On An Overgrown Path

In his latest rant Norman Lebrecht tells us: "It is no coincidence that the nine symphonies of Vaughan Williams have only ever been performed once as a cycle by Richard Hickox and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in the mid-Nineties for the curates egg, excellent as it is in parts, is not recommended to be consumed whole", and goes on to accuse English music of chauvinism, among several other vices. In fact the complete Vaughan Williams symphonies have been performed seriatim on two other occasions, but at the time there were only six of them. The first cycle of all the then published symphonies was performed in the 1951-2 season by the Hallé Orchestra , five of them conducted by the inimitable John Barbirolli, the odd man out was the Sea Symphony (with its Walt Whitman text), for which the baton was taken by Ralph Vaughan Williams himself. A n anecdote from this Hallé cycle reminds us of life before jet set maestros and concert podcasts. When the Sea Symphony was repe...

"One of television's most imaginative film-makers has condemned Mark Thompson's leadership of the BBC as a 'catastrophe' and accused the corporation of undermining its worldwide reputation by insulting the intelligence of viewers. Tony Palmer, who has won more than 40 awards including Baftas, Emmys and, uniquely, the Prix Italia twice, criticised the director-general after the BBC turned down a documentary of his. The film, about English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, has been produced by Five instead. Palmer said he received an extraordinary rejection letter from a BBC commissioning editor explaining that, 'having looked at our own activity via the lens of find, play & share', it had been decided the film did not fit with 'the new vision for [BBC] Vision' . Bizarrely, Palmer said, the letter concluded: 'But good luck with the project, and do let me know if Mr. V. Williams has an important premiere in the future as this findability might ...

Walt Whitman's line 'Behold the sea itself' opens Ralph Vaughan William's Sea Symphony * in a huge wave of sound that breaks over the audience. Hearing RVW's stroke of genius again at Friday's opening Prom performed by Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra excited many resonances. Alex Ross' tweet that "the opening gesture of Vaughan Williams's Sea Symphony carries me away every time" resonated with these words written by that great editor and publisher Robert Giroux ** for the introduction to Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain : In books that become classics ("A classic is a book that remains in print" - Mark Van Doren ) the opening words often seem to be inevitable, as if they possibly could not have been otherwise - "Call me Ishmael," "Happy families are all alike," "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." The opening of the Sea Symphony may be bold and inevita...

My two photos were taken at the sessions in November 1970 and January 1971 for Sir Adrian Boult's classic EMI recording of Ralph Vaughan Williams morality The Pilgrims Progress, which is based on John Bunyan's allegory of the same name. The recording was made in the Kingsway Hall , and Sir Adrian can be seen conducting the soloists, and London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir above. The lower photo was taken in the control room during a playback, and shows from left to right, Ursula Vaughan Williams, Christopher Bishop (producer), Sir Adrian Boult, John Noble (The Pilgrim), Ian Partridge, Gloria Jennings, Christopher Parker (balance engineer), in front John Alldis (chorus master) and Sheila Armstrong. Photo credits Godfrey McDominic/EMI. The theme of my Overgrown Path radio programme at 5.00pm UK time this Sunday (Oct 7) will be Pilgrims of the Soul , and I will be playing the Prologue and Act 1 of this recording of The Pilgrim's Progress in the second part of the pr...

Ursula Vaughan Williams died on October 23 2007 aged 96. She married Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1953, and contributed to several of his later works, including the magical Serenade to Music which sets words from The Merchant of Venice . The photo above was taken at the 1971 sessions for Vaughan William's Pilgrims Progress , and shows Ursula Vaughan Williams on the extreme left. The Guardian obituary reminds us that, as well as contributing to her husband's work, Ursula Vaughan Williams provided librettos to a veritable who's who of twentieth century composers including Gerald Finzi , Alun Hoddinott , Herbert Howells , Elisabeth Lutyens , Elizabeth Maconchy , Anthony Milner , Alan Ridout , Phyllis Tate and Malcolm Williamson. So ends an important chapter in the history of modern music. Although, sadly, it may not be recognised as such everywhere. ... Soft stillness and the night Becomes the touches of harmony. The Merchant of Venice, Act V Here's a topical mix of Vaug...

