On An Overgrown Path

A recent New York Times article said it all - "As audiences seem to grow older and the public turns its attention away from concertgoing, orchestras around the country are adopting a wide array of methods, from the trivial to the thoughtful, to bring more people into the concert hall. They are hunting for the neophytes, the dabblers and mainly the ungray." A great feature film with classical music at its core is a sure-fire way to attract a new generation of concertgoers . Walt Disney and Leopold Stokowski did it with Fantasia . The project started in 1937 when Walt wanted Mickey Mouse to star in a cartoon version of Paul Dukas' The Sorcerer's Apprentice . Advanced 'specification creep' then set in. The end result was a full-length animated feature with the Philadelphia Orchestra captured in ' Fantasound' by a thirty-three microphone, nine channel, sound system that was years ahead of its time. Hear Stokowski talking about Walt Disney in this 1971...

Milestone Record’s extraordinary 8 CD set ‘ Bill Evans Trio the last waltz’ was recorded on eight successive evenings at Keystone Korner in North Beach, San Francisco in September 1980. Just thirty-two different compositions are featured in the nine hours of music, and nine of those are Bill Evans (right) originals. This is literally music making on the brink. Miles Davis’ Nardis makes five obsessive appearances. Several of these include epic piano solos, and the longest Nardis cut lasts for seven seconds short of twenty minutes. Evans knew he was on the edge, and he wanted to leave his definitive version of Nardis before he went over. The final Keystone session was on September 8th 1980. Seven days later Evans was dead from the effects of cocaine dependency. It is a mark of the importance of Bill Evans that Gyorgy Ligeti cited him as one of the influences on his seminal Etudes for solo piano. The other eclectic influences credited by Ligeti are traditional African music, th...

The big guns really are out at next week's Promenade Concerts. Choose from Verdi's Requiem , Mahler's 3rd and 6th Symphonies, Strauss' Also sprach Zarathustra , and Rimsky's Scherezade. New music includes Boulez and an Esa-Peka Salonen world premiere. My choice of the European Youth Orchestra's Walton 1 as my Prom of the week last week turned out to be a shrewd one. Wow! - didn't those brilliant young musicians play their hearts out? And wasn't John Eliot Gardiner's conducting revelatory in a work miles away from his Baroque roots? The youth orchestras this year have brought a spontaneity and electricity that has made some of the 'London today, Edinburgh tomorrow' visiting orchestras sound positively routine. Wednesday's Missa Solemnis nearly got my vote for the next Prom of the week. But I'm becoming so used to authentic instrument performances that I reserve judgement on this Cleveland Orchestra concert until I've heard it....

"Here then…are some of the harsh facts behind the words ‘severe mental illness’ and ‘serious nervous breakdown’ which the press has been using about me so often lately. Not that I am complaining about the press! – I was thrilled by the sympathetic and wide spread media interest that came my way both before and after my return to the….concert stage" - these words were written by the real ‘ Piano Man’ John Ogdon in 1981. Ogdon (above) was thrust into the limelight in 1962 when he was joint winner, with his friend Vladimir Ashkenazy , of the Moscow Tchaikovsky Competition. He wowed the Moscow audiences with his performances of Rachmaninov, Balakirev and Scriabin, as well as the Tchaikovsky 1st Piano Concerto which became his signature piece. Although Ogdon is mainly remembered today for his stunning interpretations of the Russian romantic repertoire he was also a ceaseless performer of modern music. He studied in Manchester at the same time as Peter Maxwell Davies , who wrote ...

Come in, join us, and have a virtual drink. It’s a quiet celebration with just a few close friends. Pliable celebrates with Elizabeth Schwarzkopf in 1979. For the full story of this photo see below. Exactly one year ago today the first post was uploaded on this blog. Now I’m 166 posts further down an overgrown path. I haven’t changed the world, but I never set out to do that. But the blog has found a voice of its own, and more importantly has also found an audience. It has carved out a place in the new fangled blogosphere. Tracking service Technorati currently rates me 35,855 out of out of the 15.5 million blogs it measures. That puts an overgrown path somewhere in the top 0.25% of all blogs, which for a 'serious music' site covering a lot of early and new music, from Filipe de Magalhaes to Odaline de la Martinez , is very pleasing. Around 500 new readers come on board every day, and an impressive number take RSS feeds . And I know from my IP logs that some surprisingly...

