The BBC Proms - a sad history

Overgrown Path has been saying it for years - BBC Proms - a multicultural society?, BBC Proms 2006 lacks eternal feminine, Music gets in the way of running BBC Proms, and BBC Proms last night - I flee the country.

Now other people are saying it - Hodge attacks Proms: they're narrow and lack the common British values: The culture minister, Margaret Hodge, will today criticise the Prom concerts as one of many British cultural events that fail to engender new common values or attract more than a narrow unrepresentative audience.

At last people are finally waking up to the fact that the BBC Proms in their present form are outdated, irrelevant and unworthy of the BBC's marketing hype as 'the world's greatest music festival'. But government intervention will only make the situation worse, unless the cause of the problem is tackled.

History is the key to understanding the present problems. The first Promenade Concert took place in 1895, and it was twenty-seven years later that the BBC became involved and broadcast the first concert. In 1945, exactly fifty years after the first Prom, the BBC took over as sole managers. The 1970s and 1980s were an Indian summer for the Proms with William Glock, Robert Ponsonby and John Drummond in charge, Pierre Boulez and Bruno Maderna were on the podium and The Soft Machine, Imrat Kahn, and David Munrow on stage.

The problems started in John Drummond's reign and the writing was on the wall in 1990 when Last Night conductor Mark Elder was replaced at the last minute due to his dissenting views on the Gulf War. (It is interesting that Elder's reputation has grown has grown since then, while that of the Proms has declined). In 1996 Nicholas Kenyon succeeded Drummond as Proms director, starting a period when the broad music vision pioneered by Willliam Glock and others was subordinated to the marketing plans and ratings measurements of the post-John Birt BBC.

To sum up Kenyon's twelve years as Proms director, which earned him a knighthood and another top job in the music establishment, I need only repeat my prophetic words written in February 2007 - His tenure at the Proms has been marked by unimaginative planning which totally failed to reflect the diversity of today's contemporary music, and his programming repeatedly backed personal hobbyhorses at the expense of important voices.

The Proms will only start to reflect a broad musical and cultural vision when the stranglehold of BBC Radio 3 is broken. The joint position of Radio 3 controller and Proms director dates from the end of the Indian Summer in 1987 when John Drummond was appointed to both positions. Like Nicholas Kenyon, his successor Roger Wright now holds both positions. The joint responsibilities create a disastrous conflict of interests in which the 'day job' of network controller invariably takes precedence over the concerts. So everything else is subservient to the broadcast schedule, including the music and timings.

To start the rejuvenation of the Proms the positions of Proms director and Radio 3 controller must be separated and 'Chinese walls' built between the broadcasts and the concerts. Birtian internal cross-charging should be instigated, with the Proms cost centre charged for the million of pounds of free BBC Radio 3 promotion it benefits from. This free promotional air time makes it very difficult to promote competitive, and broader, festivals in London during the Proms season. Can anyone really support a position where the BBC control the concerts, the promotional medium, the resident orchestra, the radio and TV coverage, the new music commissioning budget and more?

That word more is an interesting one. With a few exceptions a government minister and a music blog have been the sole critics of the Proms' tunnel vision. Margaret Hodge's criticism is reported in the Guardian; surely that bastion of liberal journalism would be one of the concert series' most vocal critics? Well, the Guardian's chief music critic Tom Service is high profile and a smart guy. But he is also a BBC Radio 3 presenter, writes for BBC Music Magazine and contributed a chapter to the book seen in my header image. The Proms - A New History is a recent publication and the consultant editor is none other than Nicholas Kenyon.

And yes, I've been an enthusiastic Promenader from the 1970s to the present day and I'm even linked from the BBC Proms website.
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Here's another bottle of third-pressing Mahler

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

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

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

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

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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.
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There's no such thing as the music audience

There's no such thing as 'the music audience'. They like the organ, or they like chamber music, or they like symphony concerts, or they like opera, or the nineteenth century, or new music. But they don't like each other. There is a mass of different audiences. So any (radio) schedule you put together is going to displease more people than it pleases. - said former BBC Proms director and BBC Radio 3 controller John Drummond.

