Summer in the city

Summer has arrived early in Norwich, the sun is blazing, the Festival is in full swing, live music rules, and here are just some of the events we will be enjoying this week:

May 10 - afternoon, open workshop with Sir Colin Davis rehearsing the Chamber Orchestra Anglia in Elgar's First Symphony (free!): evening - Stravinsky project, Britten Sinfonia make the music and Michael Clark Company dance a double bill of music by the master ending with Les Noces sung by New London Chamber Choir.

May 13 - cutting-edge circus performance, live music and video from NoFit State Circus, seen in my header photo.

May 16 - Barcelona Sunset, Catalunyan contemporary dance company Erre Que Erre bring film, live music and dance, includes music by the Beach Boys, Tina Turner and Kraftwerk. YouTube sample here.

May 17 - Jordi Savall & Hesperion XXI in Orient-Occident in the 15th century church of St Peter Mancroft.

And I haven't mentioned the Hilliard Ensemble, King's College Cambridge Choir, Willard White and many more Festival visitors. Can it get any better? - the full Norfolk & Norwich Festival programme is here.

Amid all the excitement don't forget Jacobus de Kerle's Missa Pro Defunctis and James MacMillan Veni, Veni, Emmanuel on Future Radio on Sunday May 11 at 5.00pm UK time and 12.50am May 12.

More summer in the city here.
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Danger - musicians having fun

In their 1951-2 season the Hallé Orchestra perfomed all six of the symphonies Ralph Vaughan Williams had then written. Five of them were conducted by the inimitable John Barbirolli, while No. 1, the Sea Symphony with its Walt Whitman text, was conducted by Vaughan Williams himself. When the symphony was performed in Sheffield with the composer conducting, the orchestra was a 'cello short, and at Vaughan William's request Barbirolli, a talented 'cellist, took the vacant seat.

I was reminded of this story when listening to Jordi Savall and Hesperion XXl's superb new CD Estampies & Danses Royales. The programme of music from the thirteenth century Chansonnier du Roi is for instrumental forces only, so soprano Montserrat Figueras (aka Mrs Savall) wasn't needed for the sessions. But she wasn't going to miss the fun, and there she is on the recording playing the kithara, a rare instrument which featured here recently.

Fun is what this new release is really all about. It is superb music brilliantly played and recorded; but above all there is a quality that seems to be disappearing from recordings and live concerts - the sound of musians having fun. As contemporary composer Kurt Schwertsik said - 'I believe the function of art is to denounce seriousness. It should be fun. There's a halo of awe around modern music. You achieve more if you're not serious'.

Vaughan Williams, Savall, Barbirolli and Schwertsik in one post? - that's what I call fun! And there's more musicians having fun here.
The Kurt Schwersik quote is from the excellent CageTalk (ISBN 9781580462372). 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

It is impossible to live without inner peace

On 11th March 2008 Madrid marked the fourth anniversary of the terrorist bombings (above) that claimed the lives of 191 people and wounded 1,856. It was the biggest terrorist attack in the history of Spain and, indeed, Europe, with 10 simultaneous explosions on four of Madrid’s district trains at the height of the morning rush hour. It happened a few minutes before 8 a.m. Later, the police exploded another two bombs that had failed to go off and a third was defused, leading to the identification of those responsible.

The ceremony of remembrance for those who were killed began at twelve noon in front of the monument inaugurated last year which stands in Plaza de Atocha. It was led by their majesties King Juan Carlos and Queen Sophia, who laid a wreath at the foot of the monument. After a minute’s silence in memory of the victims, there was a rendition of the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s “Da pacem, Domine”, a work commissioned by Jordi Savall for performance at the Barcelona Forum of Cultures in June 2004. Inspired in the Gregorian chant Danos la paz Señor, the piece was composed only two days after the tragic bombings as a tribute to the victims who were honoured at the ceremony of remembrance. Arvo Pärt’s “Da pacem, Domine” will be included in a forthcoming Alia Vox release.

In the words of Raimon Panikkar “It is difficult to live when there is no external peace in the world around us. It is impossible to live without inner peace, if there is no peace in our hearts”. Arvo Pärt’s Da Pacem Domine is a prayer for those whom we have lost, as well as an invocation to peace and hope, the music creating a space of peace, both in the world around us and in our hearts.

'For Inner and Outer Peace' is the title of an important book by another great musical humanitarian, Antal Dorati. It was published by International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), but is out of print. All this ... and what for?

Story source Alia Vox. 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

Happiness is ...

More on Stimmung here and Jordi Savall here.
Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Music of the Sephardic Jews on Future Radio

I find myself returning again and again to Diáspora Sefardí, Jordi Savaal’s anthology of Eastern Sephardic music and this Sunday, March 9, I will be sharing this wonderful music with Future Radio listeners. Migration, survival and assimilation are all too familiar themes today, and it is worth retelling the story of the Sephardic Jews to remind us that culture is still more resilient than politics.


