Happy new ears on internet radio

In between programmes of music by Karlheinz Stockhausen, Colin McPhee and Alvin Curran I have been working on three Christmas specials commissioned by Future Radio featuring Tchaikovsky's great ballets. The hour long programmes will be presented by my wife, and musical highlights from each ballet are linked by a summary of the plot. The project has been a delight from start to finish, and not only because my wife is easier on the ear (and eye) than me. What wonderful music Tchaikovsky wrote, and that's a view shared by some pretty influential people.

'The sheer inventiveness of Prince of the Pagodas is extraordinary - so many memorable ideas - as is the sustained brilliance of the orchestral writing. The quality of the music is the equal of the Tchaikovsky ballets, which served as Britten's model for a large part of the score (Ronald Duncan recalls that Britten told him he kept a score of Sleeping Beauty beside his bed while writing the piece)' - from Britten by David Matthews (Haus Publishing ISBN 190434139).

Our programmes use the recordings of the Tchaikovsky ballets made by the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden conducted by Mark Ermler (sleeve above). These were recorded for the now defunct Conifer label in the late 1980s. They were chosen for their authentically Russian style and excellent sound captured in All Saints' Church, Tooting, with the bonus that the wordless chorus in the Dance of the Snowflakes scene in the Nutcracker is sung by the local Halesworth Middle School Choir.

The conductor Mark Ermler (1932-2002) was born in Leningrad and worked with the Bolshoi Theatre as well as Covent Garden. He had a wide repertoire and conducted the first public performance of Prokofiev's last opera Story of a Real Man in Moscow in 1960. Our Christmas ballet specials are being broadcast by Future Radio on FM locally in Norwich, UK and worldwide on the internet on Christmas Day (Nutcracker 6.00pm), Boxing Day (Swan Lake 3.00pm) and New Year's Day (Sleeping Beauty 4.00pm). The audio stream can be launched from the right side-bar where there is also a time zone converter.

In November 2007 Future Radio commissioned an independent listener survey, and this showed that 5.5% of the station's total audience listened to the Overgrown Path programmes, a figure that is not too far behind some of their specialist rock shows. I am only too aware of the danger of comparisons across different data sets, but to give a perspective RAJAR figures show that 1.2% of the total UK radio audience listens to BBC Radio 3.

The results of the Future Radio survey are very pleasing as the basic rule for my programmes has been 'no compromise'. All the works are broadcast complete, there are no long-winded explanations of the music, no cult of the presenter, and no listener phone-ins. Around 95% of each programme is music, and linking announcements are minimised. This allows the music to speak for itself and the listeners to judge the music for themselves.

The composer listings for the five months that the programme has been on air are also strictly 'no compromise' - Pierre Boulez, Elisabeth Lutyens, Colin McPhee, Elizabeth Maconchy, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Vanessa Lann, Lou Harrison, Beata Moon, William Alwyn, Thea Musgrave, Alvin Curran, Paul Creston, Judith Weir, Terry Riley, Rebecca Saunders and many more.

Overgrown Path radio is an experiment that is just a small part of a long tail. But the results of the listener survey show that when you treat your audience as intelligent equals they respond. That is something much bigger radio stations have forgotten. And they have also forgotten the vital point made by Libby Purves' in her book Radio: A True Love Story. "All that you can do is to make - and publicise - the best and most passionately well-crafted programmes you can think of. Ratings have to be watched, but calmly and with a sense of proportion. You have to believe that if even one person is swayed, or inspired, or changed, or comforted, by a programme, then that programme has been worthwhile".


Now playing - Britten's The Prince of the Pagodas Suite with Leonard Slatkin conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Regular readers will know that Leonard Slatkin's lacklustre tenure with the BBCSO did not make me a big fan of his conducting. This Chandos CD, which couples the Britten ballet suite with Colin McPhee's Tabu-Tabuhan and the 1941 recording of Britten and McPhee playing a Balinese transcription for two pianos, is a good summary of Slatkin's period with the orchestra.