'The Composer must not shut himself up and think about art, he must live with his fellows and make his art an expression of the whole community - if we seek art we shall not find it' ~ Ralph Vaughan Williams, Royal College Music Magazine 1912 'It is better to be vitally parochial than to be an emasculate cosmopolitan. The great names in music were at first local and the greatest of all, Johann Sebastian Bach , remained a local musician all his life' ~ Ralph Vaughan Williams, Abinger Chronicle, 1939. As his anniversary year draws to a close my photos show Ralph Vaughan Williams in his local community of Dorking , Surrey. The lower photo shows him outside St. Martin's Church, Dorking with Isadore Schwiller and Gerald Finzi . Schwiller led the Leith Hill Orchestra for many years, and his eponymous quartet gave the first performance of RVW's String Quartet No. 1 in 1908, and played in the 1949 private performance in Dorking of the Fantasia on the 'Old 104th...

During my time at EMI commissioning power was split between the central International Classical Division - where I worked - and local operating companies. The International Classical Division  (ICD) controlled the big budgets needed for the international stars such as Herbert von Karajan, Mstislav Rostropovich, André Previn and Riccardo Muti. While the local companies had smaller budgets for recording projects with local musicians: for instance EMI UK commissioned Sir Adrian Boult's recordings from their local budget. The ICD had to propose a major recording projects to the local operating companies around the world who would give their sales estimate. Only if the global sales forecasts recovered the cost of the proposed project would it be green-lighted.  This democratic but flawed A & R approval process was originally put in place by EMI's senior management to curb Walter Legge's penchant for recording music he was passionate about but which the record buying pu...

It will surprise many to learn that my headline is supplied by Ralph Vaughan Williams. He was one of a group of composers, which included Gustav Holst, John Ireland and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, who met in the late 1890s to discuss William Morris' brand of socialism , and Vaughan-Williams' proposition that 'the moderate man is contemptible' was the subject of one of their debates. Vaughan Williams was a leading figure in the English folk music revival and the pentatonic scale, which is the common foundation of folk music around the world, links the English rural tradition to African American spirituals. The presence of the Afro-English Samuel Coleridge-Taylor in Vaughan Williams' circle indicates that at the time racial prejudice was less virulent in Britain than in America, which is why that peerless exponent of the African-American spiritual Paul Robeson chose to live in England from 1928 to 1939 where he was able both to perform and pursue his radical politics. ...

The sad news comes from America of the death of the baritone John Noble after a long illness. He was born in 1931 and studied mathematics at Cambridge University. While still a student at Cambridge in 1954 he sung the part of Pilgrim in Ralph Vaughan William's The Pilgrim's Progress and went on to a professional career which included singing the role in the EMI recording under Sir Adrian Boult in 1970/71. The header photo above was taken in the Kingsway Hall control room during the recording and John Noble is in the centre foreground with, from left to right, Ursula Vaughan Williams, Christopher Bishop (producer), Sir Adrian Boult , Ian Partridge, Gloria Jennings, Christopher Parker (balance engineer), in front John Alldis (chorus master) and Sheila Armstrong. John Noble's other recordings included Britten's Albert Herring for Decca, Verdi's Macbeth and Don Carlos for HMV, and Finzi's In Terra Pax for Lyrita. He also frequently sung the role of the Christus ...

In their 1951-2 season the Hallé Orchestra perfomed all six of the symphonies Ralph Vaughan Williams had then written. Five of them were conducted by the inimitable John Barbirolli , while No. 1, the Sea Symphony with its Walt Whitman text, was conducted by Vaughan Williams himself. When the symphony was performed in Sheffield with the composer conducting, the orchestra was a 'cello short, and at Vaughan William's request Barbirolli, a talented 'cellist, took the vacant seat. I was reminded of this story when listening to Jordi Savall and Hesperion XXl's superb new CD Estampies & Danses Royales . The programme of music from the thirteenth century Chansonnier du Roi is for instrumental forces only, so soprano Montserrat Figueras (aka Mrs Savall) wasn't needed for the sessions. But she wasn't going to miss the fun, and there she is on the recording playing the kithara, a rare instrument which featured here recently . Fun is what this new release is real...