Will a 'long tail' of Bach orchestrated by Webern and au naturelle, and Boulez displease more people than it pleases? Listen here at 5.00pm British Summer Time this afternoon (August 19). And now read John Drummond describing how Simon Rattle, literally, revived a great contemporary composer.
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More about style than intellectual substance

"A lively era comes to an end this summer, when Nicholas Kenyon presides over his tenth and last BBC Proms season before going off to become the managing director of the Barbican. It’s spooky that his tenure has more or less coincided with Tony Blair’s as Prime Minister, because their regimes have been quite similar. Like Blair’s New Labour, Kenyon has promoted a “big tent” policy at the Proms: strong on diversity, inclusiveness and impact. And, like Blair, he has sometimes been accused of caring more about style and presentation than intellectual substance.

"It’s undeniable that Kenyon’s decade hasn’t been as notable for avant-garde shocks or bold commissions as, say, William Glock’s Prom seasons in the 1960s were. When, as an impressionable youth, I attended the bloodcurdling Proms premiere of Peter Maxwell Davies’s Worldes Blisin 1969, I watched with astonishment as hundreds of outraged punters stampeded for the exits. Similarly, when John Drummond, Kenyon’s predecessor, provocatively programmed Harrison Birtwistle’s Panic on the Last Night in 1995 – knowing full well that it would be televised on BBC One at peak time on a Saturday evening – the BBC switchboard was jammed with calls from appalled viewers.

"Nothing in Kenyon’s era has caused such a furore – not even his faux pas of concocting an entire season last year without including a single woman composer or conductor. He is too silky-smooth an operator, and perhaps too emollient a personality; he doesn’t get a buzz from ruffling feathers.

Richard Morrison tells it like it is in this extract from The Times, although hasn't Nicholas Kenyon been director of the BBC Proms for twelve seasons, not ten? For more on those William Glock Proms, and also on a composer you won't find in the 2007 season, take this path.
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Soli Deo Gardiner

The BBC Proms welcomes Sir John Eliot Gardiner on Sunday. Or do they? Former Proms director and BBC Controller of Music, the late John Drummond, takes up the story:

" John Eliot Gardiner (left) had a strong personal following. For me, both Roger Norrington and Nikolaus Harnoncourt were much more impressive conductors, but Gardiner’s Monteverdi Choir Prom would usually sell out and give us our annual chance to have a falling out with Gardiner himself, whose lofty attitude to colleagues and the BBC did not endear. One year he proposed Gluck’s Orfeo. I took it largely to obtain the Proms debut of the American soprano Sylvia McNair, whom I had much admired since hearing her at St Louis. She made a dramatic entrance at the top of the side stairs, dressed in a brilliant lemon-yellow dress. Slowly descending the staircase, she reached the stage for her entrance aria. At this moment, Gardiner stopped the orchestra and retuned. I was furious: it was so grotesquely offensive and unmusical. When I went round to commiserate with Sylvia, she told me he had done it at every one of the preceding performances.

One year Gardiner persuaded me to accept a performance of the Bach B minor Mass without soloists, using members of his own excellent Monteverdi Choir for the solos. Much as I admired the choir, I was not entirely sure that individual members could carry such major parts in such a big building. However, I need not have worried. Without reference to the Proms office or any regard for the financial implications, Gardiner changed his mind and booked a roster of five distinguished soloists which cost me thousands. He was quite unapologetic, and I was considered impertinent to have questioned his judgement. His judgement was probably correct; his manner of achieving it was unacceptable.

Gardiner’s extraordinary arrogance was admirably demonstrated at a Gramophone magazine awards ceremony when, claiming he had to get back to Paris for rehearsals, he insisted that his award should be presented separately and before the celebratory lunch. He was nevertheless still in his place at table when the ceremony ended some three hours later."

As told by John Drummond's in his autobiography Tainted By Experience (Faber ISBN 0571200540).

Now playing – Haydn’s The Creation, with John Eliot Gardiner conducting the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque soloists. He may be ‘extraordinarily arrogant’ but Gardiner can make some extraordinarily moving music. This recording won Gramophone and CD Compact (Barcelona) awards when it was released in 1997. It was recorded in All Saints Church, Tooting by producer Karl-August Naegler and Tonmeister Rainer Maillard. The performance is superb, and the sound is also superb. It has recently been re-released in Archiv’s new Grand Prix mid-price series and is highly recommended. John Eliot Gardiner went on to have a spectacular bust-up with Deutsche Grammophon, a split which resulted in the creation of his own label Soli Deo Gloria. It seems tantrums are written into the score in the early music world. As John Drummond recalls Sylvia McNair may have found Gardiner’s treatment of her in Orfeo “grotesquely offensive and unmusical”. But she went on to sing the role of Gabriel in his recording of The Creation.

