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Programme note for orchestra touring China

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The worst thing for any victim is not the pain that one has undergone, but the knowledge that the culprit is still roaming free, and worse if the victim has to stand in silence while the culprit goes about in the crowd with a show of power. To be in a free country and allowing Chinese leaders to go unchallenged, allowing them to carry on their business as if everything is fine back in China and Tibet, is a DUTY not performed. We protest not because we hate Chinese , but because we want to speak to their conscience or their wrongdoing, and tell them we have not forgotten and that we still protest this, and also to tell the world of the injustice we are suffering at the hands of the brute and the bully, thereby seeking their support.  That extract comes from the essay Protest As Celebration Of Difference by Tenzin Tsundue . After graduating from Madras, South India, Tenzin Tsundue crossed the Himalayas on foot and entered Tibet. He wanted to see the situation in his occupied country
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Can streamed music ever be beautiful?

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Images are of Robert Rich 's double CD Numena + Geometry . CD aesthetics will be too arcane for many. But the ugly environmental impact of streaming in particular and cloud computing in general should concern everyone.  Digital technologies currently use 10% of the world's electricity and produce almost 4% of global emissions. Streamed content accounts for 60% of digital data flows. Netflix alone accounts for 15% of global internet traffic, and 30% of Netflix's energy needs are met by coal. If 70 million streaming subscribers were to lower the quality of their video and audio streams there would be a monthly reduction of 3.5 million tons of CO2e, equivalent to approximately 6% of the total monthly coal consumption in the US.  These are just some of the startling facts in Guillaume Pitron 's book The Dark Cloud , which is an essential read. 
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Who are the real classical role models?

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Confirmation that geniuses are more often not very good human beings is provided in a highly recommended new book by Matthieu Ricard. Born in France in 1946, Matthieu Ricard's parents were the French philosopher and journalist Jean-François Revel  (1924-2006) and the abstract painter and Tibetan Buddhist nun Yahne Le Toumelin  (1923-2023).  As he describes in his memoir Notebooks of a Wandering Monk Ricard grew up in the company of leading French intellectuals. He received a PhD degree in molecular genetics from the Pasteur Institute in 1972, but then abandoned his scientific career to practice Tibetan Buddhism, living mainly in the Himalayas. He is celebrated for his global advocacy of Buddhism as a science of the mind; all his income from books, photographs and conferences is donated to the humanitarian projects run by the Karuna-Sechel Association which he cofounded twenty-two years ago to alleviate the suffering of the most destitute in India, Nepal and Tibet. The art of
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Great music has no independent existence

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Listening to the Amsterdam Sinfonietta's exemplary performance on CD of the Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony reminded me  once again  that I cannot hear that Adagietto without recalling the closing scene of Visconti's Death in Venice . In his autobiographical The Way of the White Clouds Lama Govinda explains how....  Sometimes a glance, a few casual words, fragments of a melody floating through the quiet air of a summer evening, a book that accidentally comes into our hands, a poem, or a memory laden fragrance may bring about the impulse which changes and determines our whole life.   In Mahayana Buddhism the entry point to a transcendent hidden land is known as a beyul . When I first saw Visconti's cinematic masterpiece in 1971 it took me through a beyul to the music of Mahler - which led on to the riches of Bruckner, Wagner and more - and on to an engaging  zeitgeist . For years classical music has struggled unsuccessfully with the challenge of attracting
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Mahler that dares to be different

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At a time when classical music is mired in politically correct mediocrity this new recording of Mahler's Ninth Symphony comes as a revelation. In partnership with the Foundation Euregio Kulturzentrum Toblach the Gustav Mahler Academy has created an instrument collection for the Originalklang-Project (original sound project) for which the instruments of the Vienna Court Opera Orchestra around 1910 have been meticulously reconstructed. The Foundation purchased wind and percussion-instruments and restored them or, in a few cases, had exact copies made. Gut strings are used and players adapt their techniques to the conventions of the time.  Conductor and artistic director of the ‘Originalklang’ project Philipp von Steinaecker  was mentored by Claudio Abbado and as cellist is a founding member of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. He has played principal cello with the English Baroque Soloists and the Orchestre Révolutionaire et Romantique and worked as an assistant for Sir John Eliot
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A tale of two new audiences

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According to his PR spin, Norman Lebrecht’s blog Slipped Disc is the world’s #1 cultural news site, drawing 2 million readers every month . Central to Norman's strategy for building an audience is the use of  controversial techniques alien to the predominantly conservative classical music world. These include  salacious headlines , innuendo, gossip, and deliberate provocation .  Meanwhile the new CEO of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Emma Stenning has embarked on a strategy for building an audience using controversial techniques alien to the predominantly conservative classical music world. These include  multi-media concerts , photography during concerts, and drinks in the auditorium. Slipped Disc 's use of  alien audience-building techniques draws not a whisper of disapproval. But Ms Stenning's use of  alien audience-building techniques prompts howls of disapproval from the same predominantly conservative classical music world. Moreover the howls of disap
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Being particular is not important

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These photos are of my guide Rashid and cook/muleteer Mohammed on my recent trek in Morocco's High Atlas. My listening while in the mountains included Norman Del Mar's recording of Rubbra's Second and Eighth Symphonies for Lyrita and Vernon Handley's Bax Second and Fourth  for Chandos . Both those discs will be familiar to long time OAOP readers, but less familiar may be Einojuhani Rautavaara 's symphonies. Since the 1990s I had known and admired Rautavaara's  Second and Seventh - Angel of Light - Symphonies for Bis and Ondine respectively. But his other symphonies in Ondine's complete cycle were new and very rewarding territory for me. In his booklet essay for the Ondine box set Kimmo Korhonen quite accurately describes Rautavaara's eight symphonies as "one huge journey through life, a voyage of the soul..."  My reading also produced a strong recommendation for like-minded readers. David Darling is an English astronomer, freelance scie
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