Proud to be a music anorak

Nice to see classical vinyl generating excitement in today's Guardian, but not sure about the headline - 'A music anorak's treasure trove' which suggests classical music is some kind of nasty habit. Also it appears from the piece that the Guardian (and BBC's) Tom Service doesn't have a record deck. I'll let you into a secret. I don't have an iPod, but I do have a Thorens TD125, which I guess also makes me a turntable anorak.

Elsewhere in the Guardian a late tribute to Herbert von Karajan adds little original but is good for a laugh with my old EMI colleague Peter Alward describing Karajan as 'very shy, a simple man with simple tastes'. Which is the best description of a very large yacht and Falcon 10 executive jet I've ever come across.
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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

An anniverary howl for Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg (above) died on April 5, 1997 and Herbert von Karajan was born on April 5, 1908. I'm probably the only person to find a connection between the two, so it's not surprising that if you type "allen ginsberg herbert von karajan" into Google.com the first two results are currently from On An Overgrown Path. Which means you can read about them here and here.

Image credit Summer of Love. 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

No flowers please for Herbert von Karajan

Few musicians have generated such a mixture of respect and revulsion as Herbert von Karajan. It takes Richard Osborne 851 pages in his masterly biography to capture the essence of this extraordinary conductor, entrepreneur and opportunist, and it would be impertinent to even attempt to cover the same ground here. So instead, with the centenary of Karajan's birth falling on April 5, I offer this personal vignette from my time at EMI, which I hope in some small way illustrates the conundrum that was this extraordinary man.

During the late 1970s the Machiavellian Karajan had carefully nurtured a deadly rivalry between EMI and his other contract company, Deutsche Grammophon. This meant that EMI had, at very considerable expense, outbid DG for the four act version of Verdi's Don Carlos with José Carreras and Mirella Freni, and Debussy's Pelléas et Méliande with Frederica von Stade and Richard Stilwell. Pélleas was a personal passion of Karajan, and because of this he agreed to make a very rare personal appearance to promote the release of the recording when he was in London in 1979 on a Berlin Philharmonic tour.

It fell to a small team headed by me to organise a 'money no object' Karajan event to prove that anything Deutsche Grammophon could do EMI could do better. At this point I have to confess that several of us were slightly ambivalent about Karajan's personality if not his music making, so we decided that the event should mirror the maestro and be just a little bit over the top. Karajan and his Berlin band were rehearsing in the Royal Festival Hall with one of their 'drive-thru' programmes, including Ein Heldenleben if my memory serves me right. So we booked the Abraham Lincoln Room (yes really) in the outrageously expensive Savoy Hotel directly across the Thames from the hall.

The whole event was organised like a military operation, my plan of action is reproduced at the foot of the article. EMI's Abbey Road Studios provided copy masters of the Don Carlos and Pelléas recordings and tape machines to play them on while KEF supplied monitor speakers. Frederica von Stade and Richard Stilwell also agreed to attend, and eighty leading music journalists accepted the personalised invitation seen below

Our over the top plans included equipping all my team with personal radios (this was decades before cell phones) and communicating with each other military style, with HvK code-named The Eagle. Staff were stationed at the stage door of the Festival Hall to brief us when Karajan was en route, and the company's limo with vanity plates EMI 1 was used to transport the conductor. (Those were the days of company limos, I bet everyone in EMI today has a Tata except Guy Hands). We were explicitly told that the maestro did not eat in public, so the journos were fed the most expensive buffet in company history while Karjan enjoyed a hero's life across the river.

Bang on time the Eagle appeared at the Savoy and Peter Andry, director of EMI's International Classical Division, who was also my boss and a Karajan confidant, chaired a flawless presentation which included the conductor talking passionately about Pélleas, a stunning playback of the love duet from the opera, and questions from the journalists. The header photo was taken at the end of the presentation and Peter Andry is with Karajan; it is from my personal files and may not have been published before.

