skip to main |
skip to sidebar
"While I thought Boulez, Stockhausen, Berio were all great composers - especially Berio, who had melodic poetry and eloquence that stood out for me - there was a sense that the postwar serial tradition was starting to fray at the edges. It was ripe for change, and for people to cock a snook a bit" - says 53 year old Judith Weir in a Guardian interview previewing the forthcoming BBC Symphony Orchestra composer weekend featuring her music. My header photo shows Judith Weir on the set of her 'A Night at the Chinese Opera'.
It's great to see some much needed adventurous programming from the BBC in the Judith Weir festival from January 17th to 20th. As well as talks and films there are seven concerts featuring many of her works, and all are to be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3. Full concert details here, broadcast details here, and a Judith Weir feature On An Overgrown Path here.
With the BBC Proms handed over to reality show winners these annual composers weekends are now the showpiece contemporary music event for the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and they are playing in three of the concerts. Two are conducted by Martyn Brabbins, and one by André de Ridder. None are being conducted by the orchestra's chief conductor Jiří Bělohlávek. So where is the BBC's peripatetic maestro? Recording an unadventurous CD of Brahms with the BBCSO, and last seen on the podium in Amsterdam with the Concergebouw Orchestra conducting Dvorak.
Another contemporary opera composer from Scotland 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
Keith has left a new comment on your post "Music and chance":
Another B composer, York Bowen. On Sunday 18th Nov, I got up early and went to the newly re-furbished Birmingham Town Hall complete with lighting gantry with perspex sound diffusers and a restored organ for a Sunday Morning Coffee Concert.
I heard the Trio Chausson, a French trio, performing Haydn, Brahms and a trio by York Bowen (left). The piano player in the trio, Boris De Larochelambert, had seen some of Bowen's music, and had researched and found the manuscript of the Piano Trio in E minor, Op118 in an archive in London. He has produced a performing score, and we heard it played during this morning concert.
I'm not musically trained, and what I heard that morning left a strong feeling of expressive music with a wide dynamic range, with the piano leading and the violin and cello floating above and often playing against each other. There were plenty of rhythmic changes, light and shade, but I can't recall any strong tunes as such - it was music about feeling, dark skies with streaks of sun, and not for whistling. I think it sounded 20th century - certainly not classical - but there was no trace of 12 tone or atonal sound, which chimes with the biography below.
Lyndon Jenkins did express surprise that such music remained unpublished and unrecorded - perhaps one for Naxos?
The concert formed part of the ECHO rising stars series, and I could get used to an hour and a quarter or so of music at 11 am on a Sunday. The main floor of the hall was about 60 to 70% full, so I am not alone. Alas, most of us were on the mature side of 40.
"Following his death in 1961, Bowen's music is now largely out of print, very few works appear in concert programmes and his chamber music is hardly played. However, there is a revival underway and thanks to recent recordings and Monica Watson's book "York Bowen - A Centenary Tribute" (1984), (Thames Publishing), listeners and performers are becoming aware of a wonderful musician and some truly extraordinary music."
Thanks Keith. There is a fine recording of York Bowens' Viola Concerto on Hyperion. The soloist is Lawrence Power, and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra is conducted by Martyn Brabbins, who featured here recently in Snape Skyscape. It is also worth noting that York Bowen makes it into the Gramophone Good Classical CD Guide, whereas Karlheinz Stockhausen doesn't!
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 photo above was taken a few hours before last night's world premiere of Giorgio Battistelli's Snape Skyscape. Orford Church can be seen on the skyline. It was here that all three of Britten's Church Parables were given their first performances and recorded, as was his children's opera Noye's Fludde. Snape Skyscape was a commission from Aldeburgh Music, and it was premiered in Snape Maltings, which is just out of my picture to the left, by the Britten-Pears Orchestra conducted by Martyn Brabbins. In his programme note the composer explains:
'The central idea of Snape Skyscape has nothing to do with 'descriptive' or 'programme' music. It's simply about impressions received during my stay in Aldeburgh, a place rich in history that has a special kind of energy. Snape Skyscape can be understood as a small musical fresco, in which the energies of the natural landscape and those of intellectual ceativity intetwine and feed into each other. It's a personal expression of what Aldeburgh means to me. The translation of colour, of the wind, of the sea, into fractal forms inevitably loses something, but it nevertheless conveys some form of meaning.'
