Europe's very own digital concert hall launched

Another 'digital concert hall' has been launched. Dutch media company CommuniServe B.V. are promoting http://www.monteverdi.tv/ (above) as a resource offering 2,500 hours of classical concerts, blogs, reviews, a downloadable music catalogue and several classical radio stations.

A different take on the digital concert hall 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

Indeterminacy in music blogging

Stockhausen, Xenakis, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Francis Picabia, Mozart and Mahler beckon from London - as one savant wrote about the contemporary music scene in England over on Sequenza21 "I do hate ... the lack of diversity in performance (not much range/choice) and all the self aggrandising anti-’intellectual’ inverted snobbery regards the ‘continentals’". I'm away from the keyboard for a few days enjoying the live music, so below is the schedule for my Future Radio show for this Sunday (March 16) plus the following five weeks with links to related articles.

March 16 - Angela Hewitt recital:
* J.S. Bach Toccatas
* Messiaen excerpts from Vingt Regards sur l’enfant Jésus


March 23 - Celebrating Easter with A Love Supreme
* Yuval Ron Ensemble play music from Iraq and Muslim and Jewish Andalucia
* John Coltrane's jazz suite A Love Supreme

March 30 - Vaughan Williams anniversary
* Thomas Tallis Felix Namque for organ
* Vaughan Williams Third Symphony 'A Pastoral Symphony'


April 6 - Contemporary Karajan, to mark the conductor's centenary his recordings of:
* Berg Three pieces from the Lyric Suite
* Honegger Symphony No 3 'Liturgigue'.


April 13 - Pupil and teacher
* Xenakis Komboi
* Hildegard of Bingen lament and Scene 3 from Ordo Vitutum
* Messiaen Oiseaux Exotiques

April 20 - Modern English music
* Maxwell Davies Missa Parvula
* Rubbra Symphony No 6


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

The complete works on Future Radio

Ralph Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis is one of his best known works, and Tudor church music was a major influence on the composer. During 2008 I am playing all the Vaughan Williams symphonies on my Future Radio programme, and this Sunday (Feb 17) it is the turn of the Eighth Symphony. This for many, including me, is one of his finest works, and it certainly destroys the myth of the composer as a backward looking English pastoralist, with its scoring for vibraphone, xylophone, tubular bells, glockenspiel and three tuned gongs.

I'm coupling all the Vaughan Williams Symphonies with choral music from Thomas Tallis. This will be taken from the splendid new 10CD box of Tallis' complete works at bargain price from Brilliant Classics sung by the Chapelle du Roi directed by Alistair Dixon. Tallis also composed a number of instrumental works which are included in the box. They are not of the same peerless quality as his choral works, but are, nevertheless well worth hearing. I paid £30 for the boxed set (texts included on CD-ROM) from an independent record store, but they are available cheaper online. Which rather captures the current lunacy of the classical music industry. The last of the ten Tallis CDs was recorded by Signum in 2004, and they were selling individually last year for £15.

Cue columns of plainsong soaring upwards.
Listen on Future Radio at 5.00pm every Sunday and 12.50am every Monday UK time in real time here (convert to local time zones here). 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. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

On the path of Kurt Atterberg

Interesting post (and audio sample) on the Swedish composer Kurt Magnus Atterberg (1887-1974), seen in my header photo, from a Harvard student, musician and broadcaster and blogger.

More on those WHRB orgies here, follow my Danish thread 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

Third rate music on Naxos' American Classics?

I'll be interested in American readers' reactions to the start of this review by the Guardian's Andrew Clements - 'Considering how much third-rate music has been included in Naxos's American Classics series, Elliott Carter has so far been poorly served by the budget-price label. But in the year of the composer's 100th birthday, this - the first of two discs that will include all five of Carter's string quartets - could be the start of a major addition to his discography.'

