On An Overgrown Path

Iconic is a grossly overused exaltation . But the twin cherry logo of Ibiza's Pacha superclub is genuinely iconic. And there is a connection between that icon of electronic trance and classical music. The logo was created by designer Yvette Montsalvatge; she is the daughter of composer Xavier Montsalvatge (1912-2002) who has been profiled here and was the inspiration for the composer's Sonatine pour Yvette . The connection is revealed in Helen Donlon's recently published and recommended exploration of the social and cultural history of Ibiza and its nocturnal playgrounds Shadows Across the Moon . In it Helen Donlon develops a theme that has recurred over the years On An Overgrown Path , namely the power of music to transform consciousness . She namechecks, among others, La Monte Young , Philip Glass and Hazrat Inayat Khan , and tell how: Throughout history, losing yourself to music in order to achieve satisfaction at some higher level has been seen as an irresistib...

A gushing press release from New York Public Radio station WQXR announcing Clemency Burton-Hill 's appointment as Creative Director, Music & Arts proclaims that "As the host of BBC Radio 3’s Breakfast Show, she helped to welcome a new audience to classical music". Which is somewhat at variance with the hard facts of Radio 3's recent dismal ratings performance and the headline of the Independent article above over a photo of Clemency Burton-Hill. But that notwithstanding, I am delighted Ms Burton-Hill is off across the Atlantic to work her magic on WQXR. Now please could Stateside classical stations recruit Petroc Trelawny and the remaining new audience-chasing Radio 3 presenters who have so effectively made the station a no-go zone for me and many others. On An Overgrown Path is no longer linked on social media. New posts are available via RSS/email by entering your email address in the right-hand sidebar. Any copyrighted material is included for critica...

That article in the current edition of Rolling Stone India reports on the rise of curated music newsletters, a trend which shows that streaming services are not the only place to discover new music. These email newsletters share music discoveries, and are used by their curators as a listening discipline and to create digital memories of the music that moved and inspired them. All of which resonated powerfully with my own decision to stop using social media to promote On An Overgrown Path and to rely instead on a committed RSS readership. The many social media addicts will doubtless point out that the readership of these newsletters is small, and my own RSS following is indeed tiny compared to that fancifully claimed by click bait meister Norman Lebrecht . But increasing concern is being expressed about the creative damage inflicted by streamed music and video content. Yet surprisingly little attention is being paid to the damage inflicted by on demand services such as Facebook...

It is mid-August and BBC Proms attendances are struggling. Most genuine music lovers have abandoned the Albert Hall to the clowns of the one-ring music circus that pitches up there every summer. Most of the prized new young audience have given up on the concerts after realising that crowd surfing and laser lights are not on the bill. And most of the Radio 3 audience has been driven away by Petroc Trelawny's relentlessly patronising presentation. So it is time to bring in the spin doctors and serve up some juicy click bait. Last year's bait was applause between movements . But this year something far more appealing has been found - Brexit . So to keep the ailing Proms high on the media agenda yet another Brexit controversy is manufactured . Hopefully when the Proms have finished, the pro and anti-Brexiteers and the malleable music celebrities will move on to another platform. Then we will be able to concentrate once again on the one thing which really matters, the music. ...

Money was doubtless the reason for franchising the BBC Proms to the oil-rich but ethically-challenged emirate of Dubai. However just one of many concerns about classical music's endorsement of the United Arab Emirates is the regime's overt homophobia , which makes demonised Russia look distinctly gay-friendly. As stated by UAE lawyer and government spokesperson Dr. Habib al-Mulla : "This is a conservative society. Homosexuality, conducted homosexuality is an illegal act*. And we are not ashamed of that”. Presumably BBC Radio 3 presenter Petroc Trelawny, who has publicly expressed support for LGBT+ causes and who travelled without demur to Dubai to present the franchised Proms , and BBC Proms controller Alan Davey who is also aligned with the LGBT+ community , are both well aware of the UAE's stance on homosexuality. But in classical music today money speaks louder words, and the Gulf media's critical appreciation of western classical music was clearly not the ...

In his Guardian review of Jeremy Paxman's memoir , Will Self points out that the TV presenter is wrong to attribute the decline of the BBC's flagship Newsnight current affairs programme to demographic rather than technological changes. Will Self's observations on the "balkanisation of the media" are very relevant to the recent myopic soul searching about the future of BBC Radio 3 which coincided with the station's 70th anniversary. Technological change is the reason why the media landscape has changed so dramatically in the last decade. Yet, in her 1200 word exposition of how "BBC Radio 3 needs a rethink" Guardian cultural commentator and BBC biographer Charlotte Higgins does not use the word 'technology' once. Like Charlotte Higgins and others who wrote panegyrics at the time of the anniversary, I am indebted to Radio 3 for its past role of illuminating and educating. But times have changed, and, as we are told so often, classical...