As the presentation ended Andry thanked Karajan and the conductor left the platform to lively applause. Then came the pièce de résistance. My indefatigable secretary was stationed to the side with a bouquet of the Savoy's finest flowers which probably cost the equivalent of half EMI's current classical recording budget. Only one problem; nobody had told us that as well as not eating in public the maestro did not accept flowers in public. Karajan rudely brushed Rosemary aside and fled for the door leaving a very red-faced secretary clutching a huge bunch of flowers watched by eighty highly amused journalists.

So there we have Herbert von Karajan. Inspired music maker and totally self-serving personality. Even after almost thirty years I can't hear the love duet from Pelléas without thinking of the cost of those flowers.

Happy birthday maestro, wherever you are.


* I will be celebrating the Contemporary Karajan on Future Radio at 5.00pm on April 6 and 12.50am on April 7 with a programme of twentieth-century classics conducted by him. The music is:
~ Alban Berg – Three pieces from the “Lyric Suite”
~ Arthur Honegger – Symphony No 3

Lots more Karajan links here. Peter Andry, who is seen in my header photo with Karajan, master-minded many great EMI recordings including one of my personal favourites, Karajan's 1970 Dresden Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Before joining EMI Andry was a Decca producer and his recording of the Ernest Bloch String Quartets should be in every CD collection. Read more about it here.

All images and text (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008 and not to be reproduced without prior written permission. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Carla Bruni's musical connections

French first lady Carla Bruni has some interesting classical music connections. Her mother Marisa Borini is an actress and classical pianist who is reported to have had an affair with Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. Depending on your sources Bruni's biological father is Maurizio Remmert, an Italian businessman who now lives in Brazil Marisa or Marisa Borini's husband, the contemporary composer Alberto Bruni Tedeschi seen in my header photo. Alberto Bruni Tedeschi's distinctions included writing four operas and having one of them filmed with a cast including Charles Aznavour, his own daughter Valeria Bruni and Isabel von Karajan, the daughter of the conductor.

President Sarkozy seems to appreciate ladies with musical connections. His divorced second wife, Cécilia Ciganer-Albéniz, is the great grand-daughter of Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz. Which, interestingly, means the families of both the President's second and third wives are of Sephardic descent.
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Got the T-shirt? - now hear the music

There was some healthy discussion on my recent article about pianist Angela Hewitt's Bach World Tour T-shirts. No discussion on my Future Radio programme this Sunday (Jan 27) at 5.00pm UK time, just 51 minutes 3 seconds of the perfect pianism of Angela Hewitt playing Messiaen and J.S. Bach, connected by less than 5 minutes of the usual low key links from me. The audio stream can be launched here, and is available in real time only.

There is some interesting music coming up on my Future Radio webcasts in the next few months. It includes Elliott Carter's Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Cello and Harpsichord, Michael Tippett's Second Symphony (why aren't his symphonies performed more often?), and a new recording of Lou Harrison's Concerto for Violin and Percussion Orchestra, all complete - no extracts. Through the year I will also be playing all the Vaughan Williams symphonies. Future Radio agreed to this following very positive listener responses to my broadcast of the Fifth earlier this month, and they are rearranging their schedule to accomodate the 71 minute Sea Symphony in August to coincide with the centenary of the composer's birth.

On April 6 I will be presenting Karajan and Twentieth Century Music to mark the centenary of the conductor's birth. For all his faults Karajan made some superlative records, none more so than his 1972 recording of Arthur Honegger's Third Symphony Liturgique, and I'll be playing that with his 1973 recording of Alban Berg's Three Pieces from the Lyric Suite, both with the Berlin Philharmonic. Framing all these contemporary works will be music by Bach, Tallis, Corelli and from the Sephardic Diaspora.

