On An Overgrown Path

"Whereas at the east end there is the altar, lectern and pulpit, each symbolizing in its own way the means of Grace, so at the west end there is a visual and aural expression of man's need to respond to that grace." These were the words of Kenneth Ryder, organist at the 15th century church of St Peter Mancroft in Norwich . He was speaking of the wonderful new organ (see photo above) built in 1984 by Peter Collins for his church. Kenneth Ryder was the driving force behind the three manual Werkprinzip instrument which is modeled faithfully on the organs of northern Germany, and is ideally suited to the works of Bach and other baroque composers. There is mechanical action throughout, and all the sections of the instrument are unenclosed. Just as the organ of St Peter Mancroft is part of the 18th century Germany musical tradition, so Kenneth Ryder (right) was a direct descendant of the Kappelmeisters of Bach’s day. He saw music as an integral part of the liturgy, was ti...

Although The Chorus may not be attracting the audiences in UK cinemas our leading vocal ensembles are packing them into concert venues. Last night The Sixteen with their founder and conductor Harry Christopher were visiting the superb English Perpendiular church of St Peter Mancroft in Norwich (see my post Bach at St Peter Mancroft ). Tallis meets Tippett - medieval meets modern: St Peter Mancroft Norwich seen from the new Forum Pilgrimages are all the rage among vocal groups as well as on this blog (see Pliable's Travels ). I have been listening to the first CD releases from the Monteverdi Choirs Bach Pilgrimage project (which also brought us the sublime Santiago a Cappella disc - see my Pilgrimage post) and will write about that shortly. The Sixteen are on their own Choral Pilgrimage taking an innovative programme of Tallis and Tippett to our great cathedrals, including Canterbury, York, Lincoln, Douai Abbey , and last night St Peter Mancroft in Norwich. (Interestingly St. P...

One New Year's resolution was to make On An Overgrown Path a bit more spontaneous, and a bit less like an online version of the Discovery Channel. So in line with that New Year's Day saw a visit to the church of St Peter Mancroft Norwich for the traditional all Bach organ recital played by their Organist and Master of Music Kenneth Ryder. St Peter Mancroft is in the heart of Norwich, and the present church dates from 1390 when it was attached to the former nearby Benedictine community of St Mary in the Fields. The magnificent 14th Century church is now juxtaposed against the striking 20th Century Forum building which houses Norwich Library and other amenities. The organ is a large three manual Werkprinzip instrument built by Peter Collins in 1984, which is wonderfully suited to music of the baroque period. Fascinating that within a week The Overgrown Path has taken me from the magnificent remains of the Cluniac Priory at Castle Acre , in remote North Norfolk via Vespers at t...

My thread about the importance of the performance space continues with this post. We took a risk at last night's Jacques Loussier Trio concert in St Peter Mancroft Norwich , and opted to sit in the front row of the choir stalls. This put us five feet behind the bass and drums, and within touching distance of the end of Loussier's piano, and in his direct line of sight. It was a calculated risk as I knew Loussier wasn't going to blast us out of our seats, as had happened when we inadvertently got front row seats for a Joe Zawinul Syndicate gig a couple of years back, and ended up sticking Kleenex in our ears! We were rewarded with one of the most musically involving jazz performances we have been to for years. Instead of being in a magnificent fifteenth century English perpendicular church we were in a jazz club. We were not watching the band, we were part of it. I am slightly ambivalent about Loussier's music. But for many of us Loussier's Play Bach LP...

I have been having a friendly debate with fellow blogger Will Benton on the merits of Officium , the best-selling ECM CD made by choral group with the Hilliard Ensemble and jazz saxophonist Jan Garbarek - seen above. Will thinks Officum's mixture of medieval polyphony and jazz improvisation represents dumbing down, I think it is a valid destination on the overgrown path of music exploration. A new viewpoint was given on this debate when we saw the Hilliards and Jan Garbarek performing music from Officium and its companion CD Mnemosyne in Norwich Cathedral last night in the opening concert of the Norfolk and Norwich Festival . Increasingly I find the performance space for a concert is as important as the repertoire or performance standard. Norwich Cathedral Priory was the perfect foil for the soaring music, with the Norman roof of the former Benedictine Abbey gently reflecting and prolonging the wonderful sounds. The five performers (plus sparing percussion for a ...

Jordi Savall's office in Spain was quite certain, he really wanted to give an interview On An Overgrown Path when he was in Norwich. The maestro (above) even phoned me back from his home in Barcelona to say yes, he would definitely find time. I couldn't raise him again on his mobile phone after he arrived in England, but on the morning of the concert I met him at his signing session and he told me to come to the concert venue of St Peter Mancroft at the end of the sound-check at 6.45pm, and he would do the interview between the rehearsal and the 7.30pm concert start. But I arrived at St Peter Mancroft at 6.30pm to find a disaster. The taxi sent to collect him had arrived at his hotel 30 minutes late. So everything was behind schedule and the event manager thought an interview was unlikely. But a message came back from the maestro, he would do the interview after 7.00pm. The sound-check finished late at 7.05pm and as the capacity audience started to fill the church a charm...

