On An Overgrown Path

In recent years classical music has been involved in an increasingly frantic hunt for a big, new and younger audience. But there is a cogent argument that classical music cannot have its big new audience cake while continuing to eat the dogma of concert halls controlled by 19th century sonic conventions. Any concert hall, whether acoustically 'good' or 'bad', modifies the 'true' sound of an orchestra to a considerable extent. An acoustically 'perfect' traditional hall such as the new Elbphilharmonie modifies the sound passively with reflective materials to conform with conventions dating from the 19th century. So why is modifying the sound actively using digital technologies to conform with a a new set of 21st century conventions unacceptable? Using digital technologies to shape concert hall sound is not heretical. The only 'true' sound of an orchestra is what would be heard if the musicians played in an anechoic - acoustically dead - cha...

Last night I was at Snape Maltings for the first day of the William Alwyn Festival . The centrepiece of the evening concert was a powerful and persuasive performance of Alwyn's Fourth Symphony with John Gibbons conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Complementing the little-known symphony were Glinka's Ruslan and Ludmilla Overture, Borodin's In the Steppes of Central Asia and Elgar's evergreen Cello Concerto with Jamie Walton as soloist. Although William Alwyn was a Suffolk resident  his music did not find favour with Benjamin Britten . However and despite this, the blessed venue that Britten created allowed John Gibbons and his forces to remind us - if any reminder was needed - of the scandal of Alwyn's neglect. But...... The screenshot above was taken on the day of the concert. The grey seats were sold, the coloured seats were unsold. Which means Snape Maltings was two-thirds empty for the concert. Many explanations can be proposed for the poor attenda...

Quite rightly plans to build a 470-space car park on the river bank opposite Snape quay with connecting footbridge have been met with widespread concern . But there is more than a car park to worry about. The holding company at Snape is the private limited Snape Maltings Ltd (formerly Aldeburgh Music), which has annual revenue of £6.1 million , and former BBC Radio 3 and Proms controller Roger Wright is its chief executive. This company owns 100% of Snape Maltings Trading which is the company responsible for the retail activities on the Snape site, specifically the artisanal retail complex which generates much of the demand for car parking. Snape Maltings Trading's board includes retail big hitters Clive Schlee who is CEO of fast food chain Pret a Manger , and Stuart Rose who was chief executive and chairman of retail giant Marks and Spencers . Stuart Rose has also been a director of retail chains Argos and Woolworths. He is a Conservative peer who sits in the House of L...

Aldeburgh is a windswept fishing town on the east coast of the British Isles. "A bleak litte place; not beautiful," the novelist E.M. Forster called it. He went on: "It huddles around a flint-towered church and sprawls down to the North sea - and what a wallop the sea makes as it pounds at the shingle! Near by is a quay, at the side of an estuary, and here the scenery becomes melancholy and flat; expanses of mud, saltish commons, the marsh-birds crying." That is the opening of the chapter "Grimes! Grimes" in The Rest Is Noise , a chapter which is not only among Alex Ross' finest writing, but is also among the finest evocations of Aldeburgh and Snape by any writer. Now the Snape Maltings management company, whose chief executive is Roger Wright former controller of Radio 3 and director of the BBC Proms, wants to build 470-space flood-lit car park on the river bank seen in the header photo* across the river from Snape quay, with a footbridge crossing t...

Frederic Chiu 's new recording of the piano music of G. I. Gurjieff/T. de Hartmann Hymns & Dervishes was recorded at Manifold Studios , Pittsboro, NC. In Russia Gurdjieff's circle included Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Diaghilev and Nicholas Roerich , while in America Frank Lloyd Wright was an early enthusiastic evangelist for the multi-faceted mystic. The music of Gurdjieff/Hartmann has a number of distinguished advocates including Keith Jarrett . But Frederic Chiu gives a refreshingly different interpretation that emphasises the music's lyrical rather than calisthenic nature. I already have many recordings of Gurdjieff's music, but I will be returning to Hymns & Dervishes frequently, thanks I suspect in part due to the Tao of acoustics*. Photos 1 to 4 show Manifold Studios, which was designed around the sound and dimensions of a concert grand piano by Wes Lachot , who based his design on the acoustic architecture theories of Gurdjieff's student Frank Llo...

The red phone box seen above has been turned into a "virtual reality concert hall" at Snape Maltings, the concert venue created by Benjamin Britten and his partner Peter Pears . Aldeburgh Music has equipped the phone box with a headset - see below - showing a viewer-controlled video of a performance in the Maltings. Aldeburgh Music's digital manager Matt Jolly explains that the project aims to provide "a fun and immersive introduction" to the concert hall. Yes, classical music does need to experiment ,and the good news is that the audio/video programme is a performance of Frank Bridge's The Sea - the impressive 360 degree 'virtual reality' video can be watched via this link . But I suggest that the following quote from Britten's 1964 Aspen Award acceptance speech is prominently displayed in the digital phone box: There are many dangers which hedge around the unfortunate composer: pressure groups which demand true proletarian music, snobs ...