Andrew Clements then goes on to write a glowing five-star review of Naxos' new CD of Elliott Carter's String Quartets Nos 1 and 5 performed by the Pacifica Quartet. I'll agree whole-heartedly with his verdict on the Carter Quartets, I bought them last week and they are superb performances of superb music. But I am not so sure about his other views.


That judgement of 'third-rate music' raises the interesting point of should a critic focus primarily on the interpretation or the composition? Good music criticism must, of course, combine both. But the balance does seem to be swinging towards judging the notes rather than the way they are played - is that really a healthy trend? Even if some of the music on Naxos American Classics is less than stellar, isn't it better to record that rather than the 371st version of Mahler's Fifth Symphony?

I'll gladly defend Andrew Clements', or anybody else's, right to express an opinion. But these negative attitudes are spreading, and voodoo journalism is alive and well despite despite Klaus Heymann. Perhaps we should all remember the words of that fine contemporary composer Jonathan Harvey - 'I've always felt that it is, and will be, strong enthusiasm that will change the world!'

* On February 24th on my Future Radio programme I'll be expressing strong enthusiasm for Elliott Carter's Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Cello and Harpsichord and Pastoral for Clarinet and Piano in recordings from the independent American label Cedille together with transcriptions of Bach's Trio Sonatas by Robert King.
With thanks to Antoine Leboyer who raised the notes or interpretation debate with me in the context of his review of a recording of Morton Feldman's music. 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 Overgrown Path just got longer

Due largely to requests from transatlantic listeners Future Radio's new schedule includes a repeat of my Overgrown Path programme at 12.50am UK time on Monday mornings. This translates approximately to Sunday afternoon and evening on the North American East and West Coasts, find the exact time locally here and connect to the audio stream here.

The repeats start today (Feb 3) with a programme of early and contemporary music from the Santiago Pilgrimage. Do catch the excerpts from Jody Talbot's new Path of Miracles if you can, they are well worth hearing. More details here.

It may be a small step, but this repeat is recognition that classical music is far from dead, and that adventuous programming produces results. Thank you Overgrown Path readers and listeners for making this possible.

Overgrown Path forward programme schedule - all works are played complete:
* Feb 10 - John Cage Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra and Frescobaldi Canzoni
* Feb 17 - Vaughan Willimas Symphony No 8 (part of a cycle of all his symphonies in 2008) and Thomas Tallis' choral music
* Feb 24 - Elliott Carter Pastoral for Clarinet and Piano and Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Cello and Harpsichord, and J.S. Bach Trio Sonatas transcribed by Robert King
* March 2 - Michael Tippett Second Symphony (composer conducting) and Corelli Concerti Grossi No 8, 'Christmas Concerto'
* March 9 - Lou Harrison Concerto for Violin with Percussion Orchestra (new recording) and early music from the eastern Sephardic communities, plus a Ghanaian circumcision dance!
* March 16 - Angela Hewitt plays Messiaen and Bach.

Listen on Future Radio at 5.00pm every Sunday and 12.50am every Monday UK time in real time here (convert to local time zones here). 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. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Old meets new on the Santiago pilgrimage

Recycling is an essential part of the creative process. My photo above was taken last September and shows the West Portal of the Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, which is generally considered be the most outstanding example of Provencal Romanesque architecture in southern France.

Below is the magnificent portal recycled in the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. Industrialist Andrew Carnegie paid the town of Gard 2000 gold francs to allow plaster casts to be taken of the portal. The casts were shipped across the Atlantic in 195 packing cases and assembled in Pittsburgh for the 1907 opening of the museum's Hall of Architecture.

The Abbey of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard is one of the staging posts on the most southerly of the pilgrimage routes to Santiago in Spain, which starts in nearby Arles. In 2005 composer Joby Talbot indulged in some creative recycling when he incorporated the hymn Dum Pater Familias and other pilgrim tunes into his choral work Path of Miracles which celebrates the Santiago pilgrimage. Read more about Path of Miracles here.