During Roman times large numbers of Jews migrated into the Iberian peninsula of their own free, and their numbers were increased by Jewish slaves who were shipped into the region during the Diaspora following the defeat of Judea in the first century BC. In the fifth century Iberia came under Visigoth rule, and the conversion of the Visigoth royal family from Arianism to Catholicism brought the first persecution of Jews.


The Muslim invasion of southern Iberia in the eighth century was welcomed by the Jews, and the two centuries of Muslim rule are seen as the golden age of Sephardic Jewry. During this period Arabic culture had a major impact on the Sephardic community with Arabic being used as the principal language for Sephardic science, philosophy and everyday business. This golden age was nurtured by Abd al-Rahman III (882-942) who was the first independent Caliph of Cordoba, and the city became an important centre for Sephardic Jews.


In 1492 the Christian Reconquista of the Muslim and Moorish states of Al-Ándalus was completed when Granada fell to Ferdinand and Isabella, Los Reyes Católicos (The Catholic Monarchs). The same year the Jews were expelled from Spain by royal edict, and in 1497 they were also driven out of Portugal. Following their expulsion the Jews settled in north Africa, France and Italy. Initially Sephardic culture assimilated influences from the Arab culture of north Africa, from the Turks, Greeks, Bulgarians, Rumainians and Serbocroats and Bosnians. In more modern times Sephardic immigrants settled in other parts of Europe including the Low Countries, North and South America, and of course Israel.


The term Sephardic comes from standard Hebrew, and in modern Hebrew the term still means ‘Spain’. In Israel today the word Sephardic is used for any Jew who not in the main Ashkenazi grouping which originated from Germany, Poland, Austria and Eastern Europe. This means Sephardic includes Jews from Arabic and Persian backgrounds who may not be migrants from Iberia, but who use the Sephardic style of liturgy. As my illustrations show the Sephardic legacy is considerable, and notable Sephardic Jews (defined as having at least one Sephardic parent) include Maurice Abravanel, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Benjamin Disraeli, Hélène Grimaud, Otto Klemperer, Rosa Luxemburg, Darius Milhaud, Amedeo Modigliani, Murray Perahia, Charles and Maurice Saatchi, Baruch Spinoza, Diego Velázquez, Alexander von Zemlinsky and Cécilia Ciganer-Albéniz - aka the second Mrs Nicolas Sarkozy.


Diáspora Sefardí is a double CD of songs, ballads and instrumental music from the eastern Sephardic communities. The music is a real revelation, reflecting diverse influences including its medieval Hispanic origins, the Ottoman style, and the folk music of the Balkans. Jordi Savaal and Hespèrion XXI play on authentic ethnic instruments, and the charismatic Montserrat Figueras sings. The recording was made in 1999 in the Castillo de Cardona, Cataluna, and the sound captured by producer Nicolas Bartholomée is quite outstanding. I will be playing music from Diáspora Sefardí on my Future Radio programme at 5.00pm on Sunday March 9 repeated at 12.50am on March 10. The coupling is a new recording of Lou Harrison's Concerto for Violin with Percussion Orchestra.


Illustrations from the excellent University of California, Irvine Sephardic culture website. Now read about another lost people.
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. 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

Some of the best cover art ever

'Some of the best cover art ever was on the EMI Reflexe series' - said David Cavlovic. I'll second that David, and what a fabulous series Gerd Berg's Reflexe was from EMI Electrola in Germany in the 1970s. There were LPs from Thomas Binkley and his Studio der Frühen Musik (cover art above), The Hilliard Ensemble, Hans-Martin Linde and his Linde-Consort, Michel Piguet and the Ricercare-Ensemble für alte Musik, Zurich and, of course, Jordi Savall and his Hespèrion XX Ensemble with their early recordings. More history of the Reflexe series here.

As I have said before, a picture is worth a thousand words.
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

Free music - so what's new?

'Music industry finds the solution to its pirate troubles - give everything away' - screams a Guardian headline. Sorry folks, but the classical sector has been giving away music for years. Here from my current Visa bill are the prices I paid for CDs online recently including delivery: Messiaen Des canyons aux étoiles (2CDs) - £4.00, Dallapiccola choral works - £3.41, Stockhausen piano works - £4.22, Elgar Dream of Gerontius (2CDs) - £5.67.

