At last - music treated as music

In the week when the BBC, EMI and UK media decided that Nigel Kennedy is the future of classical music I greatly enjoyed a new CD from an independent Belgian label that proves that there is still life beyond the celebrity circus.

Llibre Vermell from the Ricecar label is an imaginative realisation based on these anonymous words in the famous medieval manuscript in the Abbey of Monserrat: "Sometimes the pilgrims who are holding vigil in the church of the Holy Virgin of Montserrat wanted to sing and dance, but they were only allowed to sing respectable and pious songs". The CD brings together the Namur Chamber Choir as the pilgrims, the Psallentes as the monks and the excellent boys choir Les Pastoureaux as the choirboys of the Abbey together with period instrumentalists under the direction of Christophe Deslignes. The boy's choir are, for me, the real stand-outs on an exceptional disc, how refreshing to hear young voices in early music.

The recording, which derived from a 2007 Festival de Wallonie concert, is a total delight from start to finish. It combines musical scholarship (which is more than can be said for Kennedy's cadenza in the first movement of his new Mozart concerto recording) with more exuberance and sheer joy in music making than I have heard for years. A mixed programme, which moves between Gregorian Chant, music from the Le Llibre Vermell and dance, avoids the inherent monotony of so many early music discs, while producer Jérôme Lejeune and engineer Philippe de Magnée make the magnificent space of the Église Saint-Apollinaire in Bolland an integral part of the performance.

Research carried out some time back reported that the average classical CD is played 1.3 times after purchase, so the five playings that my copy of Llibre Vermell has received in three days must prove something. I can't offer higher praise than saying I am sure David Munrow would have been delighted with this new release.

EM Forster mused in Howards End - "I wonder if the day will ever return when music will be treated as music". This highly recommended recording is welcome proof that the only thing that needs to spin in classical music is the CD.

More young voices in early music here.
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Farewell to Stromness

A comment on my Judith Weir article by regular reader Henry Holland quite correctly pointed out that Peter Maxwell Davies isn't really a Scottish composer as he was born in Oldham in England, and studied in Manchester. Henry's thoughtful comment set me off down a few personal Overgrown Paths which I share here, and which will eventually explain the mystery photograph above.

Despite his Lancashire origins I have a particular fondness for Max's more Scottish music, and first heard his exquisite 'An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise', with its memorable part for Highland Bagpipes (below), played in the MacRobert Arts Centre in Stirling, Scotland when we lived there in the 1980's. The MacRobert auditorium on the University of Stirling campus was a regular venue for BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra broadcasts on BBC Radio 3. I remember a very young Nigel Kennedy sitting in the back row listening to the second half of a concert after playing the Walton Violin Concerto in the first half. He was waiting for the orchesta bus to take him back down the motorway to Glasgow. These days a personal helicopter would be hovering outside as the last bars of the Walton died away - if the BBC Scottish could ever afford 'Nige's' fee.

I have to guiltily confess that one of my favourite compositions by Max, in fact one of my favourite pieces of music by any composer, is his distinctly non-avant garde five minute solo for piano Farewell to Stromness. I have put it on the CD player as I write, and yes, it still sends shivers down my spine. The story behind this piece is worth airing. Farewell to Stromness and Yesnaby Ground are piano interludes from The Yellow Cake Revue, a sequence of cabaret-style numbers first performed at the St. Magnus Festival, Orkney in Scotland, by Eleanor Bron, with the composer at the piano, in June 1980. The Yellow Cake Revue took its name from the popular term for refined uranium ore, and the revue was written to highlight the threat of a proposed uranium mine to the economy and ecology of the Orkney Islands. Stromness, the second largest town in Orkney (pop. 1500, photo to right), would have been two miles from the uranium mine's core, and the centre most threatened by pollution. Yesnaby is the nearby clifftop beauty spot under whose soil the uranium is known to lie. Farewell to Stromness also exists as a guitar arrangement, and once appeared in a soft-rock version. It had the questionable distinction of being arranged for strings by Rosemary Furniss (not by Max I note) for the blessing of the marriage of Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall at St. George's Chapel in Windsor Castle in 2005, Max of course being the Master of the Queen's Music, of which more below. Note to any jazz pianists reading this - here are two pieces just waiting to be translated into a jazz idiom.

If you do not know Farewell to Stromness or Yesnaby Ground you are missing something seriously beautiful, here linked from the excellent MaxOpus web site are audio files:

Farewell to Stromness -

Yesnaby Ground -

All of which gives me a reason to tell my very favourite Maxwell Davies story. Earlier this year Max was investigated by the police for making terrine from a dead swan found on his property in the Orkneys. The swan had hit power lines, so was dead on arrival in a very Parsifal kind of way. As the swan is a protected species a police investigation followed complete with search warrant. No charges were brought, but if they had been it would have been interesting as all swans in the UK come come under the prorogative of the Queen, who employs an official swan keeper. And the Queen happens to be Max's employer. See this link for the full story.

And yes, I know you are all asking what has the header photo got to do with this story? Well, there are personal connections with the Orkney Islands which explain it. During the Second World War my late father was a gunnery instructor with the RAF Regiment attached to the USAF. He spent much of the latter part of the war in the relative safety of an Orkney Islands training base teaching the American crews of B-17 Flying Fortress crews to shoot-down German night fighters, while my poor mother suffered the worst of the bomb raids in central London where she worked. A string of celebrity air crews attached to the US 8th Army Air Force passed through the Orkney base, and one of them was Clark Gable, star of Gone with the Wind (right) and many other classic films. The previously unpublished photo found among my father's papers shows Clark Gable working on a B-17 in the Orkneys, rather than working on a film set.

Of course Gone with the Wind also has strong musical connections. The composer of its Oscar-nominated score was Max Steiner. He was born in Vienna where his grandfather was a musical impresario, and his godfather was Richard Strauss. Like Peter Maxwell Davies he was something of a child prodigy, and reputedly graduated from Vienna's Imperial Academy of Music at the age of 13 after completing an eight-year course in one year. He took conducting lessons from Gustav Mahler and made his concert debut at 16. After a short time in Britain he emigrated to the United States in 1914. He became a Warner Bros staff composer in 1936, and remained there until his retirement in 1965. Steiner (right) personally scored more than a hundred films, and contributed material to several hundred others. By far his best known work is his 1939 score for Gone with the Wind (my header picture of Clark Gable must have been taken a few years after the film was made).

So here to play this post out in style is Hollywood's answer to Farewell to Stromness - the original soundtrack version of Max Steiner's Tara's Theme, which also still manages to pass An Overgrown Path's 'shivers down the spine' test -

And this, of course, is where the credits roll .......

Pictures - header, copyright On An Overgrown Path. This photo is one of several of Clark Gable taken when he was with the US 8th Army Air Force. I don't think they have been previously published. Any Gable biographers or interested parties should contact me for more details.
Orkney Wedding performance - BBC
Stromness – Visitorkney.com
Gone with the Wind - Amazon
Max Steiner - The Columnists
Music - Farewell to Stromness and Yesnaby Ground are on the excellent disc of Max's music A celebration of Scotland (see, he was a Scottish composer) on Unicorn Kanchana
Audio stream - Maxwell Davies works from MaxOpus, Tara's Theme from Reel Classics
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If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Memories of the USAAF 389th Bomb Group at Hethel, the Green Dragons