The Well-Tempered Concert

J S Bach Violin Concerto No 1
J S Bach arr. Tansy Davies Prelude and Fugue No. 20 in A minor (first performances)
Hartmann Concerto Funèbre
Schoenberg Verklärte Nacht

This programme is being given in Cambridge, Norwich and London this week by the Britten Sinfonia. The 22 year old Russian born violinist Alina Ibragimova (left) is soloist in the Bach and Hartmann concertos, and directs all the works. She has just released a CD of Hartmann's music on Hyperion.

Before the concert in Norwich Cathedral tomorrow, ( Tues 23 October) there is an 'In conversation' event at 6.30pm. In living proof that youth is not a time of life but a state of mind, this event features Alina Ibragimova in conversation with me. As well as discussing the two concertos with Ms. Ibragimova I will be following some recent paths with her. These will include the challenges of a programme spanning baroque and contemporary music, and how composers such as Karl Amadeus Hartmann are victims of music fashion.

I will also be asking Alina about her project with British rap star Lethal Bizzle, and how far she, Tansy Davies and their contemporaries can push the boundaries of classical music. If any of my far flung readers have questions for Alina Ibragimova, email them to me and I will try to include them in our discussion.

Now read about the Britten Sinfonia's inspirational work with new music. And the orchestra is also an inspiration on equality. After this week's concerts, which have Alina Ibragimova as soloist/director and a commission for Tansy Davies, their next two concert series have Imogen Cooper as soloist/director in one, and their leader, Jacqueline Shave, as soloist/director in the other. It's no longer jobs for the boys in this part of the world.
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Vinyl dreams at Killatunes Record Shop

It's Saturday, the sun is shining and I'm off to the beach. Here's a photo of Killatunes Record Shop upstairs at Ali Bongo in St. John Maddermarket, Norwich. It specialises in underground dance music on vinyl. It could almost be the summer of love.
Photo (c) 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

Towards an era of objective art

The photographs here were all taken by me at the 2007 EASTinternational. This is an open submission biennial exhibition held at Norwich Gallery and the Norwich School of Art and Design.


Each EASTinternational is selected by invited curators and artists, and the exhibition has provided a launch pad for many new artists to emerge onto the national and international stage. This year's exhibition is selected by British artist and curator Matthew Higgs and French performance artist Marc Camille Chaimowicz, and shows the work of twenty-seven artists from Europe, North America and Britain.


The main part of the exhibition is presented in Norwich School of Art and Design. This riverside building dates from 1899, and teaching rooms are cleared at the end of the academic year to create the impressive presentation spaces seen in the photos. EASTinternational is part of Contemporary Art Norwich which runs until August 31 2007.

Other Contemporary Art Norwich projects include a new temporary light and sound installation by Simon Fenoulhet at Wymondham Abbey. The ambient sounds are by John Hardy Music, and a microphone in the Abbey's ruined East Tower allows the listeners to interact with the lighting in a similar way to Helen Ottoway's sound installation at last year's Norwich Festival. Full event details from the CAN website.

The curators of this year's EASTinternational provide food for thought when they suggest we are entering a period where history and documentary are replacing art as fiction. Their quote from Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe applies just as much to contemporary music as it does to the visual arts: “All eras in a state of decline and dissolution are subjective; on the other hand all progressive eras have an objective tendency.”


Take this path to see art in a public space in Norwich, and this one to see performance art in Suffolk.
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Brain music

Art works in public spaces, and my photos show 'Homage to Thomas Browne', a site-specific artwork that was installed here in Norwich last week. The controversial installation was created by the French husband and wife team of Anne and Patrick Poirier, and there is a musical connection. William Alwyn's Fifth Symphony was first performed in Norwich, and is dedicated to the memory of Sir Thomas Browne, with each section of the symphony headed by a quotation from Browne's best known work, Urn Burial.


Physician, philosopher, botanist and writer Sir Thomas Browne lived in Norwich, close to the site of the sculpture, from 1636 to his death in 1682. Among the authors influenced by Browne's writings are R.D. Laing, W.G. Sebald, E.M. Forster, and Jorge Luis Borges. Browne's major works are notable for their extensive references to America less than 150 years after Christopher Columbus' voyages of discovery.

In 1658 Browne published his Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial. Inspired by Bronze Age burials in Norfolk this discourse reflected on funerary customs of the world, and touched on a 21st century preoccupation, the transitory nature of earthly fame and reputation. Among the writers expressing admiration for Urn Burial were John Cowper Powys, James Joyce and Ralph Waldo Emerson. In the same year Browne published The Garden of Cyrus which examines the quincunx, a five-pointed diamond shape which he believed existed throughout nature.