Three months into the role, the new controller of BBC Radio 3 Alan Davey has revealed his vision to rejuvenate the station and make it relevant in an age of multiple media. At the centre of his vision is bringing back the Pied Piper programme last heard in 1976, and winding back the clock on the breakfast programme by dropping the vox pop contributions from listeners. When I explained last year why classical radio must change or die , I incurred the wrath of the Friends of Radio 3 by suggesting they advocated that Radio 3 presenters should once again wear dinner jackets while on air. It now seems that my misunderstood joke will backfire on me, and that Alan Davey will soon be announcing the return of formally attired presenters. At this point let's make one thing clear. I was a huge fan of David Munrow's Pied Piper programme, have probably written more about him over the years than any other music journalist, and my interview with Munrow's mentor, the EMI producer...

Arrived back at Gatwick Airport from Upper Egypt where I took the photo above on a Nile ferry . Collected car from long term car park and turned on BBC Radio 3 for first time in months. Greeted by the unctuous Petroc Trelawny asking: "I don't want to nag, but have you voted in Radio 3's favourite Christmas carol competition"? Turn radio off immediately. Maybe I'll tune in again to BBC Radio 3 sometime next year to see if the tripe is more palatable when new network controller Alan Davey is onboard . Also on Facebook and Twitter . Any copyrighted material is included as "fair use" for critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s).

The first public statement by BBC Radio 3's new controller Alan Davey - seen above - offers little hope for the classical station's future. In an interview on BBC Radio 4's Today programme Davey dismissed the station's poor Q2 2014 listening figures saying: "It's one quarter's listening figures we are talking about". Which was a very unwise thing to say: as just hours after saying that the Q3 2014 figures were published and were even worse. Total listener hours for Radio 3 were down year-on-year in Q3 by a disastrous 9.2%, while benchmark station Radio 6 Music increased its listener hours in the same period by 15.5%. Alan Davey's faux pas is particularly surprising as his Today appearance was stage-managed by the BBC PR department, and the BBC would have been aware of the appalling Q3 Radio 3 performance before the interview, as they are briefed by RAJAR - who compile the audience data - ahead of its public release. Davey's statement th...

Reaction to Alan Davey’s appointment as controller of BBC Radio 3 has been predictably facile. The Guardian fulfilled its role as part of the BBC PR machine with a sycophantic piece by arts editor Charlotte Higgins titled Alan Davey: why Radio 3 have hired well in this former punk enthusiast . It takes a lot to reduce me to tears of laughter, but Ms. Higgins assertion that “Within the BBC itself, audience figures are not the main priority for Radio 3” certainly had tears of mirth rolling down my cheeks; as did her assertion that Alan Davey’s appointment was justified by the size of his CD collection. In the opposing camp, Norman Lebrecht’s outpouring of vitriol suggests that the designate Radio 3 controller dented Lebrecht’s Rolls Royce in the Arts Council car park at some time in the past; either that or Lebrecht craved after the post that Davey was appointed to. Among the fence sitters, the self-styled Friends of Radio 3 used the appointment of a new controller to express - fo...

Some people think, probably with some justification, that I complain about the BBC too much. So I am sharing this comment which was added by Frances Wilson to my recent post about the programme Paul Tortelier at the BBC . Asinine, lazy television. Much as I enjoyed seeing clips of Tortelier, an artist whom I much admired, and was lucky to hear live as a child, I found the format simplistic and Petroc Trelawny's contribution largely irrelevant. Shame on the BBC, and especially BBCFour! Also on Facebook and Twitter . 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).

It's a New Year but plus ça change at the BBC; however, over on the independent Radio 3 forum there is confirmation of what On An Overgrown Path has been saying for years . Any constructive discussion on the Radio 3 forum and elsewhere of the cultural genocide within the BBC is conveniently inhibited by the elitist connotations of the epithet 'dumbing down'. G.I. Gurdjieff coined the term 'involution' to denote the destructive turning inward that is the opposite of consciousness expanding evolution. BBC Radio 3, and also BBC Four TV which provides the header graphic , are textbook examples of the destructive power of involution. Instead of daring to be different, the BBC is obsessed with beating the commercial stations - and Classic FM in particular - at the ratings game. In mountain biking it is well known that if a rider stares at a rock in the middle of the trail as they approach it, he/she will ride straight into it. BBC Radio 3 has been staring at Classic ...

Three key policies in new director general Tony Hall's 'vision' statement for the BBC impact on classical music and, therefore, require close inspection. The benefit of the first policy, 20% extra spend on arts programming, spins very well. But in reality it depends totally on the definition of 'arts', and all the evidence suggests the increased spend will simply be created by broadening the definition. The official remit of BBC Four TV is to "reflect a range of UK and international arts, music and culture". With Monday's typical BBC Four schedule offering Whatever happened to the likely lads , A very British murder with Lucy Worsley and Miss Marple the future of arts, music and culture does not look very bright under Tony Hall. Even before factoring in that the arts - including the Proms - are being used as political bait to catch a juicy license fee settlement and Charter renewal in 2016 . The second new policy of "a major new strand ...

