Great minds think alike .....

Great minds think alike, or do they just read blogs? Thirty-six hours ago I uploaded an article which started:

'2006 brings some important musical anniversaries. The 'biggie' is the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Mozart's birth in January, but let's not forget the hundredth anniversary of Shostakovich's birth as well. There have been howls of outrage because there is no Mozart Fest on BBC Radio 3, but not a single call for a broadcast of the complete Shostakovich opus.'

Today's Guardian leader starts:

'There's no doubt about which composer will be dominating the airwaves this month and for most of this year: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, born in Salzburg 250 years ago. There's another great musical anniversary to be celebrated this year, however, and this time a real centenary: the birth in September 1906 of Shostakovich.'

Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Image credit - Shostakovich from Music from the Movies
Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. If bandwidth is a problem with your permission I will host your image.
If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Wikipedia is remix and Blogged by the Guardian

Comments

Pliable said…
.. and influential political blogger Tim Worstall and author of the best-selling blogging book writes:

Shostakovich

Bob at An Overgrown Path scoops the Guardian by 24 hours or so.

Great minds think alike or a desperate leader writer surfing the net on a slow weekend?
10:25 am
Henry Holland said…
but not a single call for a broadcast of the complete Shostakovich opus.

Well, thank Buddah for that! Why inflict so much bad music on people (yes, 2nd & 3rd Symphonies, amongst many candidates, I'm glaring right at you)? On the other hand, maybe it would do its part in showing that Shostakovich might be the most overrated major composer that I know of.
11:17 am
Anonymous said…
There is a plaint prefacing the 'Radio' pages of the current Radio Times (31 Dec-6 Jan 2006, p117 col D) on the matter of anniversaries being the hook for programming - 'Sound Off' by David Crawford.
Here's a snippet or two to give the flavour :

" Why shouldn't we honour these giants of music ? I think we should, but I am annoyed by everything being pegged to major dates in individuals' lives - it suggests a certain contempt for listeners: you'll only tune in if a programme has some significant cultural resonance. ..."
"...But there is a glimmer of hope: Radio 3 commendably gave over schedules to the complete works of Beethoven and Bach recently, for no other reason than it was a good idea..."
[Ed.: scheduling Bach in the run-up to Christmas suggests another sort of 'good idea' to me]
"... Let's ...celebrate great artists simply because they are great, not because they were born 150 years ago, they created their masterpiece 75 years ago, or they died six years ago today."
12:41 pm
Anonymous said…
Interestingly, I'm in the midst of reading William Vollmann's EUROPE CENTRAL, which came out last year. This massive novel (800+ pages) covers much of the war years in Europe from the point of view of two narrators, one working for Hitler, the other for Stalin. But central is Dmitri Shostakovich, or, at least, someone by that name who maybe is Dmitri Shostakovich, or maybe not, because Vollmann admits that much of the biographical information he made up. Especially DDS's romantic adventures.

Vollmann actually apologizes to the Shostakovich family in the notes (25+ pages at the back of the book) for his excesses in the name of art.

It's a strange but engrossing book. Makes you constantly wonder how far Vollmann is going to go. But apparently Shostakovich's world and image has had a profound effect on the author.

But who knows? Could '06 be the year of Shostakovich? That would be nice, after all.
2:37 am
Pliable said…
Richard, thanks for that. It is probably also worth mentioning here Nella Bielski's superb new novel The Year is '42 which covers the same period and was reviewed by me in November. Follow
this overgrown path to the article.
8:24 am
Post a Comment

Recent popular posts

Watch Michel Petrucciani video online

Image
Back in January 2005 I wrote about legendary jazz pianist Michel Petrucciani (right), and that article remains high in my 'popular pages' listing after fifteen months. Since writing that piece Overgrown Path reader Andrew Nathan and I have been tracking down Petrucciani video footage, and just this week Andrew came up with an absolute gem that is available free on Google video. In my original article I wrote that Michel Petrucciani was a 'pianistic genius' , and it is no coincidence that he is buried in the Pierre Lachaise cemetery in Paris alongside Chopin. This 38 minute video with excellent sound (and a bonus guest appearance from the gorgeous Charlotte Rampling ) is not just essential viewing for jazz fans, it should be watched by all students of the piano - whatever their discipline. Just click here to view this important document. (The video is not hosted by On An Overgrown Path , this is a link to an external site). And to set the video into context here is m
Read more

The great free MP3 download fallacy yet again

Image
"Orchestras must embrace new technology following a BBC experiment that highlighted the huge demand for classical downloads. More than 1.3 million people downloaded Beethoven's symphonies for free during a two-month period last year. That proved there is a large untapped market for classical music, according to US critic, composer and consultant Greg Sandow. " From BBC News report on last week's Association of British Orchestras Conference. Pliable says if I offer free Beluga Caspian caviar from my web site and there are 1.3 million takers does that prove "there is a large untapped market" for Beluga Caviar? And elsewhere some rather more rigorous research comes up with thought provoking results which I would have thought would have been of interest to critics, composers and consultants at a major orchestra management conference: "Music downloading creates listener apathy - internet downloading and MP3 players are creating a generation of people who
Read more