This quincunx pattern determines the geometry of the artwork, with the marble eye and brain, which are seen in my photos, forming two of the points of the diamond. The work comprises twenty pieces of sculpture and twenty-two lights, and the sculptures are designed to be sat on, touched and used as furniture. Anne and Patrick Poirier are internationally renown both for their gallery installations and their public works, and they have also worked with composers of electronic music.


Composer William Alwyn was born in 1905, and lived in Blythburgh, near Aldeburgh, from 1960 until his death in 1985 . His musical style was a unique mix of romanticism and modernism, he used dissonance extensively and developed his own Indian inspired alternative to serialism which divided the twelve semitones of the scale into two groups.

Alwyn's Fifth Symphony was commissioned by the Arts Council for the 1973 Norfolk & Norwich Triennial Festival, where it was premiered with Alwyn conducting. Although the symphony is dedicated to Sir Thomas Browne and quotations from Urn Burial are used in the score the work is not programmatic. It compresses the traditional four-movement into a concise one-movement work lasting just 16 minutes.

We are very fortunate to have Anne and Partick Poirier's 'Homage to Thomas Browne' here in Norwich, and we are also fortunate to have a first-class recording of Alwyn's Fifth Symphony in the catalogue. It is available in Richard Hickox and the London Symphony Orchestra's 3 CD set (audio samples available via that link) of Alwyn's complete symphonies on Chandos. Producer Brian Couzens captures remarkably vivid sound in All Saints Tooting. This Chandos Alwyn set is highly recommended, as is the Lyrita recording of his opera Miss Julie. For budget buyers, Naxos also have Alwyn's symphonies in their catalogue, and their new release of his chamber music and songs has been well reviewed.


Now follow this path for more evidence that art works.
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New music for a new building

Went to Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 last Sunday. The performance was in St Stephen's Church, Norwich. The stained glass in the east window above the performers, seen in the photo here, records the date when the remodelling of the medieval church was completed. The date was 1610.

Now visit another of Norwich's historic churches to learn about medieval mystics with musical connections.
Image credit - the excellent Norfolkchurches.co.uk - do visit it. 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

Identikit jazz trios

Went to hear the Bobo Stenson Trio (left) in Norwich last night. Technically wonderful but curiously uninvolving music. They are one of a growing number of identikit jazz piano trios. They all come from Scandinavia, are all squeaky-clean superb musicians, all have ECM recording contracts, all play somewhere on a continuum between Bill Evans and free jazz, and all drink the same brand of mineral water between numbers.

Taking the sting out of the lute

‘Jakob Lindberg was born in Djursholm in Sweden and developed his first passionate interest in music through the Beatles’ - programme note from Lindberg’s recital last night at The King of Hearts in Norwich.

The venue - the Tudor music room at the King of Hearts in Norwich. This centre for people and the arts is located in a restored medieval merchant’s house. The music room seats just 80, and its beamed ceiling and oak floor give it superb acoustics.

The instrument – Jakob Lindberg’s lute was made circa 1590 by the prolific luthier Sixtus Rauwolf who lived and worked in Augsburg, southern Germany. Dendrochronology confirms that the soundboard is original and dates it from 1418-1560, making this the oldest playable lute with its original soundboard. Lindberg bought the lute at a Sotheby’s auction in 1991, and it has been painstakingly restored including replacing of the 19th century neck.

The composers – Robert Ballard (c. 1575-1650), Gregory Huwet (c. 1550-c. 16160, Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger (1580-1631), Albert Dlugoraj (1557- after 1619), Nicolas Vallet (c.1583- after 16420, Prince Mauritius, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel (1572-1632), Robert Johnson (c.1583-1633), and John Dowland (1563-1626), plus of course Anon.

The encore – the Beatles.

Now read about more Dowland with contemporary connections, and it's not what you think.
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All this ….. and what for?

The terrible raids on Dresden by British and American bombers took place on the nights of 13th and 14th February 1945. But the photographs here are not of Dresden, they show the damage inflicted by the German bombing of Norwich, where I live. 1432 people were killed or injured in Norwich by air raids between 1940 and 1943, and 85% of the housing stock was damaged. During April 1942 Norwich was one of the English cathedral cities heavily bombed in the "Baedeker raids" which targeted cultural centres selected from the eponymous German guide book. The photographs accompanying this article are taken from the official account of the air raids on Norwich published in 1944. This remarkable document, and remember it was written while World War 2 still raged, ends with the words below written by the novelist and war poet R H Mottram:


So the long tale of violence and attempted intimidation drags to its close, and as these words are written the seemingly endless vigil is being relaxed. Whatever we may suffer from “Revenge” weapons, we no longer anticipate organised attack. We have laid aside the steel helmet that so often oppressed our brow, and the respirator that we tested and tried on, hangs on its peg accumulating dust. We no longer look with trepidation for children who linger on their way home from school, nor do we stagger sleepily through the black shadows or the ghoulish light of flares to take up our posts of duty.

