Weak at the knees over this gig

28 January - a legend - concert room 7.30 - a legend
Paolo Pandolfo viola da gamba
A legend. I've had members of the public weak at the knees over this gig. You won't have heard of him as you are music students but don't let that or good natured sarcasm stop you from coming. FREE FREE FREE for MUS students

That's what the University of East Anglia School of Music internal flyer said, and for once the hyperbole was justified. Like his viol da gamba teacher Jordi Savall, Paolo Pandolfo is a legend. Pandolfo's concert last night, with its seamless transitions between the 17th and 21st centuries, confirmed his status. The evening was crowned by one of the pinnacles of classical musiuc, Bach's Fifth Cello Suite in a transcription for viol, after revelatory interpretations of music by Tobias Hume, Le Sieur de St. Colombe, Marin Marais and Pandolfo himself. The music students may not have heard of Pandolfo, but there was standing room only with the widest range of ages that I have seen at a concert since last summer's Faster Than Sound.

My photo above captures some of the magic of the evening, and there is more magic in the brutalist 1960s architecture of the UEA music room in which it was taken. Paul Hillier's first recording of Stockhausen's Stimmung, made for Hyperion with Singcircle, was recorded there in 1983. Which may explain the interesting similarities between my header photo and Richard Friedman's 1971 shot used in my recent Stimmung post, and no comments, please, that we were both struggling with available light.

Paolo Pandolfo is one of a a disappearing breed - a musician with views on more than his next recording contract and music directorship. Read about them in Baghdad's Spring.
Photo (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Festival of light marks collapse of communism

Today, November 9, is the Hindu festival of Diwali. This is the "Festival of Light," when lamps are used to signify the victory of good over evil. At midnight on November 9 1989 good was victorious over evil in Europe, and East Germany's communist rulers opened the gates along the Berlin Wall after hundreds of people converged on crossing points.

The header photo was taken by me outside the Nicolai Church in Leipzig. It was here that a candle-lit vigil on October 9 1989 precipitated Die Wende. This was the peaceful revolution that brought down the East German communist regime, breached the Berlin Wall and redrew the political map of Europe. The Nicolai Church was also the venue for another great triumph of good over evil, the first performance of Bach's St John Passion in 1723.

Now playing - Olivier Messiaen's Turangalîla Symphony (Chailly, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Decca 4366262). Light was important to Messiaen (left), and he described his Catholic faith as a 'theological rainbow'. His music was influenced by Hindu rhythms, and the title of the epic, and erotic, Turangalîla Symphony is a compound of two Sanskrit words. These can be broadly translated as 'rhythms of life and love'. Elsewhere David Derrick has written 'conscious musical syntheses of East and West tend to fail'. But Turangalîla certainly doesn't fail, and that's because Messiaen truly defined the over-used word genius.

More on Wende and Nicolai Church here, and a world exclusive picture of the Berlin Wall here. See post-Wende Berlin here.
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Karl Amadeus Hartmann on demand

Much interest in the recent Britten Sinfonia concerts directed by Alina Ibragimova which I wrote about here and here. The programme included the first performance of a Tansy Davies Bach orchestration, Karl Amadeus Hartmann's Concerto Funèbre, and Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht. Hartmann is seen in my header photo (credit Wikipedia).

Listen to the concert on demand on BBC Radio 3 until Nov 9 via this link, including a short interview with Alina Ibragimova.

And some thoughts on recording Schoenberg here.
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Roll over Benjamin Britten

London doesn't have a monopoly on Promenade concerts. My photograph shows the young audience bouncing to Konono No. 1 at last night's Snape Prom on the very floor where Benjamin Britten stood to record Bach's St John Passion. Every year the front rows of seats are taken out of Snape Maltings for Aldeburgh's own Proms season. It runs for the whole of August, and ranges from Paul Lewis playing Beethoven Sonatas to World Music.

Last night it was the vibrant Konono No. 1 from the Congolese capital Kinasha playing Congolese/Angolan trance music which really had the audience dancing - watch them live here on YouTube. The warm-up was the first ever DJ to play Snape Maltings although she clearly didn't know the spirit of the place. Introducing Konono No. 1, she said if so moved we should feel free to get on our feet and start shaking our things. Clearly she was unaware that Ben had already established such behaviour as an Aldeburgh tradition decades ago.

Aldeburgh Music's chief executive Jonathan Reekie has gone on record as saying the pigeon holes of old are dissolving. He is there somewhere to the right of my picture, bouncing in the mosh pit with the youngsters. Which is not something you see BBC Proms supremo Nicholas Kenyon doing in the Albert Hall.

If you can make it to Suffolk the Snape Proms run until August 31. Several of the concerts, including Jacques Loussier, are sold out, check the Aldeburgh Music website for availability. It's just the thing to bring new audiences to Snape, and as Britten said, music doesn't exist in a vacuum. A great time was had by all last night. But please don't give up the day job Aldeburgh.

Photograph On An Overgrown Path. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Bach and modern technology revisited

Sometimes a post which I'm fond of sinks without trace, and that is precisely what happened to Bach and modern technology in April last year - until today. Many thanks to Dick Strawser, who is Music Director at WITF FM 89.5 in Harrisburg, PA, and a fellow blogger, for revisiting an interesting little post about an even more interesting little book.

Now here's another post I was fond of which sunk without trace - Glorious John in New York. I wrote it in November 2005, and it features today's hot topic - music critics.
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