Although Giorgio Battistelli distances the work from 'programme' music, Snape Skyscapes is a dazzling invocation of 'pure' Aldeburgh with fractals from Peter Grimes and the brutal North Sea coast. But this is not a backward-looking tribute to a dead master. Paul Griffiths has written 'the past is not a path we and our predecessors have travelled but a labyrinth, and a labyrinth forever in flux.' Britten's music was forever in flux, and post-Britten Aldeburgh, thankfully, remains in flux through Aldeburgh Music's visionary work with new music. Their latest commission, Giorgio Battistelli's Snape Skyscape, is a succession of shimmering musical fractals that are, again, forever in flux. It speaks with a unique voice. But it is a voice relevant both to Britten's own special soundscape, and that of other composers, such as Boulez and Cage, who were writing flux, in the form of chance, into their music elsewhere in the labyrinth.
Snape Skyscape is scored for large orchestra including a range of percussion (a fractal of Prince of the Pagodas), celeste and sampler. It was delivered with persuasive advocacy by the young players of the Britten-Pears Orchestra and Martyn Brabbins. Intelligent marketing resulted in a good, 
but by no means full, house in deepest rural Suffolk on an autumn evening. Thankfully no embarassing lectures from the podium to introduce the new work, and no Pastoral Symphony to soften the blow of new music. It is a comment on the power of Giorgio Battistelli's (right) new music that the core repertoire that followed seemed anti-climactic. Another work from the labyrinth, Walton's First Symphony from 1935, sounded with much circumference and little circle in the second half.
Now read more about that 'special kind of Aldeburgh energy'.
Programme note with thanks to Aldeburgh Music. Giorgio Battistelli's music is published by Casa Ricordi. Header photo (c) On An Overgrown Path 2007. 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
I asked Roger Wright, head of Radio 3, a few years ago why the BBC didn't broadcast more new music. We get too many complaining letters was his reply - composer Geoffrey Burgon writing in today's Guardian.
If my work is accepted, I must move on to the point where it isn't - John Cage
We are off in a few minutes to Aldeburgh for the first performance of Giorgio Battistelli's (above) Skyscape, which was commissioned by Aldeburgh Music, who, thankfully, aren't worried about complaining letters. Martyn Brabbins conducts the Britten-Pears Orchestra in a thoughtful programme which juxtaposes the new work with Strauss' Four Last Songs and Walton's ebulient First Symphony.
For the drive to Snape I'll slip Geoffrey Burgon's 1976 Requiem into the CD player. Sadly, Burgon's music isn't heard often enough to generate letters of complaint these days. This a genuinely forward looking work, wonderful scoring, and beautiful Kingsway Hall sound. Annoyed of Tunbridge Wells clearly won the day though, as this important Decca CD is now deleted. But hurry, you can still find it online.
Do read Geoffrey Burgon's letter, there is an alternative to new music in safe doses.
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
Academy of Ancient Music, Chief Executive - £na
The Conservatoire, Director of Music - £32k
Scottish Ballet, Head of Development - £32 - 38k
Music at Oxford, General Manager - £na
London Symphony Orchestra, Head of LSO Discovery - £38 - 43k
Britten Sinfonia, Marketing Director - £na
London Sinfonietta, Development & Marketing Managers - £na
It's a beautiful spring day here, and the header photo was taken five minutes ago in our garden. On BBC Radio 3 this afternoon was a stunning performance by Martyn Brabbins and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra of that British masterpiece, Elgar's Symphony No 2 in E flat major. Today's Media Guardian lists the music vacancies above. Last Saturday we heard the Pergolesi Stabat Mater and Rachmaninov Vespers in Norwich Cathedral. On Friday it's Prokofiev and Stravinsky at Snape, and on Saturday Schütz and Pärt in Blythburgh Church.
But it's all a mirage. Read here about the death of live classical music, and here about the death of the recording industry.
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