My post Beware of creating museums of sound , the latest in a long running thread about shifting sonic expectations, generated one of the largest readerships in the ten year history of On An Overgrown Path . That readership was boosted by exposure on Synthtopia , a Facebook portal devoted to electronic music. However, there and elsewhere a number of readers interpreted the article as a plea for the use of sound shaping to correct the sound of acoustically deficient halls, and there were the usual comments such as Paul Kavicky's "This is the stupidest thing I've read all day". Paul and others missed the point that my post was not about corrective technologies, but about bridging the yawning gap between traditional concert hall sound and the ubiquitous headphone/MP3 sound . Despite the naysayers, there is no need to argue the case for using corrective sound shaping. Because, as Alex Ross pointed out in a recent New Yorker article , corrective sound shaping is a done ...

A short while ago we were told by Universal Music ceo Max Hole that the problem with classical music in London is that it is performed in elitist state-of-the-art concert halls. Now we are being told by former Universal Music recording artist Simon Rattle that the problem with classical music in London is that there is no elitist state-of-the-art concert hall to perform in. If we overlook the irony it is good that sound is back on the agenda, but it is also important that the right agenda is pursued. Unlike other blogs which have opportunistically jumped from the Max Hole to Simon Rattle bandwagon, On An Overgrown Path has been consistent in its position that nada brahma - sound is god . Back in 2008 the question was asked here Does the sound matter anymore? and there have been numerous posts discussing the importance of concert hall sound . But recently my position has shifted as I have recognised the irreversible and fundamental change in the way music - including classical...

An ace performance by the Britten Sinfonia and James MacMillan at their Norwich concert last night provided much food for thought. Centrepiece of the programme was James MacMillan's new oboe concerto which confirmed that having something to say is more important than conforming to a fashionable musical 'ism'. A forward looking yet sombre central slow movement was followed by an extrovert finale that could only have come from the composer of Veni, Veni, Emmanuel . The new work was passionately advocated by Britten Sinfonia co-founder Nicholas Daniel who has done so much to extend the oboe repertoire. It was illuminating hearing members of the audience talking about the concerto after the performance. Most of them were there for the Beethoven rather than the MacMillan. But the consensus was that new music can be true to itself without making the audience run a mile. However, it was the second half performance of Beethoven's Second Symphony, superbly conducted by James M...

Regular readers will know that in five decades of concert going I have been fortunate to hear most of the world's top orchestras. You name them, I have heard them, from Berlin, Amsterdam and Vienna, from London and Scotland, from New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles and from many other places. Wonderful orchestras, every one of them; but that is not enough to guarantee a great performance. For in the concert hall as in Shelley's Invocation and Elgar's Second Symphony , 'Rarely, rarely comest thou, Spirit of Delight!' If I was a betting man I would not have laid money on the elusive spirit of delight appearing at yesterday's Snape Prom , which was given by the band in my header shot, the Suffolk Youth Orchestra . Of course, it goes without saying that the young musicians in the orchestra are dedicated and talented, as it goes without saying that their conductor Philip Shaw, who is senior county music advisor to Suffolk County Council, and his colleagues ...

Wagner's Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan provide the soundtrack for the images in today's post. Not played through loudspeakers; not played on my iPod; but played live by a top flight symphony orchestra. My photos were taken in the new Jernwood Kiln Studio at Snape during the week long residency by the Buddhist monks from the Tashi Lhunpo Monastery in India, and in the adjacent Britten Studio the Russian conductor Vasily Petrenko was rehearsing the Britten-Pears Orchestra in a programme of Mahler and Shostakovich as well as the Wagner. Predestination is clearly alive and well at Snape , because, as recounted in my recent article , Die Siegers (The Victors), was Wagner's planned but unwritten opera, which was to be based on a Buddhist legend. There is also, of course, a local connection; Britten's church parable Curlew River drew on a Buddhist meditation on the transience of life. During their week's residency the monks of Tashi Lhunpo Monastery created a...

Iterations are the way forward for classical music. In the continuing quest for new audiences the iterative process currently involves new music , new composers , new media , new recorded music distribution models , new performance venues and new pricing structures . Over the weekend Aldeburgh Music contributed another iteration with Tarantula in Petrol Blue . This new opera was performed in Snape Maltings using local youngsters supplemented by professional singers. A first-rate but uncompromisingly modern score by Anna Meredith was coupled somewhat uncomfortably with a populist but surprisingly dark text by children's author Philip Ridley . His lines 'If you do what I say/You can chew my gum all day' convey the spirit of the iteration. Street cred was in abundance at Snape last night. Arias were sung via mobile phones, skateboards appeared on stage, McDonalds was among the product placements and amplification, which favoured male voices, was the order of the day. 30 ye...

Harrison Birtwistle dominates the 2009 Aldeburgh Festival. The two week festival in June includes no less than four performances of a double bill of newly commissioned music theatre pieces from Birtwistle. These fully-staged world premieres will be the first festival performances in the new 340 seater Britten studio , which is at the centre of Snape's new creative campus . Aldeburgh has long and close connections with Harrison Birtwistle's unique style of music theatre, and his controversial Punch and Judy was premiered at the festival back in 1968. Four decades later Aldeburgh is presenting the world premieres of Birtwistle's Semper Dowland, semper dolens theatre of melancholy, and The Corridor a scena for soprano, tenor and six instruments. Ryan Wigglesworth conducts the London Sinfonietta with Elizabeth Atherton soprano and Mark Padmore tenor. Poet David Harsent provides the libretto for The Corridor and the two works are directed by Peter Gill. As well as four per...