Now read John Drummond on another high profile maestro.
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You are looking at the future of radio

Xfm, a UK alternative music station broadcasting in London, Scotland and Manchester to an audience of more than one million, is axing its daytime presenters in a radical move to a computerised playlist decided by listeners. The six-hour DJ-free "all music" daytime schedule is being marketed as "Radio to the Power of U", and will play songs programmed by listeners via text, phone and the Xfm website.

Human presenters are the latest casualty of the inexorable rise of the computerised playlist, and it is a trend that is affecting classical broadcasting as well as rock. In the UK computerised playlists were pioneered for classical stations by Classic FM who use GSelector playlist software originally developed for rock stations, and seen in my header image. The working of this software was described in a 1988 copyright court action:

"A detailed categorisation of each track of music in [Classic FM's] library fed as a data base into Selector enabled Selector to select the individual track for any hour of the day in accordance with any choice of programme made by reference to a combination of categories by a programme director. The particular advantage of the Selector system was that it enabled [Classic FM] to provide a balanced rotation of music, composers and performers and to reflect in the frequency of choice of track and in the choice of time when it was played its popularity and mood, and to avoid repetition or the personal preference of the presenter influencing the selection of the music played on the air." (Robin Ray v Classic FM Plc [1998] FSR 622)

Classic FM's use of the computerised playlist has been devastatingly successful in the ratings war. In the first three months of 2007 Classic FM reached an audience of 6.03m listeners, up from 5.71m the previous year, while during the same period BBC Radio 3's audience dropped below the important 2.0 million threshold, declining from 2.1m to 1.9m (source Rajar via BBC).

Ratings, and not quality, are now the primary focus of BBC management, and the success of Classic FM has been the driver for successive changes in Radio 3 in recent years. One of many knee-jerk reactions was the recruitment of Classic FM presenter Petroc Trelawny who has contributed to the BBC station's 9.5% audience decline by alienating most of Radio 3's core audience with his folky presentation style. Trelawny has been joined by a swathe of similar primetime presenters such as Sara Mohr-Pietsch and Sean Rafferty (photo below) whose role is simply to provide the aural laxative that maintains the flow of ratings-friendly programmes.


Radio 3's attempts to counter Classic FM have become increasingly desperate, ranging from 24/7 'Diana moments' such as the Beethoven Experience and Bach Christmas to giving away unrestricted downloads of complete symphonies to the horror of the music industry. But as the ratings show none of these worked, and the biggest blow to the BBC has been that its massive investment in new technology has failed to translate into increased audiences. As reported here the BBC Trust recently blocked on-demand replaying of classical music, and questions are now being asked about the lack of return on the BBC's massive investment in new technologies .

The core problem is that the Radio 3 can't do ratings, and now very rarely does great radio. The ratings war is lost because Classic FM is a commercial station and can do ratings better than a public broadcaster. To do great radio you need to be distinctive, inclusive and personal, and Radio 3's strategy of chasing down Classic FM means it has lost its distinctiveness. Its bland ratings-driven schedules have no place for diverse music so it is no longer inclusive, and the challenging output created by visionary personalities such as William Glock and John Drummond has been replaced by ratings-chasing mediocrity devised by BBC apparatchik's such as Roger Wright and Nicholas Kenyon.

All this doomsaying about BBC Radio 3 gives me no pleasure at all. I once worked for the BBC, and Radio 3 and the Proms were a central part of my music education. Radio 3 can still do great radio, and I have praised here the work of Michael Berkeley and Iain Burnside and others, and this week there are live evening concerts from the Bath Festival including a recital by oud virtuoso Dhafer Youssef - albeit presented by the ubiquitous and egregious Petroc Trelawny.

But Radio 3 is now between a rock and a hard place. Classic FM is the rock against which ratings are judged, and new media is emerging as a hardplace on the other side of the network. The BBC bet the farm on new technology and lost. But the very new media which the BBC failed to leverage may well be the undoing of its classical music network. Webcasting, podcasting and the new third-tier of low power community stations in the UK will bring a new generation of boutique broadcasters that can ignore ratings and focus on being distinctive, inclusive and personal. Where does that then leave Radio 3?