On Sunday February 3rd I will be playing the final two of the four parts of Path of Miracles on Future Radio. My programme is broadcast at 5.00pm on Sunday afternoon, and will be repeated at 1.00am on Monday morning for transatlantic listeners, which is afternoon or evening Sunday in their time zones.

I'm framing Path of Miracles with two excerpts from the 1991 recording of music from the Pilgimage to Santiago made by the New London Consort directed by Philip Pickett. This draws on the 12th century Codex Calixtinus also used by Joby Talbot. The New London Consort disc is a classic release from L'Oiseau-Lyre's Indian summer, and it has recently been re-released at budget price - grab it while you can. Read the L'Oiseau Lyre story here.


Listen on Future Radio at 5.00pm UK time this Sunday Feb 3 and Monday Feb 4 in real time here (convert to local time zones here). 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. Photo (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

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

Early music's high Noone

Early music is more volatile than rock music. Hot new groups keep appearing, new personalities keep emerging, and early music has a dynamism that is noticeably absent from other parts of the classical music scene. One of the hot groups right now is Ensemble Plus Ultra under their director Michael Noone. Born in Sidney, Michael Noone studied at the University of Sydney and King's College, Cambridge, and specialises in Spanish Renaissance music. He is known especially for his work in the archives of El Escorial and the Cathedral of Toledo, and his CD Morales en Toledo featured here back in 2005.

Ensemble Plus Ultra record for the enterprising Spanish Glossa label who are one of the few companies still placing importance on the design and presentation of their CDs. I am playing music from their new disc (beautiful artwork above) of sacred choral music by the 16th century Venetian Gioseffo Zarlino in my Future Radio programme at 5.00pm UK time on Sunday 20th January. Zarlino is best known for his great treatise, Istitutioni harmoniche of 1558, and is little known as a composer. His cycle of motets from the Song of Songs, Canticum Canticorum, uses Isidoro Chiari's 1544 translation. This reflects the aesthetic priorities of the Cassinese Congregation of Benedictines of which Chiari was an abbot. Cassinese churches had polished white interiors, clear windows, and a choir centered under the main dome. Among architects and artists who worked for the Congregation were Palladio and Correggio.

In Sunday's programme Zarlino's motets frame Luigi Dallapiccola's Canti di prigionia. Dallapiccola was born in 1904 and grew up as a supporter of the Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini. But Dallapiccola’s wife was Jewish, and when the Italian government aligned itself with the German Nazis in 1936 he turned against Mussolini, and expressed his opposition in music. His masterpiece is Canti di prigionia which was completed in 1941. This is a hymn to all those who have been imprisoned for their beliefs, and it provides a fascinating companion piece to Zarlino's motet settings from four centuries earlier.

Now read about, and hear, masses of early music on iPods.
Listen on Future Radio at 5.00pm UK time this Sunday, January 13th 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. Photo (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Found - thousands of happy new ears

In only six weeks more than a thousand people have visited the Overgrown Path podcast page on iTunes, and this week James Weeks talking about the music of Elisabeth Lutyens has been added to my David Munrow and Alvin Curran podcasts. Doesn't that level of interest in music from the long tail tell us something?

Elsewhere there has been some good humoured discussion of Angela Hewitt world Bach tour T-shirts, with one defender of the Bach world tour marketing machine writing - 'I think you are missing the point here, which is trying to get new people interested in her, giving her profile in the press and recognition ... every interview, every talk show appearance is promotion.'

Every talk show appearance may be promotion. But all promotion is not good promotion. And promoting serious music to mass markets is a risky business. There are very few examples of large, and loyal, new audiences being created by mass marketing. But there are numerous examples that ended in tears, where mass marketing failed to attract a new audiences, but instead drove away the core audience. The most obvious example is BBC Radio 3, where going mass market has failed to attract Classic FM listeners, but has instead, literally, switched-off the network's core audience and resulted in a net loss of listeners.