We hope soon to be replanning Norwich, and only the broken-hearted can fail to hope that a better and finer city may arise on these ashes. Perhaps a new Germany will help to patch our gaping places and re-site our streets. But no skill will bring back those who lie under the long row of crosses that line the cemetery rail. These, who bore no malice, are a sacrifice to the evil forces still at work in the world. One may be tempted to recall the last lines of the play, appropriately entitled Strife, by John Galsworthy: “All this …. and what for?”

It is for a new generation to provide the answer.


Now playing - Arvo Pärt’s I am the true vine, (Paul Hillier directing the Theatre of Voices, Harmonia Mundi 90407). The photograph above shows the destruction in the Cathedral Close in Norwich, with the cloisters of the Benedictine Abbey in the foreground. The photo was taken from a vantage point on the magnificent Norman cathedral. Unlike the Frauenkirche and Thomaskirche in Dresden, Norwich Cathedral survived the terrible bombing despite two direct hits from incendiary bombs, and in 1996 Arvo Pärt was commissioned to write I am the true vine to celebrate the Cathedral's 900th anniversary. The work is an English setting of St. John 15:1-14, in which Jesus likens himself to "the true vine" and commands his followers to love each other.

Arvo Pärt now lives in Berlin, another city that suffered terrible war damage, and the CD I am listening to also contains his moving Berliner Messe. Writing in 1944 R.H. Mottram expressed the hope that: “a new Germany will help to patch our gaping places and re-site our streets”, and this is precisely what happened, although the writer could not have anticipated the four decades of agonizing delay caused by the Cold War. In 1989 the collapse of Communism was triggered by events in Leipzig, just a few miles from Dresden. This allowed the creation of a new Europe which now includes many countries that were part of the USSR.

Arvo Pärt was born in Estonia, one of several countries that threw off the Soviet shackles in the early 1990s, and became part of the new Europe. Today the region around Norwich is home to a large community of migrants from these Baltic countries. On Saturday we celebrated their culture with our first Baltic States Festival, thankfully confirming that a new generation of Europeans is starting to provide the answer to the question "All this .... and what for?"

Suffering knows no side in time of war, now read about the Dresden Requiem for eleven young victims
My thanks go to Helen Yates for her grandmother’s copy of Assault Upon Norwich (published by Norwich Corporation 1944). The location of the photographs in descending order are Rampant Horse Street, Westwick Street, and Cathedral Close. 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

Joanna MacGregor and Andy Sheppard live

It's almost midnight here in the UK and we've just returned from hearing Joanna MacGregor and Andy Sheppard at The Forum in Norwich. Live music rules, jazz rules, Joanna MacGregor sounds more and more like Keith Jarrett, and Andy Sheppard sounds more and more like Charles Lloyd.

For more on the inspired duo of Joanna MacGregor and Andy Sheppard read Commercially jazz is in a bad way.
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Dialogues of the Carmelites

Dialogue 1: The Order of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel is an enclosed Catholic Order founded in the 12th century by Saint Bertold on Mount Carmel, Israel, with the bretheren taking their name of the White Friars from their distinctive white cloaks. Increasing tension between East and West forced the Order to move to Cyprus and Sicily in 1238, and they were in England two years later. In 1250 a Carmelite Priory was established on the banks of the River Wensum in Norwich immediately opposite the city’s magnificent Norman cathedral.

The monastery was suppressed in 1543, the property was divided up, and over the intervening centuries virtually all traces of the priory have disappeared. But the presence of the Carmelites lives on in Norwich. The thoroughfare leading across the river from the cathedral and law courts is known as Whitefriars, and my photograph above shows the bland office building called Carmelite House on the far side of the bridge. This was built on the site of the monastery in 2003, and is where my day job is based. Clearly visible in the foreground is the only remaining fragment of the original Carmelite monastery. This is an arch from one of the two anchorite houses that were built in the grounds of the priory, and my heart lifts each morning as I pass this medieval fragement on my way to modern mayhem.