* A great example of the new wave of boutique radio is Amsterdam based Radio MonaLisa, which I have written about previously. Each Thursday from 6.00 to 7.00pm Central European time presenter Patricia Werner Leanse proves that radio can be distinctive, inclusive and personal. Tomorrow (May 24) she broadcasts sixty minutes of vocal music from a composer featured here recently, Elisabeth Lutyens. On May 31 Patricia showcases Out of the Dark (1998) by Texan born Pauline Oliveros, who has already made one appearance on the path this week. Follow this link for Radio Monalisa. Across the Atlantic San Francisco based Other Minds also does great boutique radio via radiOM.org, their current podcasts include John Cage and David Tudor in concert in 1965, and Stravinsky in rehearsal in 1947.


Now read about what happens when BBC Radio 3 gets it right
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Simon Rattle revives contemporary composer

"There was also the Proms reappearance of very old man: Berthold Goldschmidt (left), ninety that year. Simon Rattle, who had championed Goldschmidt’s music in Birmingham, was keen to conduct something of his in the Proms. Goldschmidt’s life was being much written about: how he had shown brilliant promise in pre-Hitler Germany but had much later been forced to leave, and how after successful years in Britain, including conducting the first performance of Deryck Cooke’s version of Mahler’s Tenth in 1964, he and his music had faded from view. I found it very hard to evaluate Goldschmidt’s music: it had obviously seemed remarkable in the 1920s and ‘30s, but struck me as less so after sixty years.

The work Rattle chose, the Ciaconna Sinfonia, had a triumphant reception, as if the audience wanted to compensate for years of neglect by refusing to let the composer leave the platform, and Goldschmidt really revelled in the applause. We gave him dinner afterwards in a nearby restaurant, during which he became seriously unwell and eventually slumped forward apparently dead. It was a dreadful moment. Simon Rattle stood behind him and felt for a pulse. I rushed about phoning ambulances and looking for a doctor. By the time the ambulance arrived Goldschmidt was sitting up chatting, quite unaware of the panic he had caused. ‘It’s rather hot isn’t it?’ he said.

He went home in a taxi, accompanied by a charming young woman, as if nothing had happened. At his ninetieth birthday party his publisher, Anthony Fell of Boosey & Hawkes, said it was marvellous that Goldschmidt was not bitter at his roller coaster of a life. In reply, Goldschmidt said, ’Bitterness is a question of taste.’ I am glad he lived long enough to hear his music performed again and to return to Germany and be feted everywhere, but I am still not sure how good the music is."

John Drummond recalls the revival in 1993 of a 20th century composer in his autobiography Tainted By Experience.

Now playing – Berthold Goldschmidt’s Ciaconna Sinfonia, with Simon Rattle conducting the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. You can judge yourself how good Goldschmidt’s music is by listening to The Goldschmidt Album. This 1996 Decca CD features the composer’s music conducted by Simon Rattle, Yakov Kreizberg, and Goldschmidt himself. Rattle was so keen to champion Goldschmidt’s music that he persuaded EMI to release him from his exclusive contract to record his 20 minute contribution to the album.

The CD was an early release in a Decca series Entartete Musik (Degenerate music) featuring works suppressed by the Third Reich. The first release in the much hyped series was the opera Jonny spielt auf which I wrote about recently. Its composer Ernst Krenek studied with Franz Schreker, as did Berthold Goldschmidt. But more than ten years later the Decca website only lists four titles in the series, and neither The Goldschmidt Album nor Jonny spielt auf are among them, although the Goldschmidt CD is available from Amazon resellers. Once again Entartete Musik has been suppressed, but this time by the corporate planners within Decca’s parent Universal Music.

Now read about another forgotten victim of fascism
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Music’s unmerry widows

Recent reports that Sergei Rachmaninov's great-great-grandson is a control freak will come as no surprise to anyone who has read John Drummond's autobiography - it seems to run in the family.

John Culshaw’s first foray into music, not long after leaving the RAF in the late 1940s, had been to write a very short book on Rachmaninov – at that time a deeply unfashionable figure, very little of whose music was played. The book was a triumph over the unavailability of material, and when the typescript was completed Culshaw went to see the composer’s widow in Switzerland. Ferried across Lake Lausanne in a private launch by a liveried servant, he was graciously received and asked to come back a week later, when Madame Rachmaninov would have read the typescript. Limited to twenty-five pounds ($48) in foreign currency, Culshaw had to explain that he could not wait that long. Grudgingly, Madame Rachmaninov agreed to a shorter time.

