Man in the Holocene

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Graphic by M C Escher


Birds that feed on fish; their excrement will form the beginning of an oasis in which human beings can live, until the next stream of lava smothers it all.


Max Frisch - Man in the Holocene

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Dare to be different

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Years ago when I was presenting on radio , the executive producer told me that my programme should dare to be different. Which was very wise advice. But sadly, in the intervening years there has been a massive shift away from difference and towards uniformity. This shift is driven by the ubiquitous media algorithms which dictate that if you like this crap, we will serve you an unvarying diet of very similar crap. And social media's friends, followers and likes are today's currency of uniformity. However, thankfully a few notable examples of daring to be different have crossed my path recently.  In the past I have argued that there is too much Mahler . And that is a view I still hold. But if we must have more Mahler, let's make it different. Which is what the Mahler Academy Orchestra conducted by Philipp von Steinaecker  have done. The Mahler Academy Orchestra is part of the Gustav Mahler Academy Bolzano-Bozen. This was founded by Claudio Abbado to provide mentoring for ...
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Travels beyond TripAdvisor

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These photos were taken on my recent spirit quest in Morocco to the Sufi shrine of Sidi Chamharouch, which is seen above. A 75 minutes drive from Marrakech brought me to Imlil where the road ends and the mountains begin. The hamlet of Sidi Chamharouch - which is one of those blessed places which returns a blank in a Trip Advisor search - is at an altitude of 2350 metres and is reached by a tough and potentially dangerous two hour climb up a rocky path. Access is impossible for wheeled vehicles and supplies are brought in by the mules seen in my photos. Beyond Sidi Chamharouch is Jebel Toubkal, which at 4,167 metres is the highest mountain in North Africa. During my trek I was struck by the similarity between the High Atlas and Ladakh on the border of India and Tibet . Film director Martin Scorsese was also struck by the similarity. With Tibet a no-go zone he used this region for location shooting of his 1997 movie Kundun ; this depicts the Dalai Lama 's flight into exile fro...
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The purpose of puffery and closed-mindedness

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Two contrasting responses from America to my post Third rate music on Naxos' American classics? Flinging merde - ' Granted some of the stuff that Naxos has packaged in that series has been less than distinguished but operating in a cultural establishment where critics treat every cow patty ever dropped by the likes of Alwyn (above) and Bax and Finzi and Michael Tippitt (sic) as if it were fois gras, Clements is hardly in a position to fling merde' - from Sequenza21 , and I'm sure Norman Lebrecht would approve of that misspelling of Tippett. The true beauty of the effort - ' Personally speaking I expect listener reaction to concert music is heavily dependent on emotional mood and cultural/historical context . The concept of "ratings" and "tiers" for composers is pretty much an over-rated specialization of critics, which serves the purpose of puffery and closed-mindedness. My father is the American composer George Frederick McKay (photo be...
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Good enough for Toscanini, Ormandy and Stokowski

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Edmund Rubbra's Brahms Variations And Fugue On A Theme By Handel Op. 24 was performed in the 1940s and 50s by Arturo Toscanini and Eugene Ormandy, and his Rubbra's Fifth Symphony was recorded by Sir John Barbirolli and programmed by Leopold Stokowski. Yet today Rubbra's music is rarely if ever heard in the concert hall. So we are fortunate that it has been better served in the recording studio. Notable recordings include Richard Hickox's indispensable survey of all the symphonies for Chandos , supplemented by compelling interpretations by Norman del Mar, Tod Handley, Sir Adrian Boult, and the composer. (But strangely, Rubbra's Brahms Variations is missing from the current CD catalogue.) But why has Rubbra failed to gain traction in the concert hall? Why, for example, in an age when accessible trumps challenging , is Rubbra's Fourth Symphony virtually unknown? Why is his music so neglected when the Lark Ascending consistently tops popularity polls, and Robert L...
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Classical music's televisual bleak midwinter

