On An Overgrown Path

Arguably the most important change in the past decade has been the shift from the mass media reflecting public taste and opinion to the mass media dictating public taste and opinion. That exemplar of the power of the media the X Factor final airs in Britain today and as chaos theory takes effect a UK record store closes every 2.7 days and Borders UK folds . But all is not quite lost. One of the best record retailers in the world is in Belgium and many record stores in that independent thinking country display the Kwadratuur web page above and play the linked audio samples. Despite the Christmas classical releases including such crackers as Sting's If On A Winter's Night , the sole classical representative in Kwadratuur's December 1 selection was the Arditti Quartet's recording of Jonathan Harvey's Fourth Quartet , where it joined albums from Dying Fetus ( sic - in more ways than one), 3 inches of Blood , Wu Fei (which I am told is worth a listen) and others....

Regular reader Bernard Tuyttens gives us the heads-up on the post below from A Sweet Familiar Dissonance as a contribution to the current debate, or should that be despair? about the changes to BBC Radio 3. Tom Strini suggests that the best thing for the future of classical music would be to "embrace its marginality." I tend to "flip-flop" on this issue (if you'll excuse the expression) though most of the time I try to keep a positive outlook. I would like to think there will always be a few people who love classical music - maybe enough to keep it alive indefinitely - but the world we live in is discouraging to a classical music fan. "Singers" who can't read a single note of music make millions of dollars and fans dismiss as "boring" anything that requires the least bit of thoughtful attention. People who have never bothered to listen to even one complete symphony - people who, in fact, may not even realize that the five minute excerpt...

In this session, jazz is not adulterated to Indian music, and neither is the Indian element "jazzed up". Nor do both partners meet halfway in an abstract inhospitable no man's land where they would relinquish their respective characteristics. Each of these musical areas remain respected in their individualities, their purity is left untouched. Everyone of these musicians plays his very own music. Yet, this is really why it is so revealing to hear how musicians of two very widely separated cultures are able to communicate intelligently, how they can play together with superb sensitiveness. That perceptive quote comes from the sleeve notes of the 1967 MPS LP Jazz Meets India on which a duo of horn players provide the improvisatory thread that ties together a jazz trio and three Indian musicians. And the result is precisely what it says on the packet, or rather sleeve note. Jazz Meets India has just been re-released on CD and is not to be missed. Heading the Indian trio ...

More confirmation that dumbing up is classical music's next big thing comes from Belgium. On 18th March the de Singel international arts campus in Antwerp is mounting an impressively wide ranging Britten Happening . The performers include Steven Osborne , Roger Vignoles and Edo de Waart, and a visit to the online box office shows that the Happening is almost sold out. As dumbing up gathers momentum artists need to beware of the shadow effect of dumbing down. Yesterday BBC TV announced a new series of Maestro at the Opera . When it comes to dumbing down both the organisations involved, the BBC and Royal Opera House, have been there and done that . But Mark Elder and Marcus du Sautoy will needlessly tarnish their reputations by appearing on this tawdry TV game show. It is unfortunate that a very talented conductor and an Oxford professor of mathematics have not studied the independent data which shows that not only does dumbing down classical music fail to increase the net a...

George Gershwin's World War 1 draft card. From the US National Archives, Atlanta . John Ogdon programmed Gershwin alongside Boulez and Szymanowski. Read more in The Real Piano Man . With thanks to Bernard Tuyttens in Brussels for the heads up. 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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

A musical polyglot who embraces everything from klezmer to tango, Argentine-born Osvaldo Golijov (right ) is a composer with the rare ability to excite both critics and ordinary concertgoers. A fine example of this talent is his seminal work, “La Pasión Según San Marcos” , which sets the story of Jesus's crucifixion in contemporary Latin America. He invites his listeners to a jubilant Latin carnival, with blaring trumpets, hypnotic percussion, infectious samba and mambo rhythms. Along the way, ecstatic choruses, Gregorian chant and mournful Brazilian ballades wind towards the Kaddish, a fitting way for a Jewish composer to conclude a piece based on the Book of Mark. This magnificent piece, which will be a highlight of the month-long festival to honour Mr Golijov that opens at Lincoln Centre in New York on January 22nd, was commissioned by Helmuth Rilling, a conductor, to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Bach's death in 2000. In less capable hands, a large-scale work featuri...

In Leni Riefenstahl's celebrated film of the 1934 Nazi Nuremberg there is a chilling sequence as Hitler and the other leading Nazis pass through the massed ranks of the Deutsche Arbeiterfront (German Labor Front). The soundtrack for this sequence captures a military band playing Deutsche Largo, a march from the same composer as Junge Marschiert ( Youth Marches ) , which was played as the combined forces of the dreaded SA and SS paraded down Wilhelmstraße in Berlin on January 30th, 1933 to celebrate Hitler's appointment as Chancellor. 'Hitler's Piano Player' is a new book that tells the remarkable story of the composer of these marches. Ernst Hanfstaengl was a German who was educated at Harvard , and lived in America through the First World War before moving to Germany where he worked closely with Hitler as head of the Nazi foreign press bureau. Then, in an extraordinary example of poacher turning gamekeeper he fled the fascist regime, eventially moving to the ...