This week saw the passing of György Ligeti whose choral work Lux Aeterna touched millions. In the same week articles about the new technology of MP3 downloads featuring music by Mozart and historic performers generated the kind of readership figures On An Overgrown Path that most commercial websites would kill for. If a Google search for MP3, Ligeti or Mozart brought you here I urge you to read on, this article is important. Comment posted to my recent tribute In Memoriam Kenneth Ryder - God rest your soul, sir. I just learned of your passing via my parents. I was one of your original 'Norwich Boys' Choir' members back in the early 70's. For sure you helped shape my musical career. You touched the lives of so many. Roger Hewett , Musical Director, Cirque du Soleil , Montreal, Canada. The fact that the organist and director of music of a church in distant East Anglia could 'touch the lives of so many' on other continents started me down An Overgrown Path ...

That photo was taken when I was interviewing Jordi Savall for a radio programme in 2008. The interview may have taken place fifteen years ago, but the messages in it - particularly the final paragraph - are, sadly, more true today than they ever were. BS Welcome to the 15th century church of St Peter Mancroft in Norwich, and to An Overgrown Path special that celebrates one of the truly outstanding musicians of our time. The viol player, conductor, composer and early music champion Jordi Savall was born in Catalonia in 1941. He started his musical training at the age of six before going on to study at the famous Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Switzerland. He founded the early music ensemble Hesperion XX with his wife the soprano Montserrat Figueras in 1974, and has made more than one hundred highly acclaimed recordings. In 1998 he founded his own record label Alia Vox which has gone on to pioneer new methods of presentating CDs to fight back against the record industry mov...

That photo was taken when I was interviewing Jordi Savall for a radio programme in 2008. The interview has been available as a streamed audio file since then, but it has never been transcribed. However, the enthusiastic response to Timothy Stevens' invaluable transcription of my interview with Jonathan Harvey has now prompted me to undertake the task. The interview may have taken place seven years ago, but the messages in it - particularly the final paragraph - are, sadly, more true today than they ever were. BS Welcome to the 15th century church of St Peter Mancroft in Norwich, and to An Overgrown Path special that celebrates one of the truly outstanding musicians of our time. The viol player, conductor, composer and early music champion Jordi Savall was born in Catalonia in 1941. He started his musical training at the age of six before going on to study at the famous Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Switzerland. He founded the early music ensemble Hesperion XX with hi...

An important 2CD set from an enterprising Seattle record label reminds us that the massive number-crunching power of today's PCs can bring musical benefits beyond the ubiquitous MP3 file download. Acoustics remain a highly fallible science. A number of modern concert halls, including London's Barbican and Royal Festival Halls and New York's Avery Fisher Hall , have all undergone extensive, and expensive, rebuilds in search of the perfect sound, while the computer-less architects of yesterday, who built halls including Amsterdam's Concertgebouw and Bayreuth's Festpielhaus (above), had an infuriating habit of getting it right. In a very thought provoking project Loft Recordings have leveraged modern computing power to demonstrate how a virtual acoustic can be created. The acoustics of Chartres Cathedral in France were mapped using a tone sweep played through three monitor speakers placed in the cathedral crossing (see diagram below), and recorded through micro...

Spent much of this holiday weekend at a performance of all Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes and Fugues. The Russian pianist Elizaveta Kopelman played them magnificently, and the venue was the beautiful St Mary’s Church in Suffolk, a part of the world that time, but fortunately not good music has passed by. This has been a year of cycles, the Tchaikovsky Quartets in January, a wonderful cycle of the Beethoven Quartets by the Borodins in March, the Ring at Longborough, and now the Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues . It has also been a year for music in churches, most memorably a Rachmaninov Vespers in St Peter’s Mancroft in Norwich. But what has this to do with birds? An earlier posting talked about wanting to recall every fork and path that led me to a masterpiece such as the 24 Preludes and Fugues . Well I can recall the path precisely. I was staying in an old house by a river after one of the not so good periods coming back from the worst ever visit of the black dog, and trying to sort out...

My photograph shows the wonderful Wingfield organ. This is a pre- Reformation instrument that has been lovingly reconstructed from a soundboard found in the coffin-house of the churchyard at Wingfield in Suffolk, not far from where I write these words. The music of Tudor composers such as Tallis , Byrd , Bull , Gibbons and Tomkins would have been played on an organ such as this. The full specification is here , and there are more wonderful photographs, and an audio file, on the Guardian website . The instrument has been reconstructed as part of the Royal College of Organists Early English Organ Project , from where my photograph is taken. On An Overgrown Path has also visited fine organs in St Peter Mancroft, Norwich , St-Louis-en-l'Ile, Paris , the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, Berlin , the recently restored Frauenkirche in Dresden , St Thomas', Leipzig , Norwich Cathedral and Oberlin College, Ohio . Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use...

I've always felt a strong link between musical performances and the space they take place in. But my conditioning has meant I've always been biased towards 'historical' performance spaces such as Norwich Cathedral and the beautiful town church of St Peter Mancroft . This year's City of London Festival, which has just started, takes an innovative perspective on music and performance space by linking 20th century music with contemporary architecture. The opening concert was a real show stopper. Officially known as the Swiss Re building after its tenants, but known to everyone in London as the Gherkin because of its unique shape, Sir Norman Foster's extraordinary curved glass skyscraper was opened in 2004. The Festival opener was a performance by contemporary music veterans Singcircle of Stockhausen's Stimmung on the top floor of the Gherkin complete with 360 degree panoramic views of a stunning sunset. Among the other 20th century combinations of music an...