Another blog that has appeared on the radar, and is definite worth visiting, is Musicircus . Tasty morsels on offer there include news that Uri Caine (photo right) is coming to the London Jazz Festival in November. One feature I particularly applaud is a Book of the Month Club. This month it's Richard Powers' novel A Time of Singing . Music blogs, including mine, should give more space to literature and the other arts. My slightly random The bookless Mrs Beckham got a huge response. Musicircus has some acts from outside the 'serious music' arena, it's worth visiting . If you enjoyed this post take an overgrown path to Jacques Loussier close up

Good news - a relatively happy end to the disturbing 'Piano Man' story. The so called ' Piano Man ' was found wandering in a coastal area of Kent in April. His identity was unknown, and he failed to communicate with any of the officials caring for him. The music community took up the story as he showed some ability as a pianist. It has now been confirmed that the mystery man was from Bavaria. After breaking his silence the 20 year German flew home on Saturday. The UK health service and German foreign ministry are not naming the man for confidentiality reasons. So tantalisingly the 'Piano Man' mystery ends in mystery. Can any readers think of any talented young German pianists who have been missing from the concert circuit for the last five months? If you enjoyed this post follow an overgrown path to Elgar's other Enigma

In these days of globalisation and music-like-water it is a delight to write about leading soloists and musicians, including members of the Berlin Philharmonic, working together for a really important cause. International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) is a non-partisan international grouping of medical organisations dedicated to the abolition of nuclear weapons. They work with the long-term victims of nuclear explosions and accidents from Hiroshima to Chernobyl. Their work has been recognised with the 1984 UNESCO Peace Prize, and 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. For the last 21 years IPPNW-Concerts has been working from its Berlin office with top musicians world-wide to raise funds for their work. As well as being a fantastic cause there is some music well worth exploring available on IPPNW-Concerts' own CD label, and in co-productions with Swedish label BIS . These are all live recordings of concerts promoted by IPPNW over the years. There are forty-nine CDs in ...

The Gallic flair for design and style is unique and irresistible. A wonderful example is the blog Netlex News which is where Albert Ayme's beautiful 'Suite en jaune, 1968' to the right is linked from. Netlex News ' simple, sparse, and brilliantly effective graphic style is something every blogger should aspire to. The content is excellent as well. Their post Music against Hatred allows me to seque neatly to my next post......... If you enjoyed this post take an overgrown path to Danish Thread

In a thoughtful comment on my post about Bernstein's Mass a reader suggests exploring some other 'flawed masterpeices' from the same genre. And here is my own contribution to the hunt for hidden gems. Robert Schumann is one of my favourite composers. But I have to confess to never having heard a live performance, or owning a CD (although there are several in the catalogue), of either of his Requiems. So when we were in Avignon recently, and found that not just one, but both these works were being programmed in a single concert we leapt at the opportunity to hear them. Schumann's Requiem Opus 148, scored for SATB, choir and orchestra, was composed in 1852, and follows the conventional liturgical format. The Requiem for Mignon Opus 98b of 1849 is a less conventional work celebrating Mignon from Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre. These works were programmed with Schumann's Nachtlied Opus 108 for choir and orchestra with its pre-echoes of Brahms' Re...

No grandstanding, no false emotions, no veneer of extra-musical pretensions. The music, pure and unadorned, was to be allowed to breathe and speak. In a business where egos can be as inflated as a Bruckner symphony, Mackerras's lack of pretension stands out.... Just a brief taster from a wonderful four page profile of a wonderful musician in this morning's Guardian . Stephen Moss' journalism sets a benchmark mere mortals like me can only dream of reaching. Sir Charles Mackeras sets an example other dotcom maestros can only dream of following. Read it. If you enjoyed this post take an overgrown path to Wot no computers

Popular culture and aspirations are as closely linked as Rolls and Royce. A recent BBC survey measured the press coverage devoted to UK public figures in 2004. This was then used to define who the popular culture icons really are in Britain today. Clear winner was England and Real Madrid footballer David Beckham with a whopping three-quarters of a million column inches devote to him. And second at half-a-million inches was his wife, the former pop singer Victoria Beckham (picture above). The top ten popular culture icons comprised three footballers, three pop singers, three members of the Royal family, and a topless model. Even more recently pop culture icon number two, Victoria Beckham , revealed in an interview with the Spanish magazine Chic that she has never read a book. Popular culture is depressing aspirations. A role model is someone that people copy. Victoria Beckham is a role model, and it is a certainty that millions will emulate her bookless life style. And that means ...