Ralph Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis is one of his best known works, and Tudor church music was a major influence on the composer. During 2008 I am playing all the Vaughan Williams symphonies on my Future Radio programme , and this Sunday (Feb 17) it is the turn of the Eighth Symphony. This for many, including me, is one of his finest works, and it certainly destroys the myth of the composer as a backward looking English pastoralist, with its scoring for vibraphone, xylophone, tubular bells, glockenspiel and three tuned gongs. I'm coupling all the Vaughan Williams Symphonies with choral music from Thomas Tallis . This will be taken from the splendid new 10CD box of Tallis' complete works at bargain price from Brilliant Classics sung by the Chapelle du Roi directed by Alistair Dixon . Tallis also composed a number of instrumental works which are included in the box. They are not of the same peerless quality as his choral works, but are, nevertheles...

Authentic performance is conventionally defined as played on original instruments and in an original style (without vibrato etc), but performances in 'authentic' surroundings can add an equally valid frisson . Norwich Priory became a Benedictine Monastic Priory five years after its foundation in 1096, and the Norman groundplan is the most authentic of any English cathedral. Among many glories the cloisters, which unusually for a dissolved house remain intact, are outstanding. They were burnt down in 1272, and subsequently rebuilt with an unusual covered upper story for the monks to use for work and contemplation in winter. (It is a common mistake to think cloisters were simply used by monks walking in silent, contemplative circles. Together with the Chapter House and church they were a central point for the monks, used for working, reading and writing. When I arrived to stay in the Benedictine L'Abbaye Sainte-Madeleine du Barroux I didn't know the etiquette of monast...

Winter sky over North Norfolk this afternoon. Now playing - Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1 by Ralph Vaughan Williams , Sir Adrian Boult conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra on EMI LP ASD 2847. The Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1 was based on tunes collected from King's Lynn fisherfolk. The town is about 20 miles from where I took this photograph today. In the sleeve notes for the LP Michael Kennedy writes that the Rhapsody "begins and ends with a musical description of the Fens landscape, misty and mysterious ..." Now read about November woods from a brazen romantic . Photograph (c) On An Overgrown Path 2007. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

I want the idea to be universal and to apply to anybody who aims at the spiritual life whether he is a Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Shintoist or Fifth Day Adventist. That is the editor of the English Hymnal, composer of that great hymn tune Down Ampney ('Come Down, O Love Divine') and bodhisattva Ralph Vaughan Williams speaking. He is explaining why in the libretto of his opera The Pilgrim's Progress he changed the name of the central character in John Bunyan's allegory from Christian to Pilgrim. Given that the work was composed between 1944 and 1949 his diminution of the Seventh Day Adventists and omission of Muslims and Hindus is understandable. Sir Adrian Boult's 1971 recording of The Pilgrim's Progress should be in every CD collection. The cast that includes John Noble as the Pilgrim , Wynford Evans (who sings the role of Pliable!), John Carol Case, Sheila Armstrong, Ian Partridge, Robert Lloyd, Norma Burrowes, and Alfreda Hodgson and they are captured in...

Sunday 11th December - to Cambridge for the official start of our Christmas with Music for Advent and Christmas sung by the Fairhaven Singers in Jesus College Chapel . (The ceiling of the nave decorated by William Morris is pictured above). How fortunate we are here in Norfolk to have top class choirs, and the Cambridge college chapels, almost on our doorstep. This imaginatively planned concert ranged from the medieval to the 20th century. The 15th century was represented by the anonymous In dulci jubilo , sung in three verses each harmonised by a different composer in the form of Praetorius , Pearsall and Bach . From the 20th century came Vaughan Williams ( The blessed son of God from his cantata Hodie of 1945), the anthem Vox Dicentis of 1911 by Emmanuel College organist Edward Naylor , and from 1987 Will Todd's A boy is born . The Fairhaven Singers were formed twenty years ago, and give around five concerts a year in Cambridge college chapels and the West Road Concer...