The CD is worth buying for the performance of Tabu-Tabuhan which is persuasive, and this is the recording I used for my recent webcast. The Britten suite is useful for those who don't want to invest in Britten's own recording of the complete work, but there is little else to recommend it. The performance sounds under-rehearsed and routine. Fine for a budget release of a concert performance, but not for a full price CD.

More wonderful Tchaikovsky from Russia here.
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Celebrating Easter in music and pictures

Easter Sunday is the date of the annual celebration of Christ’s resurrection. The date of Easter is determined by the lunar cycle, with each Easter Sunday maintaining the same relationship to the preceding astronomical full moon as occurred at the resurrection in 30 AD. Because the Western Christian (Catholic, Anglican and Protestant) and Eastern Christian (Orthodox) churches use different calendars (Gregorian and Julian respectively) Easter is often celebrated on different dates by the two churches. 2007 is one of the exceptional years when the dates coincide, the previous one was 2004 and the next is 2010.

Orthodoxy was made the official religion of Russia in 988, and the photographs with this article were taken by me in the mother church of all Eastern Christians, Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. The Russian Orthodox Church followed the Byzantine musical tradition which excluded women’s voices and any instruments except bells. But while the Greek and Middle Eastern Orthodox Churches restrict their liturgical music to unison chant, the Russian and Balkan churches use polyphony. Large numbers of hymns are included in the Russian liturgy, and, except for several celebrated examples from 20th century composers, the church discouraged musical settings of the text. This means there is no Orthodox equivalent to the masses of Palestrina, Haydn and Mozart.


Easter is the most important festival in the Orthodox calendar, and the liturgical music for the festival combines ancient melodies with harmonisations, or original themes, from 19th and 20th century composers. An excellent overview is available on Apex’s super-budget CD, Russian Chants – Russian Easter Liturgy. The CD is sung by the Liturgical Choir of Moscow under Father Amvrosy, and was recorded in Moscow in 1992 by a Russian production team. The Liturgical Choir was an early product of glasnost, and was founded in 1987 to revive and carry on the great traditions of Russian Orthodox liturgical music. Their programme ranges from ancient monodies to harmonisations by Balakirev (1836-1910) and Kalinnikov (1870-1927), and includes the centrepiece of the Easter celebration, Christ is risen from the dead, sung in Greek, Latin and Slavonic.


The best known concert settings of the Orthodox liturgy are by Rachmaninov (Vespers and Liturgy of St John Chrysostom), Tchaikovsky (Liturgy of St John Chrysostom), and Alexander Grechaninov (Vespers). But there is another little-known gem from Grechaninov, who was a contemporary of Rachmaninov. The choral Passion Week cycle was composed in 1911/2, and was premiered in Moscow in 1912. It was only performed once more before Grechaninov fled to France and then the US following the 1917 revolution. Under glasnost the work was revived in Russia in the 1990s, but has remained virtually unknown in the West.

That is about to change as Chandos has just released a superb new recording with the Phoenix Bach Choir and Kansas City Chorale directed by Charles Bruffy. Grechaninov’s 74 minute setting of hymns and biblical texts may be monumental, but it is also meditative and mystical. The recording made in the Church of the Blessed Sacrament, Kansas City is demonstration quality, and the choirs more than counterbalance any linguistic shortcomings with their superb technique. The recording was made in just two consecutive days, a remarkable achievement for the choirs and soloists as this is a very big a cappella sing with no instruments to hide behind. Well done everyone, and well done Chandos for making their second recording of Grechaninov’s Passion Week. The first was made in Moscow in the 1990s with Valeri Polyansky conducting the Russian State Symphonic Cappella, the new one is already on my shortlist for best CD of 2007.

* Listen to samples and buy MP3 downloads of Grechaninov's Passion Week here.