It's all about thinking outside the box, as Olivier Messiaen did.
Listen on Future Radio at 5.00pm UK time this Sunday, January 27th in real time here (convert to local time zones here). An Overgrown Path podcast will follow. 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. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

What a Karajan at the BBC

Apologies to readers, who like me, tuned in vain to BBC Radio 4 at 7.15pm this evening to hear the 'reassessment' of Herbert von Karajan's life and work that I mentioned in one of today's post.

I picked up information on the programme from today's Guardian radio listings which highlighted the Karajan programme. This information would have been supplied by the BBC publicity department. As programmes sometimes change I went to Radio 4's webpage. This clearly says:

19:15 Front Row 23 January 2008
Arts news and reviews with Mark Lawson, including a reassessment of the life and work of Herbert von Karajan as the centenary of the maestro's birth approaches.

Just to make sure doubly-sure I googled 'BBC Radio 4 Karajan' and found another page on the BBC website which confirmed that the programme was being aired today at 7.15pm. So I linked to it.

At 7.15 there was no Karajan feature, no explanation, and no apology. Like so many things the BBC does today, totally hopeless.

In the old days at least we made our mistakes with style.
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So you thought classical music was dead?

davidderrick has left a new comment on your post "Music's unmerry widows" - Not 1981, surely? CDs only came in in March 83. This was around 89. Possibly for the genius's 80th birthday? 'Scuse pedantry ...

David, the Galleria series were originally released in LP format. I could not recall having bought any of the series. But age doesn't just make better conductors, it also plays tricks with memory. Which is why Sir John Barbirolli conducted from a score. After your comment arrived I went through my LPs and found this 1982 vinyl record, complete with Eliette von Karajan painting, which I have just photographed. The Deutsche Grammophon website confirms the dates.

Meanwhile the Karajan centenary bandwagon is really starting to roll. Tonight (Jan 23) BBC Radio 4 promises a 'reassessment' of Karajan (why not Radio 3 - not Classic FM enough for them?), while DG's centenary releases are here (but I can't see the excellent vinyl only Second Viennese School set). The Karajan industry is definitely hard currency - the Austrian Mint are to issue a 5 Euro commemorative coin in April. There are going to be books galore (but no Lauterwasser volume), re-releases of recordings, and more memorial concerts than there were for Princess Diana. If you thought classical music was dead check it all out here.

The current Karajan memorial European tour by the Berlin Philharmonic features Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony (but there are no T-shirts). By coincidence my first classical record was that symphony on DG conducted by Karajan. Read about it here.
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A picture is worth a thousand words

When it comes to sleeve artwork Herbert von Karajan's wife may have got it wrong. But Joni Mitchell got it right. The two images here are from her 2000 album Both Sides Now. Joni provided these superlative self-portraits for the sleeve, and she worked with Vince Mendoza, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Peter Erskine and others to make an album which is a work of art in more ways than one.


More on Joni Mitchell the painter here, and more proof that pictures are worth a thousand words here.
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Music's unmerry widows

Re. Mrs von Karajan - Didn't DG issue a Karajan series featuring Eliette's own artwork? Just how wealthy and influential is this woman? BTW. What ever happend to Herbert's brother, Wolfgang? Cheers David Cavlovic

Ja wohl David. In 1981 Eliette's daubs decorated the sleeves for Deutsche Grammophon's "Karajan-Edition" in their "Galleria" series. 50 original paintings adorned as many record sleeves for music ranging from Vivaldi to Stravinsky. A sample is above, and more information and a better image is here. An estimate by Die Welt puts Eliette von Karajan's wealth at 250 million euro (£187m/$366mUS).

Wolfgang von Karajan died in November 1987. He showed considerable promise in his early career as an electrical engineer, but never really capitalised on this and later tried to make a career in music. In 1984 HvK wanted EMI to record the Art of Fugue with his brother and himself, EMI declined. There was an uneasy relationship between the two brothers as HvK disliked Wolfgang's wife intensely. Wolfgang was a very different personality to Herbert, he was reclusive and slightly eccentric. Thankfully he didn't design record sleeves.

