On An Overgrown Path

And in today's Guardian coverage of the BBC's one day Ring marathon there is this ominous little sentence: 'CD label Warner is working with Radio 3 to provide free downloads of Ring excerpts. ' I guess one way for the BBC to avoid rubbing the record companies up the wrong way with free MP3 downloads is to cut them in on the deal. The article also confirms my assumption that this latest musical gem in the BBC's crown is a fifteen year old commercial recording recently reissued at mid-price on CD. Image credit - Canadian opera Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Musicians' jobs before free downloads & The BBC's frost with the music business

Richard Wagner's 15-hour Ring Cycle will be broadcast in its entirety on one day over Easter on BBC Radio 3 . The performance, conducted by Daniel Barenboim in Bayreuth, Germany in the early 1990s, will be aired on 17 April, a UK bank holiday. Yet another example of media- friendly programming from Radio 3. But, though the BBC press release doesn't say so, I assume the broadcast is from the commercial recording made of the 1991 Bayreuth Ring . Sorry to be a licence paying party-pooper, but broadcasting a very fine, but fifteen year old, commercial recording non-stop is more a PR event than artistic coup . It is also cheap air-time that doesn't make any use of the five fine orchestras employed by the BBC. The day-long event, part of Radio 3's 60th birthday celebrations, will include just four 15-minute breaks. The Ring Cycle features Anne Evans as Brünnhilde, Siegfried Jerusalem as Siegfried and John Tomlinson as Wotan. A BBC presenter will guide listeners through th...

Philip Glass' Symphony No. 6 - Plutonian Ode was co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall and Brucknerhaus Linz to celebrate the composer's 65th birthday. The work's libretto was written by his late friend, Allen Ginsberg , and Glass takes up the story: 'During the last ten years of Allen's life we had performed frequently together in poetry/music collaborations. Allen was a superb reader of his own work and I was often inspired to compose new piano music for these occasional collaborations. In the case of Hydrogen Jukebox, we developed an evening length opera which was designed by Jerome Sirlin and directed by Ann Carlson . We presented that work in over 30 cities as part of an international tour. It had been our plan to make a new, major collaboration based on his epic poem Plutonium Ode (1978). Before he died in 1997, Allen had made several recordings for me of the poem in preparation for the new work. At that time I had in mind simply an extended piano work to accom...

On Sunday 26th February on BBC Radio 3 Richard Morrison profiled one of the most powerful names in music in the last century. Paul Sacher (left) was named the third richest man in the world in the 1990s having married the heiress of the pharmaceutical company, Hoffmann-La Roche . He used his wealth to commission over 300 pieces from composers and conduct many of the premieres - including Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste. Sacher's passion for new music led him to found an orchestra in his native Basle and transform musical life there so that it became a magnet for leading musicians and composers. In the centenary of Sacher's birth, Richard Morrison travelled to Basle to explore the many sides of Sacher - as a conductor, patron, businessman and lover - and delved into the Sacher Foundation where manuscripts of the leading composers keep his legacy alive. With contributions from Pierre Boulez , Anne-Sophie Mutter , Heinz Holliger , Elliott Carter, Harri...

The future is looking very exciting for the BBC Symphony Orchestra under their new Chief Conductor, Jiri Belohlavek (left), who officially takes up his position in July this year. The orchestra recently had a somewhat acrimonious divorce from its previous Chief Conductor American Leonard Slatkin. Speaking about his departure the BBC Orchestra's General Manager Paul Hughes said diplomatically : " Leonard has many strengths which haven't been fully developed here. The chemistry didn't always make for the kind of music-making that we and Leonard would have liked ." Slatkin was more bellicose in an interview in the London Evening Standard saying: " The difference between running an orchestra in America and here is that in America you are totally in charge. I'm used to taking responsibility. Here, I was not responsible for choosing guest conductors and soloists, even for some of my own programmes. Did I really want to conduct a whole weekend of Schnittke? ...

Path finder - One of my regular ports of call is An Overgrown Path . If you want to see why, click here. One recent Overgrown Path post really caught my eye: Eric Whitacre outsells Mozart Lots of stuff about Mr Whitacre. Apparently, he is quite famous. I had never heard of him. Which says something about me, I suppose. Anyway, it's a good read. Toward the end of Overgrown Path's post, there is a link to an mp3 download. So, I downloaded. And listened. Nice. Go down the path some more? The CD is called Cloudburst . It's on the UK's Hyperion label. Hyperion: Cloudburst Fourteen poems set to music.Choral works. Choral, works.What works opens with a poem by E. E. Cummings: Posted on Mister Bijou from South China: Serendipity, Connections and Trends - Visiting On An Overgrown Path , I was introduced to contemporary classical music composer Eric Whitacre. (Just a few days ago I ‘discovered’ classical violinist Christian Tetzlaff, and classical music critic Jeremy Eichl...

