern German composers, from which eventually flowered the music of Buxtehude and, of course, Gould's beloved Bach. William Russel's perceptive programme for the Framlingham recital also reflected this link with a sequence of Sweelinck, Buxtehude and Bach. (See below for the full programme).

Gould described the consorte music recording as "the best damn record we've ever made" and placed it alongside his Prokofiev and Scriabin album. I can only agree, this is one truly gorgeous disc, and well worth seeking out if you don't know it. His Byrd and Gibbons on the piano is quite wonderful. Yes, I know Tudor music on a piano is politically and academically incorrect. But I am sorry - for me this disc is an important, and visionary, document. And without it I may well not have started on an overgrown path to explore Sweelinck's complete canon.

Sweelink's most familiar organ work is the Echo Fantasia in A minor. There is a delightful recording on, appropriately, the Dutch Globe label played by Anneke Uittenbosch who mixes organ and harpsichord in a delightful recital. But for me the real delights are the Cantiones Sacrae. For recording of these look no further than the highly recommended Hyperion discs with Trinity College Chapel Choir, Cambridge, directed by Richard Marlow. The first CD includes the familiar Hodie Christus natus est. Please share my delight in Sweelinck's glorious choral music by listening to five minutes of his Magnificat anima mea Dominum (My soul doth magnify the Lord) -

The organ in St Michael's (photo at head of article) on which the Sweelinck was played is a remarkable historic instrument. The case dates from 1580 while the pipework was originally built by Thomas Tamar for Pembroke College in 1674. This means the organ case was built when Sweelinck was just 18 - you can't get a more original instrument performance than that! The case is one of only eight to have survived destruction by Purian leader Oliver Cromwell when England was declared a republic in 1649. (For those whose English history is rusty I should add the republic was shortlived. When Cromwell died in 1658, he was succeeded as Lord Protector by his son, Richard. The republic then collapsed into financial chaos and disputes between the military and administration increased, parliament was dissolved and Richard Cromwell was overthrown in 1660 - plus ça change!) Framlingham is rich in history, not least Framlingham castle which is just up the road from St Michael's Church. The castle was given, in 1553, by King Edward VI to his sister Mary Tudor (right). She stayed at Framlingham while waiting her sucession to the crown, which hung in the balance. Her colours flew over the gateway and thousands of her supporters camped around the castle. Finally the Earl of Arundel arrived to inform her she was Queen, and she proceeded to London.

The programme for Malcolm Russell's recital at St Michael's, Framlingham on 17th June 2006 to celebrate the life of Noel Mander was:
*Chorale Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier BWV 731
Chorale Prelude Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier - J S Bach 1695 - 1750
* Six variations on Mein junges Leben hat ein End - J P Sweelinck 1562 - 1621
* Ciacona in E minor Bux 160 - D Buxtehude 1637 - 1707
* Pièce d'orgue in G BWV 572 Vif - Grave - Lentement - J S Bach
* Concerto No V Op 4 in F Major Sicialana - Presto (Walsh solo edition) - G F Handel 1685 - 1759
*Voluntary in G major No lV Op 5 Adagio - Allegro - J Stanley 1713 - 1786
* Larghetto in f sharp (1868) - S S Wesley 1810 - 1876
*Sonata No lV Op 65 Allegro - Andante religioso - Allegretto - Allegro maestoso & vivace - F B Mendelssohn 1809 - 1847
* Chorale Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier - J S Bach(without applause)

Image credits: Framligham organ from KCOA: Glenn Gould from Classical-composers.org. Mary Tudor from Framlingham Castle. 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
If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to I am a camera - Leipzig

Harpsichord magic from Don Angle

'I always found his Bach to be scandalously empty of whatever musicality, crammed with fantastic and meaningless inventions. And I'm not mentioning the articulation nor the phrasing' - Harpsichordist Scott Ross on Glenn Gould.

Ross, who gave us the heavenly Scarlatti sonatas that I wrote about recently, was sparing with praise for his peers, although he did acknowledge a debt to Kenneth Gilbert.

But there was one harpsichordist Scott Ross admired unreservedly, and amazingly that player has never recorded any baroque music.

To find out why Ross admired Don Angle (photo above) so much listen to these three samples of his playing -and prepare to be amazed:

* * * *

* Scott Ross resources On An Overgrown Path include * If you only buy thirty-four CDs this year - buy these ..... * The perfect ethical, and musical, Christmas present *

* Visit Don Angle's web site via this link.

Audio clips from Don Angle's Harpsichord Magic at amazon.com. Image credit - Trinity Episcopal Church, Tariffville, CT. Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article contact me and it will be removed. Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Instruments of extreme beauty

If you only buy thirty-four CDs this year - buy these .....

At the turn of the millennium BBC Radio 3 asked listeners to choose the greatest recording of the 20th century. The recording chosen was deservedly, but somewhat predictably, Solti's Ring cycle. The runners up were Carlos Klieber's interpretations of Beethoven's Fifth and Seventh symphonies, the Britten War Requiem conducted by the composer, and English String Music conducted by Sir John Barbirolli, which includes Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.

One recording that I considered to be a definite contender didn't even make the long list. But now the great news is my nomination has been re-released at budget price, and is easily my choice for the thirty-four best CDs of 2005.

Scott Ross was a musical maverick. He was born in Pittsburgh in 1951, and following the death of his father moved to France with his mother in 1964. He studied harpsichord at the Conservatoires of Nice and Paris, and won the prestigous Concours de Bruges, at the Royal Conservatory in Antwerp in 1971. In 1971 he recrossed the Atlantic to begin a teaching career at the School of Music, Laval University, Quebec. While teaching there he made award-winning recordings of the complete Pièces de Clavecin by Rameau. Ross wore the same clothes as his students (even to perform), and his 'granny' spectacles aligned him more with John Lennon than Gustav Leonhardt. For a concert at Laval University, attended by the university chancellor and French Consul General, he wore jeans and a red lumberjack shirt. He was also self-effacing to a fault, explaining - "I started the Goldbergs 'cause I quit smoking and, to keep one's fingers busy, it's better than knitting".

He was a passionate collector of orchids, and his other hobbies included vulcanology, mineralogy, and mushrooms (!). His keyboard interests extended beyond the harpsichord. He played Debussy, Chopin and Ravel on the piano, and accompanied Schubert Lieder. The music of Brian Eno and Philip Glass were among his other passions, and he was a fan of the punk performance artist Nina Hagen. Comparisons with Glenn Gould are inevitable, but wide of the mark. In fact Ross had his own views on Gould, saying: "When I hear Glenn Gould, I say, he understood nothing about Bach. An artist who doesn't show himself in public has a problem. He's so much off-target that you'd need a 747 to take him back".

In 1983 Scott Ross took an indefinite sabbatical from Laval, and kicked it off with a recording of François Couperin's Suites pour le Clavecin. By now he had rented property in Assas, near Montpelier, in his beloved France. In 1984 he signed a five year recording contract with Erato , but also experierienced his first premonition of the illness that would ultimately kill him.

The main fruit of his new contract was the recording project that I consider to be one of the greatest in the history of recorded sound. The recording of the complete keyboard