When he returned, he was told to wait in the hall. Shortly afterwards she appeared holding the typescript in an outstretched hand before dropping it on the floor. ’I have spoken to my lawyers in New York, Paris and London’, was her only comment. Yet the book is entirely favourable. It is one of the many examples of the disastrous influence of some composer’s widows - Die Unlustigen Witwen, as Boulez calls them – ‘The Unmerry Widows’. He has had to cope with Frau Schoenberg, Frau Mahler and worst of all Frau Berg, who for forty years spoke daily with Alban’s spirit and blocked the completion of Lulu.

Now read more about Rachmaninov’s music here.
Extract above from John Drummond's autobiography Tainted by Experience (Faber, ISBN 0571200540). Graphic sampled from an original by Jeff Ostrowski. 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

Alban Berg - you can't call that music

Today's big art story is that Prince Charles is joining great 20th century artists Joan Miró, Marc Chagall, Wassily Kandinsky, Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, and Francis Bacon as the designer of a label for a Château Mouton Rothschild wine vintage. You can view their labels by opening those preceeding artist links, the Royal artwork is above, and Charles' label for the 2004 vintage is here. This story would really have made the late John Drummond laugh, as the following anecdote explains:

I have always found the Prince's lack of interest in anything to do with the arts in our time depressing, since all his opinions get so widely reported. It seems to me that he has had unrivalled opportunities to get to understand the twentieth century, but he has rejected it without hesitation. Both Denys Lasdun and Colin St John Wilson of the British Library, found work hard to get in the UK in the aftermath of the Prince's criticisms.

I cannot believe it is a proper use of royal patronage to increase unemployment among architects. And it is the same with music. Having listened together at a Bath Festival concert to a superb performance of Alban Berg's String Quartet, written in 1910, the Prince turned to me and said, 'Well you can't call that music, but I suppose you would John.' 'And so should you, sir,' I repled defiantly. We had quite an argument, and later that evening he told our host that he liked me but unfortunately I was wrong about everything.

* View all the Chateau Mouton Rothschild labels here.

For more on the Royal taste in music read That's Harrison Birtwistle, - quick, let's hide.
Extract from John Drummond's autobiography Tainted by Experience, published by Faber, ISBN 0571200540. 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

W.H. Auden holding court ...

Another chance encounter with a writer was due to my friend Julian Pettifer, who was at St John’s (Cambridge). He said there would be a special guest in his rooms that evening, and asked me to drop in late for coffee. I climbed in and found to my delight the rumpled figure of W.H. Auden holding court. He was relatively sober and hugely entertaining, and I could see immediately why so many people found him charming. In later years he became a prize bore when drunk, which was most of the time, going on endlessly about who had sung the Third Lady in The Magic Flute in 1952. Happily, before that I was with him on a number of occasions when he was reading his own works, at which he excelled.

Once in Edinburgh, after a BBC recording, we went to the pub to have a drink with Stevie Smith at her eccentric best. Within twenty minutes Wystan and Stevie had started on a nostalgic journey through Hymns Ancient and Modern at a hideously out-of-tune piano. I rushed back to the BBC, rounded up a camera crew, and got back in time to film a few minutes of this priceless duet. It is often trotted out in commemorative programmes. Of course, in today’s BBC you would have to have it planned eighteen months in advance.

W.H. Auden was born on 21st February 1907. The story above is taken from John Drummond’s autobiography. Now take An Overgrown Path to Monteverdi in Cambridge

John Drummond's autobiography Tainted by Experience is published by Faber, ISBN 0571200540. 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

Encore Lenny!

My recent Bernstein story clearly struck some chords. So here, by popular demand, is another Lenny snapshot from John Drummond’s autobiography.

Bernstein made his first appearance at the Proms in 1987, with the Vienna Philharmonic. It was a very successful concert, with a memorable performance of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, and he was on his best behaviour, as he usually was with the Vienna Philharmonic, who, despite their legendary anti-Semitism, liked him very much. Backstage afterwards, he was full of praise for the audience, especially for the attention and stillness of the promenaders. He explained to me, as if to a slightly backward child, that nobody knew about the Proms. He would make it his ambition to tell the world. So we looked for further possibilities of collaboration.