The headline is not mine, it comes from Pierre Boulez. Read about Die Unlustigen Witwen - music's unmerry widows here.
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I was Herbert von Karajan's mate

My prediction that marriage was the musical 'must have' for 2008 is proving to be uncannily accurate. January hasn't finished, and already we have 'marriage - the book' and 'marriage - the CDs'. Herbert von Karajan's widow is marking the centenary of the conductor's birth on April 5, 2008 with a book telling the story of their 31 year marriage. Revelations in the style of Cécile Sarkozy are not expected from Eliette von Karajan who is seen in my photo trying not to put the maestro's latest toy onto the rocks.

Read about the book in German here, or in a fittingly excruciating Babel Fish translation here. And it gets worse. Deutsche Grammophon are redefining adventurous programming with a 2 CD tie in, see below. Now read a rather more interesting, and exclusive, story from Herbert von Karajan's past here.


Eliette von Karajan: Mein Leben an seiner Seite. is published by Ullstein, Berlin. 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 composer without a shadow?

If you want to start a fascinating thread write about Leonard Bernstein's Mass. Here are some comments from my most recent Mass post:

Movie commented - It's not a dishonest piece and I think it still works today.

I commented - But what are examples of dishonest pieces of music?

Pentimento commented - I'd say much of Strauss's oeuvre is dishonest.

I couldn't live without Metamorphosen, Capriccio or the wind concertos, and one of my most memorable, and disturbing, evenings in the opera house was Hildegard Behrens singing the title role in Salome with Karajan and the Vienna Philharmonic at the 1977 Salzburg Festival. But, despite that, you may be right Pentimento. Which leaves me with only one possible back link - Herbert von Karajan Ein Heldenleben
Sorry I cannot credit the lovely portrait of Richard Strauss (I do hope you meant Richard and not Johann, Pentimento), but I do not know who it is by. It comes from Ferdinand Von Galitzien's blog. Help with attribution much appreciated. 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 Stockhausen and Schumann

Who said that the art of sleeve design died with the LP? - well actually I did. So, to prove myself wrong here is the sleeve for the recording of Stockhausen's Gruppen that I will be playing in my Future Radio programme this Sunday Dec 16 at 5.00pm UK time.

The CD was released by Budapest Music Center Records in 2006, and the Gruppen was recorded in 1997 in the same hall as the work was first performed in, the Messe Reinlandsaal in Cologne. The three orchestras are drawn from the ranks of the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln and the conductors are the Spaniard Arturo Tamayo, the Hungarian Peter Eötvös and the Frenchman Jacques Mercier.

The coupling is Stockhausen's Punkte, and the excellent sleeve notes are by Richard Toop. As well as recording worthwhile composers BMC Records is one of the few companies committed to keeping good design alive in the digital era. More power to them for that.

Look at these images again. Now do you understand why I wrote Stockhausen - part of a dream?


Now playing - Robert Schumann's Symphony No. 3 'Rhenish'. Schumann and Stockhausen may seem to have little in common other than the letter 'S', but there are links. Both explored new technologies. While Stockhausen pioneered electronic music Schumann was a little less ambitious with his advocacy of the pedal piano which extended the register of the instrument using an organ style pedal action. Schumann's works for pedal piano played by Martis Schmeding are available on the Ars record label, although the nasty close and dry sound of the recording makes it of little interest other than as an academic document.

There are also geographic links between the two composers. Stockhausen was born in Mödrath near Cologne in 1928, and grew up in the Rhineland area where his father was a teacher. Although Schumann was born in Zwickau in the east of Germany he moved west to Düsseldorf in 1850, and later that year wrote his 'Rhenish' Symphony which celebrates the Rhineland and Cologne.

I visited Cologne frequently on business in the 1970s, and was mesmerised by the city's magnificent 13th century Catholic cathedral as well as attending trade fairs at the more prosaic Koelmesse where Gruppen was first performed. The fourth of the five movements of the 'Rhenish' is thought to have been inspired by the ordination of a Cardinal in the Cathedral.