Now read the good news from Kiev.
All the photos were taken by me in Hagia Sophia during our recent visit to Istanbul. 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

Cure for Tchaikovsky fatigue

My July 2006 tribute to Ruth Schonthal still attracts a lot of readers. So here, as a counterbalance to BBC Radio 3's current Tchaikovsky overload, is a rare opportunity to hear Ruth Schonthal's music on one European radio station that is still not afraid to challenge its listeners.

Amsterdam based Stads FM broadcasts a weekly programme hosted by Patricia Werner Leanse and devoted to women composers and performers. Patricia, who is seen in my header photo, is a mezzo soprano from California. She has lived in the Netherlands since 1989, and also writes for the influential Dutch magazine "Opzij". Her recent recording of the complete vocal music of Marjo Tal with pianist Patrick Hopper (BVHaast # 0302) received considerable attention in Holland.

Radio Monalisa is webcast at 18.00h to 9.00h European Standard Time on Thursdays, and on February 15th broadcasts Ruth Schonthal's 1976 Four Epiphanies - follow this link.

Elisabeth Lutyens is another composer who has featured recently on Radio Monalisa. Now read about her walking with Stravinsky.
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

The arts are about controversy

The danger of all arts broadcasting is that everything is treated as equally important, with a permanent mood of celebration. No one on BBC Radio 3 ever says that some composers are second rate, or that some writing is vapid and some poetry gobbledegook: everything is presented with equal reverence, as if it all had profound importance. You would never believe from listening to Radio 3 that the arts are as much about controversy as about achievement. When I began as Controller there were very few lighter moments on the network, and far too many dull hobby-horses being ridden. The Music Department was particularly susceptible to that favourite feature of the gramophone industry, 'the complete works' - all the quartets, all the sonatas, or whatever. Anniversaries were relentlessly celebrated ...

John Drummond recalls his time as Controller of BBC Radio 3 in the 1980s in his autobiography Tainted by Experience (Faber, ISBN 0571200540). And plus ça change, today BBC Radio 3 starts a celebration of Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky that plays all their music in a week, at the expense of anything else. The BBC's Tchaikovsky Experience is fronted by 'classical jock' of the moment Tom Service, and the nearest it comes to controversy is the chance to vote online for your favourite piece from the Tchaikovsky Top Ten, after listening to a 60 second download of the 1812.

Now try this cure for Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky fatigue.
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

Wrong, wrong, and wrong again Norman

Norman Lebrecht getting it wrong is so commonplace that it hardly justifies comment. Except when it is a journalist on his own paper pointing it out. Here's Fiona Maddocks writing in the Evening Standard.

Wrong, wrong and wrong again, thundered my colleague, Norman Lebrecht, in yesterday's Evening Standard, thereby guaranteeing the BBC's forthcoming Tchaikovsky Experience more curiosity and interest than the corporation's publicity department could have dreamed of affording.

His attack was on the BBC's cultural turpitude in general, and the choice of the all-time "chocolate box" composer for this wall-to-wall, complete works treatment in particular. The BBC, no doubt, can fend for itself. But the view that Tchaikovsky's music is merely decorative and devoid of deeper meaning is now so outdated that I must urge Norman, politely, to get out more.

Recent major studies by Richard Taruskin and Stephen Walsh have reminded us - though our ears tell us plainly - that Tchaikovsky was a key influence on Stravinsky, the towering musical genius of the last century. Shostakovich acknowledged his debt in every note he wrote. The list goes on.

A little known aspect of Tchaikovsky's work featured in a short, perfectly executed concert at the Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Ennismore Gardens (above), for broadcast on Radio 3 on 14 February. The All-Night Vigil Opus 52, or Vespers, sets liturgical texts for mixed voices. Ancient chant combines with the ardent choral writing we know from Tchaikovsky's operas, here stripped bare but still radiant and full-bodied. The challenge to the performers, nearly an hour of vigorous unaccompanied singing, was met with masterly skill by the BBC Singers. Intonation was impressive, their attempt at a Russian sound quality highly creditable.