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In the Bleak Midwinter is the title of Tony Palmer's new film portrait of Gustav Holst which was premiered on BBC TV over Easter weekend. And In the Bleak Midwinter is also prettty good summary of where the film stands creatively. The new film, which received much sycophantic pre-broadcast hype, is an anachronism. 1971 would be a more appropriate production date than 2011, except that forty years ago the film's many production flaws would not have been tolerated. These include clunky editing, an obtrusive low frequency rumble on many of the purpose recorded music sequences, poor colour matching between disparate footage, lack of establishing shots showing both conductor and musicians in performance sequences, and presenter Stephen Johnson repeatedly glancing off camera as if to seek reassurance that someone is still watching. In the Bleak Midwinter is a televisual conflation of Karajan's 1970s Unitel films , Ken Russell's Malvern Hills period , and Palmer's ow...
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Variations on an Ukrainian Folksong

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A virtue signaling opportunity for pianists is provided by Sir Malcom Arnold's Variations for Piano on an Ukrainian Folksong . This was written for and premiered in 1949 at the Wigmore Hall by John Kuchmy , who was of Ukrainian descent.  John Kuchmy was born in Canada in 1912 and became a naturalised UK citizen in 1973. A violinist colleague of Sir Malcolm's in the London Philharmonic Orchestra, he was also as a talented pianist who performed Beethoven Concertos with the the London Philharmonic.  Memories of when my path briefly crossed with Sir Malcolm Arnold in Word quickly spread that the old composer had lost it . Those who like me abhor Trump's megalomania can take some solace in Dudjom Rinpoche 's explanation that "You know, don't you, that all these around us go away, just go away".
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Audiences need permission to like unfamiliar music

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That photo of Sir Malcolm Arnold and Julian Bream appears on the late composer's website . Ten years ago I was literally very close to Sir Malcolm's music. He spent his final years being tended by his carer Anthony Day in Attleborough just a few miles from where I live in Norfolk. I managed Sir Malcolm's website and one of my first posts  about his music dates from that time. Following Sir Malcolm's death in 2006 I never lost my appreciation of his music, but it featured less frequently in my listening. However, recently I have returned to his symphonies, and listening to them again has raised some important questions. His nine symphonies are the product of a master craftsman. They move forward from Mahler and Shostakovich, yet should be immediately accessible to contemporary audiences saturated in the music of those two composers. But, despite this, Sir Malcolm Arnold's symphonies remain unknown outside a small circle of admirers. Why? Let me make it clear ...
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Wagner, Mahler and Shostakovich all sound like film music

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In a typically thoughtful contribution to my post Why not play the premier league composers more often? Richard Bratby - who is professionally involved in classical music - mused "speaking solely from my own experience - there is a very noticeable falling-off in ticket sales when a symphony orchestra programmes pre-Beethoven repertoire, irrespective of the quality of the performance or the music, or the energy with which it is marketed. But why?" Now Kea has answered Richard's question with the following comment: Wagner, Mahler, Shostakovich, etc, all sound more or less like film music (or -- more accurately -- film music sounds more or less like recycled bits of Wagner, Mahler, Shostakovich, etc) and therefore don't require any intellectual involvement or serious effort to listen to. Understanding the music of Bach, Mozart or Haydn, etc (or for that matter Schumann, Brahms, Webern, Cage, etc) actually requires people to listen actively rather than being pulled alo...
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New technology meets new music

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Prompted by my recent Theremin and variations article a regular 'pathfinder' in Europe has sent me a link to a wonderful article on Edgard Varèse and Léon Theremin . Varèse is seen here together getting to grips with the new technology. The article is in French, but it is a fascinating document well worth translating with Babel Fish. Now read about contemporary composers and the theremin . 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 other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
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Critical Mass

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I'm a big fan of Marin Alsop . But last night her BBC Prom performance with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra playing her own sequence of the suites from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet was strangely unsatisfying. Tempi were pulled around, and rather than adding to the tension the wayward performance weakened it. When it finished I wanted some 'in your face' music making that was over the top, but which really worked. So as Marin Alsop was a pupil of Bernstein's I put on his 1971 recording of his own Mass , a work I don't listen to very often. Is Mass Bernstein's unrecognised masterpeice? Or is it a failed experiment in using the vernacular and exploiting street chic? (But wasn't the 'parody mass' a legitimate renaissance musical form which exploited contemporary music such as L'homme arme ?) My view used to be that Mass was simply a failed experiment, but I have to confess I am slowly moving towards the view that it may be a misunderstood m...
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