On An Overgrown Path

Many more people listen to classical music on streaming services than attend live concerts. Streaming is forcing important changes on recorded classical music, and these changes are little understood, or, in some notable cases, not understood at all. As an example, on the music industry-endorsed Slipped Disc  classical influencer Norman Lebrecht gives an enthusiastic welcome to Apple Classical , saying:  'In a Shostakovich tenth symphony from Berlin, the internal definition seemed to me clearer than the orchestra’s own-label recording and, weirdly, than my aural memory of hearing it in the hall. If this is to be the future quality of sound, bring it on'.  In his  linked article for  The Critic headlined Apple of My Ear Lebrecht explains that he auditioned Apple Classical using the Dolby Atmos/Apple Spatial Audio format. So we need to dig down into the use of PR-speak such as "the sound on Apple is as good as it gets, actually better" by a prominent music critic

Lukas Fierz knows a thing or two about classical music, and he has added this thought-provoking comment to my post Are concert halls half-empty or half-full? That the "normal" classical concerts (recitals, sonata evenings, orthodox orchestral concerts) are a dying routine is clear since the end of last century.  No diet plan, no protests nor petitions will prevent further slow death from starving.  Priority should rather be to resuscitate the dying routine with the novelty, relevance, interest, adventure and thrill that attracts public and fills halls. Some try and even manage to do this. And only those will survive.  Ambient Church is a concert series where weird meets mindfulness : it presents meditative, devotional, and minimal music in churches around Brooklyn. Featured album by ambient electronic composer Steve Roach was recorded live at the Church of the Heavenly Rest, NYC in June 2022. Defending the status quo is not the answer . Classical music needs to bring on

That CD above features the shakuhachi flute . It was originally used by the monks of the Fuke Zen Buddhist sect in the practice of suizen (blowing meditation), and for those wanting to learn more Blowing Zen by Ray Brooks is recommended. Below is an excerpt from the Heart Sutra in a translation used at Zen Mountain Monastery , Mount Tremper, New York. In the Buddhist context emptiness is not nihilistic: it does not refer to a conceptual ground zero.  Emptiness refers to transcendental impermanence - the absence of ego, and the absence of judgement and discrimination.  John Cage was heavily influenced by Zen , and there is so much the classical music industry could learn from Zen and other wisdom traditions, if it would simply  put egos aside  and listen,. As Aaron Copland explained , "When the audience changes, the music changes". Technology and lifestyle changes mean classical audiences are impermanent . Just as performance styles, concert conventions, musicians, concer

That is Alma Mahler in the photo. In July 1940 she fled from unoccupied Marseille in France across the Pyrenees to neutral Spain in an escape masterminded by American Varian Fry's Emergency Rescue Committee. She escaped with the Czech writer Franz Werfel , and in her luggage were several Mahler manuscripts, among them Das Lied von der Erde and the the score of the first three movements of Bruckner's Third Symphony.  Netflix docudramas are not my thing. But I watched the first episode of the strangely titled Transatlantic as I am familiar with the story of Varian Fry on which the series is very, very, very loosely based. I will say no more about Transatlantic , except that I won't be watching the other five episodes.  For those who prefer the facts over screen bait, there are two Overgrown Path posts about the Varian Fry era. Walking the walk with Alma Mahler recounts my retracing of the route taken by Varian Fry's escapees, and Art in the Age of Mechanical Repro

Classical music has a schizophrenic relationship with sound quality. On the one hand there is an obsessive preocuppation with hideously expensive 'acoustically perfect' concert halls . On the other hand recorded classical music has been chased down the rabbit hole of lo-fi by MP3s, streaming, ear buds, and mobile listening, and rarely - if ever - is sound quality mentioned in reviews of CDs . So it is not surprising but still disappointing that a major initiative by one of the largest classical labels to open the debate about recorded sound quality has passed unremarked, while classical's great and good continue their demands for yet another 'acoustically perfect' concert hall.  Warner Classic's rerelease of Sir John Barbirolli's legendary Sibelius recordings are labelled as 'remastered'. But what is remastering? Mastering and remastering are two very different processes. When a recorded is mastered to CD very little is done to the sound

One of the many downsides of our clickbait obsessed culture is the neglect of not very clickbait-able J S Bach. To compensate for that in a very small way this post highlights some old and new, straight and not so straight, recordings of Bach's music that have given me particular pleasure recently.  For 38 years Valentin Erben was cellist of the Alban Berg Quartet. In 2020 at the age of 75 Valentin Erben recorded the Bach Cello Suites framed by nine organ chorales played by his son Sebastian Erben.  The three CDs were recorded by the Paladino label in Marienkapelle & Bruckner-Orgel, Stiftskirche, St. Florian, Austria and were released last year. Back in 1999 the German jazz pianist Thomas Gabriel recorded the CD Bach Jazz  with his trio. There is certainly no shortage of jazz treatments of Bach with Jacques Loussier's as the gold standard. But the Thomas Gabriel Trio's interpretation stands out due to its innovative but sensitive use of improvisation. Ther