New audiences are essential for the health of serious music, but so is being realistic. We live in an age of instant gratification, and today's arts administrators and broadcasters want immediate access to new mass audiences. This is not only unrealistic, it also often achieves the opposite result to that intended. New audiences can be reached, but we need to be less greedy and more adventurous to reach them.

As always on this blog these are my personal views. But they are based on real world experience. Yes, the sample size may be small, but, as I have pointed out before, the samples are larger than the focus groups used by the BBC and others. And before the cynics sniff at a few thousand listeners for David Munrow and Alvin Curran they should remember that it was revealed recently that Rupert Murdoch's new satellite Fox Business Network is attracting an average of only 6,000 daytime viewers.

The new audience for serious music is in the receptive long tail, not in the mass market short head. The long tail of classical music has received much attention recently. But there are many other long tails - for literature, for the visual arts, for the cinema, for techno and electronic music, and others. There is overlap, but there is also a sizeable new audience for serious music waiting in those other long tails. These are people who have been driven away from classical music by BBC TV's Classical Star and Classic FM's music for dinner parties. They see serious music today as being unexciting. They don't want to be talked down to by chummy radio presenters. They want the adventurousness of Boulez in the 1970s at the Round House and Proms in London, and at the Rug Concerts in New York. But, with a few notable exceptions, we are not giving them what they want.

I have talked to some of the new audience that my internet radio programmes and blog have reached. They told me they bought CDs and downloads of music by Guillaume Connesson, Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, Conlon Nancarrow and others after discovering them On An Overgrown Path. These new listeners are well educated, have disposable incomes, are interested in the media, travel extensively, have expensive stereo systems, watch art films, and read contemporary fiction. But they listen to non-classical music because they find it more exciting and challenging. They are the long-tail dwellers, they are a receptive new audience for serious classical music, but we need to be a lot more adventurous to reach them.

Sir Brian McMaster arrives at the same conclusion in his controversial and brave report on funding in the UK arts which was published last week. In the report he recommends 'that cultural organisations stop exploiting the tendency of many audiences to accept a superficial experience and foster a relationship founded on innovative, exciting and challenging work'. Or, as that great arts administrator and BBC Radio 3 controller John Drummond wrote "the arts are as much about controversy as about achievement".

We need to be more adventurous and controversial. We already have the exciting music. We should stop apologising for it.

Image with many thanks to AllPosters.com. 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

Radio has to be an adventurous experience

My article last year about Elisabeth Lutyens created a lot of interest. In it I recommended the new CD of Lutyens' choral music sung by Exaudi directed by James Weeks, and on my Future Radio programme this Sunday (Jan 13) James Weeks (above) joins me to talk about Lutyens and introduce some of the music from the disc, including her 1953 masterpiece the Motet (Excerpta Tractati Logico-Philosophici) which is usually known by the more memorable title of the Wittgenstein Motet. The interview will be available as An Overgrown Path podcast after the broadcast.

James Weeks is also active as a composer and we will be playing one of his choral compositions on the programme. James is a champion of contemporary music, and he has just been appointed music director of the New London Chamber Choir. Pierre Boulez is patron of the NLCC, which has a reputation for pushing the new music envelope just about as far as it will go, and sometimes beyond. The choir was founded by James Wood, and together they stirred things up with a new work which I featured in an early post here. The week following the Lutyens programme I will be playing the NLCC's recording of Luigi Dallapiccola's moving Canti di prigionia in a programme of Italian choral music.

If any confirmation is needed that radio has to be an adventurous experience it comes from non-music blogs such as Threading thoughts, which recently wrote:

I am intrigued, transported, and mind-moved by music. Like visual art and literature I respond to a wide selection: classical, pop, folk, jazz, and contemporary classical (which I always think is a dull title). However, I know next to nothing - well, nothing - about music. I just know what I like! I was delighted last Sunday in the Observer newspaper Review section to find a list of contemporary music blogs to try out. As I type this I am listening to Future Radio which I found through the On An Overgrown Path blog. Also I like the Zen saying on the header of the Overgrown Path blog.