No apologies for returning to the UK radio audience figures that were published today . The headline data shows that BBC Radio 3 lost 2.1% of its audience in the same twelve month period that Classic FM increased its audience by 2.4%. Now more detailed data has emerged showing that the Radio 3 Breakfast programme , which has been specifically dumbed down to target Classic FM with vacuous listener tweets, a classical chart, bleeding chunks, banal DJ chatter etc, has taken the biggest audience hit. In fact Radio 3 Breakfast lost a staggering 100,000 listeners - 14% of its audience. You don't need to be mathematician to work out that a 14% audience loss in an area of extreme dumbing down and a 2% audience loss overall means there must have been some substantial compensating audience gains in non-dumbed down programme areas. Which blows the whole Radio 3 strategy of chasing audience by dumbing-down out of the water. That is Petroc Trelawny above at the Proms, he presents Radio 3 Br...

"And what an extraordinary piece it is! Probably the best Lachenmann performance... I've heard" declares Mark Berry of the Boulezian about Helmut Lachenmann’s Tanzsuite mit Deutschlandlied . The Lachenmann work was played by the Arditti Quartet - seen above - with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra and Jonathan Nott, and Mark added his comment to my post about the Prom in which it was given its UK first performance. Recently I described the Arditti's performance of Jonathan Harvey's Fourth Quartet at this year's Aldeburgh Festival as providing "one of those rare experiences of being transported by music to another and better world" and in another post I drew attention to the Quartet's recordings on the Aeon label of memorable contemporary ditties from Jonathan Harvey, Pascal Dusapin, Roberto Gerhard and Harrison Birtwistle. The Pascal Dusapin double CD is particularly recommended as it showcases a contemporary composer who deserves to be much ...

A good bookshop will display the titles they think you will read, but they will also try to draw your attention to those they think you should read. That quote comes from a short piece in the Independent by Richard Hall. I was reminded of it by a comment added to my Sir Colin Davis tribute post by David Nice lamenting the absence from the catalogue of Sir Colin’s Tippett recordings . As for books, so for classical music, and, with a few notable exceptions, record companies, broadcasters and orchestras present the music they think audiences will listen to, without also drawing attention to music they think audiences should listen to. One notable exception to 'comfort programming' is the BBC Symphony Orchestra concert tomorrow (April 19) conducted by Martyn Brabbins – a conductor whose adventurous repertoire puts his higher profile colleagues to shame. Tomorrow’s Barbican concert prompted David Nice’s comment as it features a rare performance of Tippet’s Second Symphon...

Many thanks go to my American readers for taking BBC director general Mark Thompson off our hands . Now can we also interest you in Roger Wright, Petroc Trelawny, Rob Cowan, Katie Derham and Norman Lebrecht? Also on Facebook and Twitter . Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

My co-presenter at this evening's Britten Sinfonia pre-concert event in Norwich is violinist Pekka Kuusisto - seen above. While researching the talk I came across this in a 2007 Guardian profile : Not that he's in sympathy with anything that might be described as crossover. Perish the thought. A few years ago, one of Kuusisto's UK visits coincided with the Classical Brit awards, and he found himself watching them on TV, agog for all the wrong reasons. "Andrea Bocelli got some kind of lifetime achievement award, and then the Opera Babes performed, and the Planets - and so the whole country is being taught to believe that this is what classical music is! It's really grim, you know? I was shocked". Less grim is the news that the first four New York performances of Missy Mazzoli's new multi-media opera ' Song from the 'Uproar: the Lives and Deaths of Isabelle Eberhardt ', which presumably will not feature in the Classical Brits, have sold out - m...

Scanning the search terms that bring new readers to An Overgrown Path is an education in itself. Every day old chestnuts such as ' Pierre Boulez gay ' and ' Petroc Trelawny awful ' deliver fresh visitors. And in addition there are the one-off searches, such as this morning's from a university IP address for the term ' How to write a piano concerto '. Rather appropriately Ask.com sent the would-be composer to a post about a John Cage Piano Concerto and the visitor spent forty minutes on my site, so all was not lost. But I suspect the searcher may not have experienced the Eureka! moment they were looking for. So any advice from readers on how to write a piano concerto will be gratefully received and shared. But let's leave the Pierre Boulez query to John Drummond . Also on Facebook and Twitter . Header installation comes from the 1978 Gramophone Guide to Classical Composers and Recordings . Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "f...

While I was away in November Jessica Duchen lamented the lack of post-9/11 Requiems in an article for the Independent . John Tavener's Requiem did not make the cut for Jessica's piece but instead gets the consolation prize of a post here. Commissioned for Liverpool's 2008 tenure as European City of Culture, Tavener's Requiem is a truly syncretic work . It uses texts from sources including the Catholic Mass, the Qur'an, Sufi poetry and the Hindu epics to extol the gnostic viewpoint that, to quote the composer, although "the different religious traditions are often in conflict with each other... inwardly every religion is the doctrine of the self and its earthly manifestations". The final movement Ananda , which is a pulsating arch built around the words "I am that - I am God" sung in Sanskrit, Hebrew, Greek and Arabic, is a thing of both great beauty and truth. EMI's release of John Tavener's Requiem was one of the more memorable achie...