I grew to love the 'Rhenish' through repeated playings of my 1972 LP of Herbert von Karajan's performance with the Berlin Philharmonic (DG 2530 447), and I still retain a great fondness for his interpretation. The Deutsche Grammophon sleeve shown below is wonderfully evocative of the Indian summer of the LP of which it was part. The stark contrast in graphic styles between the Stockhausen and Schumann sleeves also reflects the marked difference between the mellow analogue sound of the 1970s, and the analytical digital sound that was soon to replace it.

When CDs arrived I bought Kubelik's cycle with the Bayerischen Rundfunks Orchestra. These have served well, but never quite generated the frisson of Karajan's performances. More recently I have found David Zinman's cycle for the BMG's budget priced Arte Nova Classics label to be very rewarding. The orchestra is the Tonhalle Zurich who use natural trumpets, baroque trombones and other period instruments. The resulting crispness and bite provides a welcome antidote to Schumman's sometimes thick orchestration. Zinman's CD set is recommended. However, unlike BMC's Stockhausen and DG's Schumann, the CD artwork isn't worth reproducing here. But for some more striking images go to Robert Schumann's Zwickau.


Hear Karlheinz Stockhausen's Gruppen on my Future Radio programme on Sunday December 16 at 5.00pm UK time (convert to local time zones here) I will also be playing Lou Harrison's 1985 Piano Concerto. Listen by launching the Radeo internet player from the right side-bar, or via the audio stream. Convert time 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

Lebrecht is right - Naxos is not in same league

Thought-provoking email about the Naxos v Lebrecht case:

'Lebrecht is right in so far, as Naxos product is not in the league of a fine opera recording of the 60 to 80s with top cast, recorded by DECCA or even DG, Philips or EMI. Their product will still sell in 50 years, whereas Naxos product does not have this unique quality, neither sonically nor artistically. A recording with a top approved cast with a conductor like Karajan (above) is still a seller today, even if recorded "only" in Stereo. The 5.1 surround sound format is no quality asset, for classical music this is not the decisive feature. That is the great difference to Naxos or other label products.

Sincerely, L. Ruschin'

Now read another reader suggesting that Naxos dumbs-down production standards.
Header image shows Herbert von Karajan with Christa Ludwig during a playback at the 1969/70 sessions for Götterdämmerung, which, as L. Ruschin says, continues to sell today. 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

BBC Proms - new music in safe doses

Here are Pliable's personal picks for the remainder of this year's BBC Proms season. All Proms are available for seven days online, detailed programmes and broadcast times for every concert are available from the BBC web site.

* August 29, 10.00pm - important contemporary music is once again consigned to the bed-time ghetto. Works by Oliver Knussen, Anton Webern and Julian Anderson are performed by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group.

* August 30, 7.30pm - a rare opportunity to hear Artur Honegger's excellent 1946 Symphony No. 3 Symphonie liturgie played by the Bavarian Radio Symphony under Mariss Jansons . Herbert von Karajan's recorded legacy has dated somewhat, but his recording of this symphony is definitive. (Lovely Lauterwasser cover photo as well).

* August 31, 7.30pm - shout it from the rooftops - the world premiere of Thea Musgrave's Two's Company, a BBC commission. I wrote about Thea Musgrave's concerto for orchestra, Helios, a few weeks ago when I played the NMC recording of it on my Overgrown Path radio programme. The soloists for this premiere are oboist Nicholas Daniel, who also plays on the NMC recording of Helios, and Evelyn Glennie. For this Prom we have a rare sighting of chief conductor Jiří Bělohlávek on the podium with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, obviously finding out where the Albert Hall is before presiding over the Last Night on Saturday. Great to see a big dose of new music, but the BBC really does have a blockage about women composers at the Proms. At the time of writing Thea Musgrave's name is completely missing from the BBC's online listing of composers with performances at the 2007 Proms.