Now read about another contemporary composer who said music has to be an adventurous experience.
Listen on Future Radio at 5.00pm UK time this Sunday, January 13th 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. Photo (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Hip hop rhythms through sound proof glass

The background rumble of trains on the London Underground passing beneath the hall can be heard on several of the great classical recordings made in the Kingsway Hall in the 1960s and 70s. I was reminded of this when recording the interview for my recent David Munrow on the record programme as I could hear the 21st century equivalent of Underground trains in the form of low frequency hip hop rhythms coming through the 'soundproof' window from the adjacent studio at Future Radio. I decided to ignore the breakthrough as it was not too obtrusive, and I was also mindful of the numerous potentially degrading links in the distribution chain that the programme would go through before reaching the final listener.

But I was still thinking analogue, and had seriously underestimated the resilience of programme content in the digital domain. When I listened to the broadcast of the interview live from the audio stream on KEF monitor quality speakers at home the breakthrough could be heard, although it certainly didn't detract from a very interesting programme. More surprisingly the hip hop rhythms can also be heard on the podcast of the interview, despite a multi-stage distribution chain and the file using the 'intermediate' iTunes encoding sampling rate of 44kHz and mp3 bit rate of 256kbps to contain download time.

That distant hip hop beat highlights the new challenges posed by digital distribution. I have already written here about the difficulties associated with webcasting classical recordings with wide dynamic ranges. This problem was brought home again while working on this Sunday's Elisabeth Lutyens programme with James Weeks. When Lutyens specifies ppp Exaudi directed by James Weeks sing ppp, and NMC's recording engineer Andrew Post digitised that ppp. Exactly as it should be, until listeners switch off when the broadcast/webcast programme content is submerged under background noise. The same problem was experienced when testing the audio stream for the complete Inner Cities webcast. I mentioned this to pianist Daan Vandewalle who replied that the reason why some passages were very quiet on his recording was because he played them very quietly!

In rock music compression is increasingly being applied to reduce the dynamic range of recordings, despite the wide signal to noise ratio made available by digital technologies. Compression gives recordings more impact by making them sound louder, and that sells product as the marketing men say. But a backlash against the excessive use of compression has begun with the creation of the website Turn Me Up who summarise their aims as follows:

Turn Me Up!™ is a non-profit music industry organization campaigning to give artists back the choice to release more dynamic records. To be clear, it's not our goal to discourage loud records; they are, of course, a valid choice for many artists. We simply want to make the choice for a more dynamic record an option for artists.

Today, artists generally feel they have to master their records to be as loud as everybody else's. This certainly works for many artists. However, there are many other artists who feel their music would be better served by a more dynamic record, but who don't feel like that option is available to them.

This all comes down to the moment a consumer hears a record, and the fear that if the record is more dynamic, the consumer won't know to just turn up the volume. This is an understandable concern, and one Turn Me Up! is working to resolve.

You can hear (or perhaps not hear) Lutyens' ppp writing on Future Radio this Sunday Jan 13. There is no hip hop background but listeners with high quality speakers may hear the door of the adjacent studio closing a couple of times. The following Sunday the opening of the 1995 recording of Luigi Dallapiccola's Canti di prigionia performed by Ensemble InterContemporain and the New London Chamber Choir will also test the signal to noise ratio of the whole digital distribution chain.

Hip hop accompaniment and doors slamming regardless, I am very grateful to Future Radio for allowing me to use programme time as a sonic sandbox. They have also been extraordinarily helpful in tweaking the audio stream quality to accomodate the extremes of dynamic range found in contemporary music, and the dreaded silence detector is currently off. Norfolk, UK is becoming something of a hotspot in the recording world, and a state of the art rock studio has just opened a few miles from where I live in rural Norfolk. Leeders Farm recording studios are close to where Sir Malcolm Arnold spent the last years of his life. Which allows me to back link to a relevant post which brings together the different worlds of rock and classical music.