Three settings by Stravinsky, whose music also forms part of this Radio 3 season, were interpolated. The musical colours here shifted to snowy silvergreys, hushed and pure compared with the burnished golds of the Tchaikovsky. Both composers had decidedly unorthodox relationships with God but these works are a revelation to ear and mind. Those who dismiss Tchaikovsky as sugarladen schmaltz will, if they keep an open mind, discover through his music that the heart has an intellect all of its own.

Now for a bargain CD recommendation of the Tchikovsky Vespers visit Brilliant Russian sacred choral music
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The musical equivalent of area bombing

'The more one listens to Sofia Gubaidulina's music, the less one likes it. Such disenchantment comes, it should be added, from hearing it in quantity. Performed in isolation, her works often give the impression of stark originality. However, placed end to end in this year's BBC composer weekend, they revealed startling limitations of emotional range' writes Tim Ashley in today's Guardian.

Fine, but is it the fault of the composer? Or is it the fault of the BBC for opting out of imaginative programming, and instead choosing the easy, and fashionable, option of the musical equivalent of area bombing? The Russian's are currently in the BBC's bombsights, and a Tchaikovsky Experience is launched on Sunday. Yes, you guessed it right, it includes every note written by Peter Ilyich.

For more on musical area bombing read about Shostakovich and Strictly Come Dancing
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Brilliant Russian sacred choral music

A wonderful concert by the Hermitage Ensemble of Russian singing sacred hymns and folk songs in the beautiful little Sibton Church of St Peter in Suffolk (the ruins of a Cistercian Abbey can be seen close to the church) took me down the overgrown path of Russian sacred choral music.

Two outstanding recent releases from the innovative Dutch super-budget label Brilliant Classics are highly recommended. The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Paris is famous for its tradition of Russian Orthodox chant. In 1967, under their director Evgeni Ivanovitz Evetz, they recorded an anthology of Russian Orthodox Church Music. Evetz was born in Poland of Russian parents, and his status as a Russian 'displaced person,' meant that he made his reputation as a refugee building and conducting choirs, first in Morocco and then in Paris.

The anthology features composers ranging from Rachmaninov and Arensky to many lesser-known figures, and has now been released as a double CD. The sound isn't demonstration quality and the documentation is minimal, which is a shame as it would be nice to learn more about some of the more obscure composers, but at around £7 (US$13) for two hours and forty minutes of outstanding, and authentic, choral singing this is yet another Brilliant bargain.


Rachmaninov's Vespers Op 37 for unaccompanied choir, based on the Russian Orthodox All Night Vigil Service, is one of the works on yet another outstanding Brilliant Classics release. The Vespers are sung by the National Academic Choir of Ukraine in a fine recording made in Kiev Cathedral in 2000. But it is the coupling of the lesser-known Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, Op 31 sung by the Russian State Symphony Capella directed by Valery Polyansky which makes this 3CD box so recommendable.

The Liturgy of St John Chrysostom was composed in 1910 and is the first of Rachmaninov's three major choral works, the others being The Bells (1913) and the Vespers (1915). In the Orthodox Church the term 'liturgy' is the equivalent to the Catholic Mass, and shares the major elements with the Roman rite. Full texts are provided, and at a price of around £10 (US$18) for almost three hours of singing, including three other Rachmaninov rarities, this is yet another outstanding Brilliant Classics bargain.