Last night's late Prom was just sensational. From the opening plainchant Te Deum with the singers processing through the promenaders to the closing bars of Arvo Pärt's Dopo la vittoria this was live music making of the highest order. The singing of the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir under Paul Hillier and the organ playing of Christopher Bowers-Broadbent in Pärt's wonderful Trivium underlined that Music-like-water , MP3's, CD's and all those other fantastic technologies are just adjuncts. The only way to hear great music is live, and we must fight tooth and nail to make sure that live music is available, and appreciated, by coming generations. The Estonian choir's concert is going to be a very hard act to follow, but there are lots of tempting things in next week's Proms schedule. Early music gets another welcome hike in profile with William Christie conducting a fine cast and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Glyndebourne Chorus in Han...

Great news for new music. Yesterday on an overgrown path was read by more people than on any day since it started twelve months ago. And what attracted that record number of readers at a time when many are taking a well deserved holiday? - two posts about contemporary composers Odaline de la Martinez and Antony Pitts . Monday's post on Musicians and terrorism also helped boost readers as it was picked up by a major UK political blog , and good audio clips and some great graphics lifted the two stories yesterday. But Odaline de Martinez and Antony Pitts are hardly household names. And the bottom line is that those two new music posts attracted more readers than Leonard Bernstein , Jacques Loussier , or those BBC Beethoven MP3 files . That's great news for all of us who are rooting for new music. When I set this blog up I wanted to create a network of overgrown paths that readers could follow. Paths that would lead to new discoveries, as well as rediscovering old treasures....

Who was the first woman to conduct at the BBC Proms? No it wasn't the ubiquitous Marin Alsop. It is more than ten years since Odaline de la Martinez made her first Proms appearance, and it doesn't do any harm to shift some of the attention on women conductors over to this very talented lady, especially as she also composes. Born in Cuba and raised in the USA Odaline de la Martinez is now based in London. She retains strong links with South America, and was awarded the Villa-Lobos Medal by the Brazillian government. As well as guesting with mainstream orchestras Martinez is also founder and music director of contemporary ensemble Lontano . Her first opera, Sister Aimée was premiered in the US in 1984. She has her own record label Lorelt which specialises in music by women composers, Latin American and contemporary composers. To give a taste of her composing style here is a short extract from the second movement Song of the rider of her 1983 Canciones for voice, piano and p...

XL is the new choral work by English composer Antony Pitts . It uses the same forces as Tallis' sublime 40 part motet Spem in Alium , and was composed as a companion piece. XL is on a new Harmonia Mundi CD sung by the Rundfunkchor Berlin directed by Simon Halsey. It also includes the Tallis motet, Knut Nystedt's Immortal Bach , and Zoltán Kodaly's substantial Laudes organi. Other posts linking to the work of Antony Pitts, and well worth reading are Jerry Springer rebel grabs Gramophone accolade and Raindrops are falling on my chant .

What is the musician’s role in times of war, or in times of terrorist attacks such as we recently experienced in London? Is it to perform close to the front line to show that art will win over terror? That was the choice of the young Daniel Barenboim and Jacqueline du Pré when they performed close to the front line shortly after the Six Day War in June 1967. It was also the choice of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1939 to 1945 when it continued to perform live concerts in defiance of German air raids on London, Bedford and Bristol . And somewhat less ingeniously it was the choice of Leonard Bernstein who hosted a fund raiser for the Black Panthers from the front line of his Park Avenue apartment in 1970. Or is the musician’s role to keep his skills safe well away from the front line, and to use them only when things are again settled and calm? Last night there was a concert in the Church of St Peter and St Paul deep in rural Norfolk. This glorious, and isolated, church can claim...

Following on from the discovery of the Arnold Schoenberg jukebox comes news from Overgrown Path reader Rodney Lister at Harvard of classical music orgies on the internet. 'I was just looking over your list of classical music on the web and noticed that you don't include WHRB, the Harvard radio station, which is streamed on the web. Not only is this the best classical music on radio in Boston (which I guess is like being world famous in Poland), at the end of each term, for about a month, they do "orgies" long series of complete or almost complete recordings or all kinds of things. In years past these have not only included complete Beethoven, Haydn, Handel, Sibelius, etc., but complete Duke Ellington and Cecil Taylor. The station does lots of other things, too--jazz, hip-hop, country music, and Harvard hockey, but the classical music part is definitely worth noticing.' WHRB can be found on the web via this link . Here is more information on the 'orgies' (...