Header photo is NOT the Future Radio studio! It is Castle Sound in Scotland, which, I am sure, doesn't suffer from sonic breakthrough, although those speakers may cause the engineer to go deaf instead. 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.

Early and late music reaches new audiences

Adventurous programming of early and late music has reached new audiences via my Future Radio programme. My Inner Cities webcast, which was late both in terms of the work's year of composition and my bedtime, was just one example. From earlier times my David Munrow (photo above) feature was repeated by popular demand over Christmas, and it has just been made available as an iTunes podcast, as has my interview with pianist Daan Vandewalle, who played Alvin Curran's Inner Cities. And every week I am getting more emails at the station responding favourably to the programmes' eclectic mix of music.

My sample size may be small, but it is no smaller than the focus groups used extensively by the BBC and by US presidential contenders. If I were predicting the future I would say that early music will be the 'big thing' in 2008, and that there is also a real opportunity for live concerts combining early and contemporary works. Pierre Boulez did it in his Domaine Musical concerts in France in the 1950s (e.g. Bach or Gabrieli combined with new works), while in 2000 a concert in Berlin combined Mahler and Ockeghem and sold out. Whatever the sample size the Overgrown Path webcasts are punching well above their weight, and the last thirty hours of broadcast music have not included a single note of Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler or Shostakovich.

I've already written here how David Munrow virtually single-handedly made early music the 'big thing' in the 1970s. All that is needed to make it happen again is the right animateur. If early music is the surprise of 2008 perhaps EMI's new owners will make their acquired assets work for them by releasing a box of the complete David Munrow recordings with decent documentation instead of sub-licensing them for peanuts to other companies while also giving them away piecemeal on their own budget label? That way the new owners wouldn't need to 'revalue' my pension.

Over the next few weeks I have some very interesting programmes on Future Radio which combine early and contemporary music. I will publish full details before each broadcast, but here is an outline of the schedule. Judging by recent events you may also see some of these composers making last minute appearances in the BBC Radio 3 schedules. My programmes are broadcast on Sunday at 5.00pm, convert to other time zones here.

* Jan 13 - Elisabeth Lutyens' music with guest James Weeks. Rising star conductor and composer James Weeks discusses his highly acclaimed CD of Lutyens' choral music with me, and plays some of her music from it. Available after broadcast as An Overgrown Path podcast.

* Jan 20 - The Italian Job. Giosefffo Zarlino Motets (new recording from Ensemble Plus Ultra and Michael Noone), and Luigi Dallapiccola's Canti di prigionia.

* Jan 27 - Celebrating Messiaen. Excerpts from Messian's Vingt Regards sur l’enfant Jésus and Bach Toccatas played on the piano by Angela Hewitt.

* Feb 3 - Pilgrimage to Santiago. Music from the medieval Codex Las Huelgas and two complete sections from Joby Talbot's acclaimed 2005 choral work Path of Miracles.

* Feb 10 - A study in contrasts - Cage and Frescobaldi. Girolamo Frescobaldi's Canzoni framing John Cage's Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra

More on Joby Talbot's contemporary choral work Path of Miracles here, and read what a critic thought of Luigi Dallapiccola's music here.
David Munrow photo from Testament's condensed CD re-release of his The Art of the Recorder and Instruments of the Middle Ages. 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 long tail reaches out

From today's Observer arts section. As I've said before, all classical music needs are more animateurs.
With thanks to that great animateur Alex Ross whose New Yorker article was reprinted in the Observer. There doesn't seem to be a web version of the article yet. I'll add a link later if it appears. 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

4.5 hours of new music - it was incredible

When did a listener last describe a piece of new music to you as incredible? I've been filing away responses to my overnight broadcast on Future Radio of Alvin Curran's Inner Cities and thought this typical message was worth posting. Shows that there is an audience for contemporary music - if you can reach it.