This year's BBC Proms season includes ' Nick Drake - An Orchestral Celebration ' with Jules Buckley and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. That is Nick in the photo above; on the night in 1974 he died at the tragically young age of 26 a disc of the Brandenburg Concertos was on the record player in his room , and Black Eyed Dog , one of the last tracks he recorded before he died, has striking similarities to the Preludio of Bach's Lute Suite in E Major. But there is also an important and little-known contemporary connection between Nick Drake and the world of classical music. While at Cambridge University Nick met and worked with fellow student Robert Kirby. When Nick recorded his first album Five Leaves Left he chose Robert Kirby to arrange and conduct the backing for the majority of the tracks using strings, brass and woodwind. It is widely acknowledged that these arrangements were a major contribution to the success of the album and also to Nick's next LP Bryter Late...

The infuriating thing is that the BBC can be both so good and so bad within a very short space of time. On Saturday's CD Review on Radio 3 Jonathan Swain reminded us just how good the BBC can be. His review of the available recordings of Ralph Vaughan Williams' Job - A Masque For Dancing was a textbook example of informed and intelligent radio. His advocacy of the work was so powerful that I listened again to Tod Handley's 1984 LP of this overlooked masterpiece as soon as the programme finished. The bad thing is that Jonathan Swain, and several other excellent presenters, have been sidelined to specialist review and overnight programmes as Radio 3 continues to trade excellence for access . Clearly BBC director general Mark Thompson never listened to Russell Brand on Radio 2 . I also suspect that Radio 3 controller Roger Wright doesn't spend enough time listening to his own station's output. Jonathan Swain's passionate case for Job was a million miles from ...

So Abbey Road studios are not for sale . EMI's owners say there will be a 'revitalisation project' instead. Just like the record label I guess. But the myth continue to grow. Doug Ramsey, a writer I admire and who invariably gets his facts right, tells us : Sir John Barbirolli conducted the premiere performance of Vaughan Williams' Symphony No. 5 at Abbey Road. In fact Ralph Vaughan Williams himself conducted the premiere performance of his Fifth Symphony at a Promenade Concert on 24 June, 1943 in the Royal Albert Hall. Sir John Barbirolli's classic EMI recording of RVW's Fifth, one of the great achievements of the gramophone capturing one of the great achievements of twentieth century symphonic writing, also happened elsewhere. It was made in May 1962 in the Kingsway Hall. My header photo shows Glorious John in the Kingsway Hall control room marking his score at the final climax of the Passacaglia of the symphony during the sessions. Searches indicate that h...

'The pause is as important as the note' ~ Truman Fisher We start a summer of travelling tomorrow with a flight to Morocco, so the tempo of posting will slow markedly. While I'm away do read other great music blogs here , but why not escape the tyranny of league tables and explore the long tail of music blogs over here ? But don't forget the music continues on my Future Radio programme at 5.00pm UK time every Sunday with a repeat at 12.50am on Monday morning. Here is the forward schedule which starts on April 20 with two modern composers who between them do not have a single note of their music in the 2008 BBC Proms season . April 20 Unique British voices - Peter Maxwell Davies Missa Parvula sung by Choir of Westminster Cathedral; Edmund Rubbra Symphony No 6 played by Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Norman del Mar. (Nice Max connection as I took the photo of the Japanese garden at Dartington Hall where he was a fixture at the Summer School for many years). A...

To start the week two excellent reasons why this new release of Peter Maxwell Davies' chamber music is good news. First, it's great music passionately played by the chamber ensemble Gemini and vividly recorded in the slightly dry acoustics of Studio 1 at the Department of Sound & Recording at the University of Surrey. (The department is very highly rated and has offered a tonmeister course for many years). The main work on the CD is Ave Maris Stella from 1975 which lasts for almost 30 minutes. This is classic early Max, writing before he was seduced by the plush sounds of the symphony orchestra and string quartet. Strange isn't it how composers like Maxwell Davies and Ralph Vaughan Williams produce some of their best works on religous themes yet are non-believers? Worth the purchase price alone is Dove, Star Folded from 2001 which, unusually for Max, is based on a Greek Byzantine hymn; John Tavener had better look out . The second reason why this CD is good news is...