The following year he was scheduled to conduct the youth orchestra specially formed for the newly established Schleswig-Holstein Festival, an initiative of the German pianist Justus Frantz, who had gone out of his way to befriend Bernstein. Negotiations were carried out through Bernstein’s manager, an inscrutable American called Harry Kraut, distinguished by one of those bizarre Abraham Lincoln beards that cover only the jawline. Kraut said – and Jacky Guter, who was with me, can confirm this – that Bernstein would do a concert in the Proms with the Schleswig-Holstein Orchestra either free, out of enthusiasm for them and for the Proms, or, at the very worst, for a special low fee. Kraut has always denied that this exchange took place.

The administration of the orchestra proved totally incompetent. Despite warnings from us, they failed to sort out work permits for the non-EEC players, and two days before the concert Frantz (photo below) was ringing up none other than the German Foreign Minister to sort out the mess. The van with the instruments and the orchestral parts arrived in London the day before the concert, but was unable to find the Albert Hall; most of the rehearsal on the day of the concert was lost because of its late arrival. In the first half of the programme, three young conductors from the summer course were to conduct short pieces. They got no rehearsal at all, because the second half - which was to be televised – consisted of Bernstein’s own song cycle Songspiel. The evening came, and by 7.25 there was no sign of Bernstein. He showed up at 7.28 and was obviously under the influence of some substance or other. He could not be persuaded to get ready to go on. Jacky said, ‘We’re live on the radio in two minutes.’ ‘Who gives a fvck about radio?’ said Bernstein. ‘Well, we do – and they are, after all, paying your fee,’ said Jacky – a reference to the fact that we had in the end been forced to pay something approaching Bernstein’s normal rate.

Grossly unfair to all the young conductors, Bernstein took all the limelight. And when afterwards a considerable number of people were invited back to the Savoy for supper, he kept the company waiting for over an hour and a half. I was tired and wanted to go home. Humphrey Burton and his wife begged me not to. When Bernstein finally arrived, and we were seated at several tables in a private room, I found myself with Bernstein at a table with a lot of women whom I did not know. Bernstein started telling a string of really disgusting stories, full of four-letter words and sexual references. After a while, I protested. Bernstein turned to me and said, ‘What’s the matter with you, you dreary old queen?’ The project to tell the world about the Proms came to an unhappy end.

But, read about Bernstein’s musical genius in Critical Mass.
John Drummond's Tainted by Experience is published by Faber, ISBN 0571200540. Header image credit 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

Leonard Bernstein - the hoarse whisperer

There are currently lots of exciting things happening on the English contemporary music scene, although you wouldn't think so from the lugubrious article in today's New York Times. It just goes to show that, despite George W Bush and Tony Blairs 'special relationship', there is still a yawning gap between England and America. It is all summed up in this priceless anectdote from John Drummond's very English autobiography:

I met Bernstein occasionally over the years, especially after I became friendly with the management of the New York Philharmonic. I would go to their concerts in New York, and several times my visits coincided with Bernstein's appearances. One evening he conducted a whole programme of music by living composers, all of whom were present: Roger Sessions, Ned Rorem and William Schuman. Halfway through Rorem's piece - a song cycle - Bernstein started coughing and left the platform. We sat in embarrrassed silence while his hacking could be heard off-stage. Afterwards I went round to see him and found a huge group in the Green Room, most of whom were in tears of emotional commiseration. Bernstein wept his way slowly through the crowd, kissing, sobbing and acknowledging the cries of 'You're the greatest', led by the unlikely pairing of Billy Rose, the band leader, and Isaac Stern. It was America at its most flesh-crawling.

Now read about my own encounter with a naked Lennie.
John Drummond's Tainted by Experience is published by Faber, ISBN 0571200540. 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

The arts are about controversy

The danger of all arts broadcasting is that everything is treated as equally important, with a permanent mood of celebration. No one on BBC Radio 3 ever says that some composers are second rate, or that some writing is vapid and some poetry gobbledegook: everything is presented with equal reverence, as if it all had profound importance. You would never believe from listening to Radio 3 that the arts are as much about controversy as about achievement. When I began as Controller there were very few lighter moments on the network, and far too many dull hobby-horses being ridden. The Music Department was particularly susceptible to that favourite feature of the gramophone industry, 'the complete works' - all the quartets, all the sonatas, or whatever. Anniversaries were relentlessly celebrated ...

John Drummond recalls his time as Controller of BBC Radio 3 in the 1980s i