Hi, I was listening to the show last night (around 12-1am maybe) and I heard a piece of music which lasted 4.5 hours long, preceded by an on-air phone call with the pianist from Belgium I believe. Could you please give me more information about this piece of music? I thought it was incredible.
Many thanks, TL

Proof that the music hasn't died on every radio station.
The score in my photo of the Future Radio studio isn't by Alvin Curran. But it is by another contemporary composer. Can any reader with supernatural powers tell me who the composer is? Photo (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Variations on the Goldberg Variations

The big bonus of presenting programmes on internet radio is I get to play the music I want to play, not the music that a focus group tells me to play. On Monday afternoon we have a fun programme for New Year's Eve, and as part of it I'm playing a 15 minute sequence from a double CD that's a personal favourite, but that doesn't fit into any conventional programme format.

Jazz pianist Uri Caine's treatment of Bach's Goldberg Variations defies any categorisation and I'll be playing tracks varying from solo piano to full on jazz. It's all part of our Happy New Ear's programme which is on Future Radio from 1.00 to 4.00pm on Monday December 31st, the Goldberg sequence should be on air at around 2.00pm.

Uri Caine's take is just one of several variations on the Goldberg Variations in my CD collection. Least successful is Robin Holloway's 'recomposition' for two pianos titled Gilded Goldbergs on Hyperion, a double CD which takes a long time to add very little, while Jacques Loussier's jazz variations take less time to say little more.

Among my favourite variations on variations are two recordings of Dimitri Sitkovetsky's masterly transcription for strings. One is a limited edition CD recorded in the beautiful Romanesque cathedral in Vaison la Romaine by the Trio de Prague in 2002, while the other is the fine 1993 recording by the NES Chamber Orchestra on Nonesuch which is noteworthy for both its committed performance and the sleeve notes by John Adams. But Uri Caine is up there with the best, listen in at 2.00pm UK time on Monday December 30th if you can.

Read more about Dmitry Sitkovetsky and those John Adams sleeve notes 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

David Munrow tribute on internet radio

Double Grammy winning record producer Christopher Bishop talks about David Munrow on the record on my programme on Future Radio this Sunday (Dec 30) at 5.00pm UK time. The programme includes music from Munrow's first LP for EMI, Two Renaissance Dance Bands, which is seen above and which was produced by Christopher Bishop. Below is a page from Christopher's recording diary, the second entry down is the sessions for another classic David Munrow album, The Art of Courtly Love.

Christopher Bishop worked with many great artists during historic times. Here is an excerpt from Michael Kennedy's 1971 biography of Sir John Barbirolli: 'It was Bishop with whom Barbirolli was working at the Abbey Road Studios on a day at the height of the Beatle's popularity. As John arrived he saw the famous four and their retinue. 'Is that the Fuzzy Wuzzies?' he asked Christopher, 'because we'd better close the door in case they charge.''

Now playing - Renaissance Dance. This new Virgin Veritas double CD brings together two classic David Munrow LPs, Two Renaissance Dance Bands from 1971 (later reissued as Pleasures of the Court) and Praetorius - Dances and Motets from 1973, and adds five bonus tracks from Munrow's last recording, Monteverdi's Contemporaries, from 1975. This is a must for all Munrow enthusiasts, and a perfect introduction to his music for those too young to have grown up with his LPs. Current price on Amazon.co.uk is £5.97 ($12) - unmissable.


Listen on Future Radio at 5.00pm UK time this Sunday, December 30th in real time here. An Overgrown Path podcast will follow. Read more about David Munrow on the record here.
Hear the programme on Future Radio on Sunday December 30 at 5.00pm UK time (convert to local time zones here). 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. With thanks to Future Radio for making the programme possible, and in particular to Dan Nyman editor extraordinaire. Also thanks, again, to James the joiner for the sleeve scans. 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