Glenn Gould - the ultimate download

Image
My personal overgrown path is leading back to the radio studio, and that has set me thinking recently about how to create programmes that are distinctive, inclusive and personal. Over in Holland the creator of Big Brother , Endemol , has its own formula for distinctive broadcasting, and this week launches De Grote Donorshow ( The Big Donor Show ) which gives three dialysis patients the chance to win a dying woman's kidney - or not. Back in 1969 Glenn Gould took a different approach to producing great broadcasting when he created his 'contrapuntal radio documentary' The Latecomers . The main subject was the new Canadian province of Newfoundland , but there was a second subject of solitude, isolation and non-conformity seen from a cultural perspective. The Latecomers , with its basso continuo of the ocean, is both a land-mark in twentieth-century broadcasting and a seriously neglected aspect of Gould's work. Now, thanks to reader Walt Santner, you can hear the whole
Read more

Free Mozart MP3 downloads from Danish Radio

Image
After the outcry over the Beethoven Symphony files the BBC saw sense and didn't offer any free audio downloads in their Bach Christmas. But now Danish Radio are at it. As part of their Mozart celebrations Danish Broadcasting Corporation are offering free downloads of nine of Mozart’s symphonies played by the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra. The first downloads are available on January 27 with Symphony No. 15 in G-flat. This is followed by symphonies Nos. 41, 36, 40, 23, 15, 34, 39, 17 and 35. If you must, here is the link for the downloads . But be warned it is in Danish, and AltaVista's Babel Fish translator doesn't handle Danish! Presumably after the outcry in Denmark there will be no Mendelssohn downloads from Danish Radio for the 160th anniversary of his death in 2007. Then it is over to you New Zealand Radio ... With thanks to fellow blogger Jon Lund for this story Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co d
Read more

That which colors the mind

Image
This recording by Owsley Stanley of sarod master Ali Akbar Khan featured in a recent post here . My further reading came across the following unpublished epitaph to Owsley Stanley - popularly known as 'Bear' - by his daughter Rhoney Gissin Stanley . It provides a refreshing contrast to today's social media influenzas : Bear was a man who walked his talk, who challenged the cult of personality and wanted the attention of others to focus on his work with sound, his art, and his philosophy, not on him.
Read more

The Berlin Philharmonic's darkest hour

Image
Wilhelm Furtwängler was born on 25th January 1886. He was Music Director of the Berlin Philharmonic from 1923 to his death in 1954, and held this position for the twelve years that Hitler was in power. In January 1945 he was conducting in Vienna, and fled from there to Switzerland where he remained until the Battle of Berlin ended in the defeat of the Nazis. The musicians of his orchestra remained in Berlin during its darkest hour. Here is their story: On 28th March 1945 the Russian forces commanded by Marshal Georgy Zhukov were just twenty miles to the east of Berlin. A month previously Albert Speer had been replaced as Nazi armaments minister after trying to persuade Hitler that defeat was inevitable. Speer now turned his energies to preventing the musicians of his adored Berlin Philharmonic from perishing in the inevitable final battle. Reich Commisioner Dr Joseph Goebells, who was in charge of the defence of Berlin, had ordered the entire orchestra to be drafted into the Vol
Read more

A treasure trove of Stokowski downloads

Image
A Japanese site has a treasure trove of recordings by the legendary conductor Leopold Stokowski ranging from 1917 acoustic recordings to 1953 electric recordings. All were 78rpm shellac releases, and the site claims they are copyright free. There are a lot of very fine things to listen to including two complete Tchaikovsky symphonies, a complete 1941 No 4 recorded with the NBC Symphony in 1941, and a 1940 Symphony No.6 'Pathetique' with the All American Youth Orchestra . Thanks go to US reader and internet sleuth Walt Santner whose research uncovered these, and the Norwegian historic MP3s , for us, and to the unknown Japanese webmaster for making them available. Stokowski was the role model for today's jet set maestros. Born in North London in 1882, a short distance from what was to become EMI's famous Abbey Road Studios , he started his musical career as organist in St James' Church, Piccadily . He moved to the US in 1905, and ten years later became a naturali
Read more

Berlin Philharmonic's first woman conductor

Image
In 2005 the appointment of a woman music director by a major American orchestra caused a storm of controversy . So, it is surprising to find that it was back in 1930 that the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra was first conducted by a woman, and even more surprising to find she was an American. But the story doesn't have a happy ending. Despite receiving critical acclaim, Antonia Brico found doors closed to her when she returned to the US, and was forced to form her own orchestras to continue her conducting career. She is seen above conducting in New York in 1945. (Image credit Dr. Ralph Weizsäcker ). Antonia Brico was born Wilhelmina Wolthus in Rotterdam in the Netherlands in 1902, and emigrated to California with her foster parents in 1908. She attended high school in Oakland where she gained experience as a pianist and conductor. She went on to study liberal arts at the University of California, Berkeley , and also worked at the San Francisco Opera as an assistant to the director,
Read more

Classical critics need to talk sound sense

Image
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
Read more

The truth about those French orchestras

Image
My article reporting Claudio Abbado’s negative views on French orchestras certainly generated a lot of attention, including a response from Parisian Antoine Leboyer which corrected the myth that Abbado hadn’t actually conducted a French orchestra. Too much attention is given to British and American orchestras here On An Overgrown Path and elsewhere, and I was delighted when Antoine offered to give an inside view on the musical health of the French capital. So here is a guest blog from Paris with the truth about those French orchestras that Claudio Abbado and Daniel Harding love to hate: Let us put things in perspective with a few words on French orchestras. Abbado may not have had the best of experiences, and he may still not find it perfect today but things are improving. Paris has many orchestras (I do not know those outside Paris well, and cannot comment on them; I do have regards for the Lyon Orchestra which played some great concerts when David Robertson was their music direct
Read more