* September 4, 7.30pm - the Vienna Philharmonic and Daniel Barenboim serve up Ligeti in a digestible portion (Atmosphères - 9 mins), and a rather bigger serving of Bartók (Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta - 30 mins). No minimalist composers, but a distinctly minimalist programme - 30 minutes of music in the first half and 38 minutes in the second with top price tickets at £45. Did I hear anyone mention attracting new audiences?

* September 7, 7.30pm - is it a coincidence that this concert by the Boston Symphony and James Levine also contains exactly nine minutes of contemporary music in the form of Elliott Carter's Three Illusions for Orchestra? Or is nine minutes the maximum permissible duration for contemporary music before it is shunted off to the late-night graveyard slot? Safer Brahms and Bartók provide the other 86 minutes.

* September 8, 7.30pm - tokenism reaches its logical conclusion with just one contemporary work in this concert - a three minute excerpt from Thomas Adès' The Storm. Not enough to mar the whitewashing of the history of music.

Now read more about music history rewritten.
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Move over iPhone - here comes vinyl

"The format was supposed to have been badly wounded by the introduction of CDs and killed off completely by the ipod-generation that bought music online. But in a rare case of cheerful news for the record labels, the latest phenomenon in a notoriously fickle industry is one nobody dared predict: a vinyl revival. Latest figures show a big jump in vinyl sales in the first half of this year, confirming the anecdotal evidence from specialist shops throughout the UK.

"It comes as sales of CD singles continue to slide - and it is not being driven by technophobic middle-aged consumers. Teenagers and students are developing a taste for records and are turning away from the clinical method of downloading music on to an MP3 player.

"The data, released by the UK's industry group BPI, shows that 7in vinyl sales were up 13% in the first half, with the White Stripes' Icky Thump the best seller.Two-thirds of all singles in the UK now come out on in the 7in format, with sales topping 1m. Though still a far cry from vinyl's heyday in 1979, when Art Garfunkel's Bright Eyes alone sold that number and the total vinyl singles market was 89m, the latest sales are still up more than fivefold in five years.

"For record stores, the resurgence has meant a move from racks of vintage Rolling Stones and Beatles releases to brand new singles and younger buyers. "The student population seem to be loving the 7in," says Stuart Smith, who runs Seismic Records in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. He sells 300-600 records a week and is preparing to launch an online store. "I'm still not sure about the MP3 generation. You can have a full hard drive and nothing to show for it. Record collections are very personal. You can view into a person's soul really," he says.

The extract above is from today's Guardian. And the header photo is a view into my soul. It was taken a few minutes ago and shows an LP from Deutsche Grammophon's 1973 Schoenberg, Berg and Webern orchestral set playing on my Thorens TD125. This Second Viennese School overview was played by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karajan, and, to my knowledge, has never made it onto CD complete, although I have the 'highlights' CD that was compiled from it in 1999. (Listen to brief audio samples here)

Producer of the set for DG was Hans Weber with Tonmeister Günter Hermanns. The Berg Drei Orchesterstücke Op. 6 was recorded in Jesus-Christus-Kirche in Berlin, all the other works were captured in the Philharmonie. The vinyl pressings are out of DG's top drawer. Mine are still pristine, and sound absolutely magnificent. For audiophiles the rest of my replay system is an Audio-Technica AT-F3/OCC moving coil phono cartridge, SME Series lllS tone arm, Arcam Alpha 10 integrated amplifier, Sennheiser HD 580 headphones, and B&W Nautilus 803 speakers.

The lavish booklet that came with the DG set can be seen in my photo. It includes a serious analysis of each work, wonderful full page photos of the composers, and a biography of Karajan that takes hagiography to an Olympic level. Special mention should me made of the cover design by Hartmut Pfeiffer. (Is that the same Hartmut Pfeiffer who is credited as one of the conductors on DG's Stravinsky overview?). The cover graphic becomes a work of art on the 12" by 12" LP box. When reduced to a 4.5" by 4.5" CD liner it becomes as disposable as an MP3 file.