It may well have been Rachmaninoff’s great admiration for Tchaikovsky which inspired him to write sacred music., just as Tchaikovsky’s Piano Trio, Op. 50 had inspired him to compose a piano trio of his own, Tchaikovsky’s Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, Op. 41 and his setting of the All-Night Vigil, Op. 52 were models for Rachmaninoff’s own liturgical compositions. It is a puzzle as to why Tchaikovsky's two sacred masterpieces are not better known today, but once again Brilliant Classics are poised to, at least partially, rectify that with their recent release of the Liturgy coupled with Alexander Gretchaninov's excellent setting of the Vespers Liturgy Op. 59. This is a 2CD set, the ensemble for the Tchaikovsky is once again the National Choir of Ukraine, while the Gretchaninov is sung by the Bulgarian Mixed Choir. Again it is easy to find these 2CDs for less than £10 ($18) delivered from Caiman Ivia Amazon marketplace) and others.

This music, and these recordings, speaks to us with a passion and directness which is rarely found in our Western world. A little while ago I featured the hand-crafted Bible that is being created by James Pepper at Highland Park Methodist Church in Dallas, and all the illustrations with this article are taken from the Pepper Bible. I recently received the following email from James, and I finish with it because it speaks with the same passion and directness:

Pliable - MP 3, yes I am not that advanced. I can still play my grandfathers one sided 78 of Enrico Caruso and a couple of Spike Jones records, sometimes when I am feeling technical I pull out the short wave radio and listen to the BBC. My TV set glows from the vacuum tubes and I write bibles.

I can still remember as a child a room full of Americans all sitting in our living room in a cottage we rented in Bermuda listening to the World Series because for some odd reason our radio could pick it up and it was the only one on the island that could! The place was packed!

Saint Seraphim is a big thing around here (Pliable - this is a reference to my article Orthodox Church of Saint Seraphim of Sarov). The local orthodox church is named St. Seraphim's, the bishop is a former Baptist preacher so its interesting; And they have an icon painter from Kiev working on the place. Also there is a St. Seraphim's in Moscow that our church is co-ordinating with in our missionary activities in Kazakhstan. We operate a church in Karaganda, we support the local missionaries, a few years ago we bought them a yurt. Karaganda was a gulag but is now a medical school and the students come from all over the Muslim world and they learn English by reading the Bible and we convert a lot of them. One of our missionaries started 30 churches in one year by converting Chieftain. Its very remote.

We went down to the Russian Orthodox Church on Good Friday and stood for the liturgy, it really is something to see. Previously I had made the mistake of kneeling for two hours which is really bad on your legs if you are not used to it. Injured while praying.

* Russian Orthodox Church Music is a 2CD set on Brilliant Classics 5029365765626
* Rachmaninov's Vespers and Liturgy of St John Chrysostom is a 3CD set on Brilliant Classics 5029365621526
* Tchaikovsky Liturgy of St John Chrysostom coupled with the Gretchaninov Vespers is on Brilliant Classics 5028421997629
* Brilliant Classics Russian Archives are well worth visiting for some bargain Gilels, Richter, Kissin and Rostopovich, while travelling away from the Russian theme their new release of the Reger and Hindemith Clarinet Quintets is also a gem.
* All illustrations, with permission from the Pepper Bible, see more via this link.
* The Hermitage Ensemble aim to bring the Russian traditions of church music and the motets of the Eastern Church closer to western audiences. More details from their web site where MP3 audio samples are also available.
* As well as sacred music the Hermitage Ensemble also perform Russian folksongs. Which takes us down another very worthwhile overgrown path to Jazz på Ryska (Jazz in Russia) by the superb jazz pianist Jan Johansson, click on this link for the full story and audio samples.

Now playing - G. I. Gurdjieff, Sacred Hymns played by Keith Jarrett (piano). Although Gurdjieff is often linked with Sufism he claimed to have studied more than 200 religions, and as a boy sung in his local Russian Orthodox Church in Kars (now part of Turkey), and his compositions are linked to Greek liturgical music. Keith Jarrett made this recording in 1980 with the support of followers of Gurdjieff. It is an important, and very undervalued, document.

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If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to 'L'Orgue Mystique' - the music and 'L'Orgue Mystique' - the images