It actually gets worse in the stores. Just last week I bought 10CDs of Thomas Tallis' complete works in recordings made as recently as 2004 for £3 a CD, and that wasn't discounted. In HMV stores you can currently pick up 14CDs of the complete Mahler symphonies by classical music's premium brands, Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic, for £1.79 a disc. That means a Mahler CD from our industry's most prestigous band now costs less than a cappuccino, and it's not expanding the market for classical music or filling concert halls at all.

So with prices already at rock-bottom what will be the impact of free downloads from Qtrax and others? Classical music will become just another disposable commodity. Download it, give it a quick listen, it doesn't appeal on first hearing? No problem, delete it and try again. Contemporary composers had better start thinking catchy, and record companies (if any survive) had better start thinking instant gratification.

Benjamin Britten had it nailed when he wrote 'Music demands more from a listener than simply the possession of a tape-machine or a transistor radio. It demands some preparation, some effort, a journey to a special place, saving up for a ticket, some homework on the programme perhaps, some clarification of the ears and sharpening of the instincts. It demands as much effort on the listener's part as the other two corners of the triangle, this holy composer, performer and listener'

So what does a dead composer (European to boot) know about today's market with its MP3s and iTunes? The answer is a lot. Britten wasn't just a composer, he was a musical polymath whose vision created one of the few successful, and growing, classical music communities in the world. Last year Aldeburgh Music sold 91,000 tickets. I wonder how many bargain basement Berlin Philharmonic Mahler boxes EMI has sold in the UK - 5000 perhaps? The solution for the music industry isn't to give everything away. It's the opposite. Think added value, think Glossa, think Soli deo Gloria, but above all think Alia Vox.

Now playing is Jordi Savall's newly released Francisco Javier 1506-1553, the Route to the Orient on Alia Vox. Yes, it comes with 2CDs of lovingly researched and performed music, but there is much more in the form of a 273 page colour book (cover above) which is a work of art in itself. In it there are fascinating and scholarly articles ranging from early music performance, to Erasmus of Rotterdam, Niccolo Machiavelli, Thomas More, and Martin Luther, as well as Francisco Xavier, who was an early Jesuit missionary, himself. And the whole package is worth far more than the sum of the parts. I paid £30 for it in Prelude Records in Norwich, and that is the best £30 I have spent on recorded music for a long time. I didn't get two CDs for my money, I got a unique musical experience. And that is what will rejuvenate the market, not giveaways.

Britten would have approved. The Route to the Orient is about as far from instant gratification as you can go. It demands preparation by reading the book, and it also demands effort to understand the non-Western music that it explores. You must leave your computer and take a journey to a special place called an independent record store to buy it, and you will also need to save up as it is not available online at a discount or as a download. The thoughtfully planned multi-cultural programme needs to be understood, and clarification of the ears and sharpening of the instincts are definitely needed for close encounters with instruments such as the shinobue, nokan, sarod and shakuhachi.

Are added value projects like Francisco Javier, the Route to the Orient and Christopher Columbus, Lost Paradises (below) the future of classical music? Or are they just small ripples in a big pond? Only time will tell. But I haven't heard Alia Vox talking about mass redundancies, and their 2008 release schedule looks pretty healthy. Which is more than can be said for EMI.


It was Philip Glass who said world music is the new classical.
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Honey I shrunk the soloist

Youth was the musical 'must have' in 2007. Could marriage be the musical 'must have' in 2008? My favourite Christmas disc this year was Ton Koopman playing Christmas Carols on the baroque Van Peteghem organ in St. Martinuskerk, Haringe, Belgium. Wonderful music from Sweelink, Buxtehude, Bull and Bach, wonderful playing by Koopman on the 1778 organ, with wonderful sound from producer Tini Mathot, who just happens to be Mrs Koopman, and the CD really is a family affair as it is released on Koopman's own Antoine Marchand record label. Tini Mathot is a distinguished keyboard player in her own right, and she is seen above playing alongside her husband. I last heard them together several years ago playing the Art of Fugue on two harpsichords ago in the peerless acoustics of St George's Brandon Hill, Bristol.

Tini Mathot and Ton Koopman are the latest in a distinguished line of couples who have worked together as performers and producers. There are Isabella de Sabata and John Eliot Gardiner at Soli deo Gloria, and Montserrat Figueras and Jordi Savall at Alia Vox (photo below), like Mathot and Koopman both couples work in the early music field, what is it about gut strings? They were preceeded by Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge, and of course Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Walter Legge. Reminders of other husband and wife performer and production teams please. And yes, I know about Joyce Hatto and William Barrington-Coupe, while Carla Bruni and Nicolas Sarkozy don't count, even if the bling-bling President's son is a hip hop producer.


Judging by the number of mentions in recent weeks Belgium is the 'must have' country for 2008. Check out these links, and we are off there next month for John Cage, Morton Feldman et al.
Photo credit Trigonale early music festival. 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