Karajan's lush 1973 interpretations of these Second Viennese School classics, and DG's 'spot-lit' microphone technique, are completely out of step with today's minimalist zeitgeist. But these vinyl LPs provide a window into my musical soul, and they challenged, educated and inspired me when I bought them back in the early 1970s.

As I took the DG LP of Schoenberg's Orchestervariationen Op. 31 off the turntable I switched the Arcam amplifier over to the tuner and saw into the musical soul of BBC Radio 3. Rob Cowan was challenging, educating and inspiring listeners with an orchestral arrangement of April in Paris.

More riches from my Thorens TD125 here.
Photo copyright 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

Opera looks at the bigger picture

Dutch video production houses are all the fashion. This week Endemol started a new series of Big Brother in the UK, while over in Holland it launched De Grote Donorshow (The Big Donor Show), which gives three dialysis patients the chance to win a dying woman's kidney, or not. And the Royal Opera House, a dedicated follower of fashion, got in on the act by buying Anglo-Dutch specialist DVD producer, Opus Arte, for £5.7m.

Covent Garden made much PR spin of the story that this is the first time an opera house has acquired a DVD production and distribution company, but in fact the convergence of opera and video goes back more than forty years. In 1966 Leo Kirch founded Unitel to produce video operas, and concerts using the tag-line "music to watch." The company now has a catalogue of more than 1,000 titles, and has pioneered the use of HDTV technology.

Unitel is best known for its catalogue of video recordings by two media aware musicians. Herbert von Karajan, seen in my header photo at a Unitel shoot, is represented by more than 50 hours of video footage, while Bernstein contributed 120 hours of Lenny 'airtime' including a complete Mahler cycle. In 1978 Unitel signed an exclusive agreement with the Bayreuth Festival, and the results of that include the video of the "Centennial Ring" of 1976-1980 produced by Pierre Boulez and Patrice Chéreau, which is estimated to have been seen by more than 60 million people.

Opera houses buying video producers is part of the remorseless vertical integration of classical music that sees orchestras starting their own record labels and the BBC running the world's biggest music festival. And, inevitably, the BBC are linked to today's story. In 2001 the BBC made a deal with Opus Arte to allow the video producer "to make a substantial investment over the next five years into new BBC classic music programmes, as well as licensing both recent and archive classic material from BBC Worldwide", which really brings a one party musical state closer.

Vertical integration may be an inevitable result of the collapse of traditional media intermediaries such as EMI, but it also threatens the spontaneity, risk-taking and individual flair that are essential to the creative process. The sterile corporate speak of the Covent Garden press release, which in just under 1000 words doesn't mention a single composer or opera, says it all - world-class - global market place - licensed brands - digital strategy - global broadcasters - big digital ambitions - creation of a revenue stream - a multiple win ...

The press release also says '£2 million borrowings already in the company have been refinanced through alternative lenders' and goes on to thank, among others, New Boathouse Capital. They are a London based corporate finance advisory business which works in the ruthless world of venture capital finance, and their other clients include the Cath Kidston fashion chain, Virgin mobile phones, and Bunker Secure IT Hosting.

Big business and grand opera may not be happy sharing the same stage. I described above how Unitel, which is still trading, was founded by Leo Kirch. In 2002 his company KirchMedia declared itself insolvent. The insolvency represented the largest insolvency of an enterprise in German postwar history. The next month Kirch sued Deutsche Bank for €100m, claiming that they had damaged confidence in the group and disclosed confidential business information in the process. I hope the Royal Opera House knows it has moved from a garden to a jungle.

Now read about three examples of spontaneity, risk-taking and individual flair that I don't think we will see in the Covent Garden video catalogue -
Image credit Unitel, showing Herbert von Karajan filming Carmen with Jon Vickers as Don José. 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