Dialogue 2: Speaking of mayhem, Francis Poulenc based his 1956 opera Dialogue of the Carmelites on historical events that took place in a Carmelite convent in Compiègne during the French Revolution. In the opera the French authorities dissolve the convent, and the nuns take a vow of martyrdom. In the immensely moving final act the nuns march to the scaffold singing the Salve Regina, and this changes to the hymn Deo patri sit Gloria (All praise be thine, O risen Lord). The opera was composed between 1953 and 1956, and during this period Poulenc suffered a nervous breakdown, reputedly due to his identification with the suffering of the nuns.

Dialogue of the Carmelites is one of the peaks of 20th century music theatre. It expresses profound psychological and religious insights through a musical language accessible to anyone familiar with Poulenc’s more popular works - if you know his Organ Concerto you will feel at home from the first bars of Scene 1 . There is extensive use of recitatives, and these contrast with some wonderful choral settings including the Ave Maria (Act II, Scene II) and Ave verum corpus (Act II, Scene IV). The opera is well served in the catalogue by the excellent Opéra de Lyon recording on Virgin Classics with a stellar cast under Kent Nagano.

At budget price this re-release is quite unmissable, and it helps reinforce Poulenc as a major 20th century composer. These words from the website of the composer's publisher are worth reflecting on - "Like his friends Honegger and Milhaud, he had the courage to resist the serialists’ diktats and remain true to himself. Now that the serialist terror has passed, those of us who love Poulenc’s music can hold up our heads in the most sophisticated company."

Dialogue 3: No serialists' diktats here, but I am a sucker for historical reconstructions which add colour and variety to potentially arid expanses of early music. In 1707 Handel visited Rome, and he was commissioned to provide music for the festival of Our Lady of Mount Carmel celebrated annually on 16th July. No information survives on Handel’s contribution, but Andrew Parrott has made a hypothetical reconstruction combining Handel’s music with Carmelite psalm settings, and all five antiphons are chanted before their respective psalms. This is a gorgeous 2CD set, wonderfully performed by the Taverner Consort and Players directed by Andrew Parrot, with balance engineer Mike Clements providing wonderfully airy sound in St Augustine’s, Kilburn. Highly recommended as a mid-price reissue from Virgin.

Dialogue 4: Although the Carmelites left Norwich more than four centuries ago the Order flourishes today in Quidenham, just 30 miles to the south. A Carmelite monastery was established there in 1948 by a group of nuns, and the photograph below was taken by me in the grounds last autumn. in the 21st century the nuns follow the Carmelite Rule in a balanced regime of prayer, work, intellectual study and recreation. This is an enclosed order, and the nuns only leave the monastery because of illness or for family reasons. The offices are celebrated with plainsong settings of the psalms, and the Carmelite nuns in Quidenham demonstrate the resilience of this remarkable Order in the face of the terrors portrayed so powerfully in Poulenc’s opera.


For more inspiration take An Overgrown Path to There is a green hill far away called Taizé
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New music in Norwich

Saturday 10th November - to Norwich for the first UK performance of a new work by Jane O'Leary. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, and with degrees from Princeton University and Vassar College, Jane O'Leary (right) has lived in Galway in Eire since 1976, and is a central figure in the musical life there, both as administrator and composer. (The photo below shows her with Irish new music ensemble Concorde). For the past three years the Con Tempo Quartet from Romania have been Quartet-in-Residence in Galway, and they came to Norwich with Jane O'Leary to perform her Piano Quintet No 2, which was funded by the Arts Council of Ireland, with the composer taking the piano part.

The Quintet, which was given its first performance in Dublin three weeks ago, is a four movement work without programme or formal structure. It uses the strings almost as a single voice to compliment the piano and produce abstract sound pictures. This is very much a contemporary work, and the pianist works the strings of her instrument with her hands as well as the keys. But judging by the positive reaction of the essentially conservative Norwich audience this is new music that connects with the past as well as the future. Kudos to Norwich and Norfolk Music for bringing this praiseworthy new work and its composer from the extreme west of the British Isles to the extreme east. The excellent pre-concert talk and discussion by Jane O'Leary also helped build an audience for this new music.

The rest of the Con Tempo's programme had James Lisney as pianist, and comprised Elgar's Piano Quintet (if the truth be told not the most persuasive adviocacy of this beautiful and moving work), and George Enecu's 1940 Piano Quintet (Op 29). Enescu is a very underrated 20th century composer, and his Piano Quintet is a superb work that deserves a much wider audience. The Con Tempo Quartet were clearly in their element playing the music of their fellow Romanian, and James Lisney is a longtime advocate of Enescu's music. The closing pages of the Quintet are quite overwhelming, search out a performance or recording if you possibly can.

If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to First performance - Douglas Weiland's Second Piano Trio, Pavey Ark
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Tippett can still empty a concert hall

It is centenary year for Michael Tippett, and that means the programme makers are having something of a Tippett fest. With all that exposure, and with more A Child of Our Times than Messiahs around the country it would be easy to conclude that Tippett was now 'safe box office'. But the Norwich and Norfolk Festival found that this was very much not the case when they scheduled two concerts with acclaimed pianist Steven Osborne playing the four Tippett Piano Sonatas and contemporary works in a 'Tippett in context' series.

The first of the two concerts in the John Innes Centre (which is out of the city centre, but offers superb chamber music acoustics) didn't just have some empty seats, it was two thirds empty. Here is the culprit programme:

Tippett Piano Sonata No. 1
Gershwin 3 Preludes
Ravel Sonatine
interval
Tippett Sonata No. 2
Ives Three-Page Sonata
Bartok Excerpts from Mikrokosm0s, Book 6

And what a treat the absent concert-goers missed. It was a typically craggy and uncompromising piece of Steven Osborne (photo on right) programming, matched by equally as craggy and uncompromising playing. What wonderful works the Tippett sonatas are. I have to confess to a particular fondness for the rites of passage Sonata No. 1, which probably reflects my fascination with first novels. Although I said in my post What a Facade! that even Gershwin's orchestral jazz writing didn't really come off, his jazz themes for piano in the three preludes show what a master of the jazz form he really was.

It would have been so easy to have programmed the two Tippett Sonatas with two 'popular' Beethoven sonatas. The Festival organisers and Osborne didn't. They got lots of empty seats, and those that did venture outside their personal comfort zones got a marvellous, and thought, provoking evening of live music making.

If you enjoyed this post follow the overgrown path to Hildegard comes to Norwich via IRCAM and Darmstadt

Evening of enlightened contemporary music

Saturday evening brought the first performance of Douglas Weiland's Second Piano trio played by the Altenberg Trio from Vienna in a Norfolk & Norwich Chamber Music concert at the John Innes Centre, Norwich.

It was an evening of enlightenment - from Norwich & Norfolk Chamber Music (check their web site for details of two exciting concerts with Tamas Vasary in September) who appointed Weiland composer in residence in 2002, and who have commissioned him to compose a piece of chamber music in each of the season's betwen 2004/5 and 2006/7. The first of these is the Piano Trio especially coposed for the Altenberg Trio of Vienna, to be followed by a Cello Suite, a Clarinet Quintet (with Andrew Marriner as soloist), and a String Quartet. Weiland's Piano Quartet, which was also written for the Norfolk & Norwich Music Club was premiered in Norwich in May 2000, and has since been played in Vienna and Australia.

Douglas Weiland is an enlightened musician. He was born in Malvern (home to Edward Elgar) in 1954, and after studying violin became a member of the acclaimed Australian Quartet. In 1990 he returned to England as a member of Sir Neville Marriner's Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields chamber orchestra. He now composes full time, and his commissions include a Divertimento for Strings for the Academy, and a Clarinet Concerto for Andrew Marriner. His current work in progress is a Triple Concerto.

Enlightenment also radiates from the Altenberg Trio who made their debut at the 1994 Salzburg Mozart week. As well as the classical repertoire this wide ranging trio have recorded Ives, Copland and Bernstein. It is wonderful to see this Trio playing, and thoroughly enjoying, a contemporary composition commissioned for them. It was also wonderful to hear pianist Claus-Christian Schuster joking in his encore intrduction about the wedding of Prince Charles (which finally took place on the day of the concert), and about home team Norwich City's surprise defeat of Manchester United which occured minutes before the concert began. With the Altenberg Trio (and as with the Kamus Quartet) chamber music is not dull or stuffy.


Altenberg Trio of Vienna - chamber music can be fun. (Sorry there is no photo of Douglas Weiland, but there doesn't seem to be one available).

Douglas Weiland's Second Piano Trio is sub-titled Pavey Ark after the well known landmark in the Langdale area of the Lake District, seen in my header photo. The trio is an accessible, work in three sections - Moderato - Allegro, Poco Allegro - Allegro, and finally a haunting Poco Adagio, molto espressivo as an epilogue. Weiland's idiom successfully combines modernity with intensely lyrial passages to create a work that seems set to expand the Piano Trio repertoire.

Congratulations to everyone involved in this premiere; to the Norwich & Norfolk Chamber Music club for their enlightened patronage, to the Altenberg Trio for their commitment, and to Douglas Weiland for creating such a wonderful work.