When a symphony by a famous composer is never played there is usually a good reason. I think we spotted at least three when the Hallé Orchestra, Hallé Choir, RNCM Chorus and Mark Elder bravely tackled Shostakovich’s Third on Thursday. First, there’s the bombastic choral finale, conjuring the spectacle of proud proletariats uniting on May Day. It’s, well, very Soviet — “The first of May is the tread of miners clutching rifles. Revolution!” — without any of the redeeming irony that the older Shostakovich might have surreptitiously laced into this gaudy patriotic banner. Then there’s the ferocious technical demands. In 1929 Shostakovich was a young man aiming for maximum shock impact. It’s hard to know which is the more hazardous for the first fiddles: the helter-skelter passage where they have to pump out about a hundred notes a second, or the anguished, Mahlerian line that sends them on a weird chromatic journey into the stratosphere. And lastly, there’s the music itself: noisily enter...

It may surprise the readers of some music blogs but Osvaldo Golijov was not the only composer to set the Passion story to music. With round-trip fares from New York to London going for less than $200 can you afford not to be in Norwich on Saturday 1st April? The venue is the great Norman cathedral with its 14th and 15th century stained glass. The work is the more tender and intimate of Bach's two surviving Passion settings, his St John. The chorus is the highly acclaimed Keswick Hall Choir , the instrumentalists are the award winning (and all girl) Brooke Street Band who specialise in baroque music, and the top soloists include Andrew Mackenzie-Wicks as the Evangelist and Colin Campbell as Christus. With such sublime music, such a glorious setting, and such a stellar line-up of performers why let 3500 miles of water stop you from enjoying one of the musical events of the year? Tickets are available from the ever-helpful Prelude Records in Norwich, and I will be delighted t...

With the enthusiastic celebrations of Mozart's 250th birthday taking place this year, recent reports suggesting that the future of music education in the UK is hanging in the balance are particularly poignant. It seems that a pending decision to turn £26m ($47m) directly over to schools, rather than to local-authority music services, could deny thousands of children the chance to learn a musical instrument. As a violinist I know that playing a musical instrument can provide an invaluable channel for self-expression. Just as one of the larger functions of artistic endeavour is to challenge societal taboos, art for the individual can provide a means to say the unsayable. And for the countless young people in this country who feel unheard, the acquisition and mastery of such a voice can prove nothing short of a lifeline. If music-making in this country is to maintain its previously high standards, then money needs to be given where it is needed - towards the promotion of music in scho...

How to reach new audiences is a continuing preoccupation of the 'serious music' community. Yet just this week a surprise classical best-seller has shown how to do it. You don't need dumbing-down , the latest avant-garde tricks , classical music night-clubs or free Beethoven MP3s. What you need is great contemporary music which is innovative, honest and accessible. It needs to be recorded by an enterprising label, with top-class performers and engineering. It also needs to feature a marketable personality and be supported by the media. Cloudburst , a CD of Eric Whitacre's choral works sung by Polyphony, is currently the surprise UK classical best seller. It hit all the hot buttons, and proves that a full price CD of music written in the last fifteen years can outsell the TV promoted greatest hits of a dead guy from Salzburg. Andrew Cane of leading UK independent classical store Prelude Records explained to An Overgrown Path yesterday: " Cloudburst had been ou...

Lots of coverage On An Overgrown Path for Gyorgy Kurtag's 80th birthday, but there are still many people who don't know his music. So here as a break from all that Mozart are two free Kurtag MP3 downloads that are long enough to give a real taster, but short enough to mean you still have to buy a CD to fairly reward the composer and performers. Kurtág - Kafka Fragments op. 24 for Soprano and violin with Patricia Kopatchinskaja (photo above) violin and Anna Maria Pammer. Recorded in the Semper-Aula of the Federal Institute of Technology, Zürich by Leonhard Lenz 3.2.2004. Nr. 1 " Die Guten gehn im gleichen Schritt. Ohne von ihnen zu wissen tanzen, tanzen die anderen die Tänze der Zeit ", Nr.2 " Wie ein Weg im Herbst: Kaum ist er reingekehrt, bedeckt er sich wieder mit den trockenen Blätte rn", Nr.3 " Verstecke sind unzählige, Rettung nur eine, aber Möglichkeiten der Rettung wieder so viele wie Verstecke ", Nr.4 " Ruhelos, ruhelos "......

Do you enjoy deliberately frustrating people? 'I look at it as productive frustration. Films that are entertainments give simple answers but I think that's ultimately more cynical, as it denies the viewer room to think. If there are more answers at the end, then surely it is a richer experience .' Michael Haneke , director of the 'water cooler film of the year' Hidden ( Caché ) in Sunday's Observer. Applies to music as well as the cinema doesn't it? Image credit - Timeout.com Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Kafka on the shore

There is a classical radio station on the web that has all the musical riches of BBC Radio 3 without the banal chat in between. As a bonus it currently has György Kurtág (right) as composer of the week at 7.30pm European time - which is more than BBC Radio 3 has. As I write Radio 3 is broadcasting a two hour retrospective on that seminal contemporary composer Andrew Lloyd Webber. Sounds too good to be true? Follow this link to Dutch NOS Radio 4 and click on 'luister listen' to find out for yourself. There are even live relays from the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam in the evenings. Click here or on the Programmagids button on the right of the home page for daily programme listings in Dutch. Convert programme times to your local time zone using this link . Image credit - Klassika.com . Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmai...

Hungarian composer Gyorgy Kurtag is 80 today. The ECM CD Jatekok , (which translates as Games ) is a wonderful introduction to his challenging, but rewarding, music. On Jatekok Kurtag (right) and his wife Marta play the composer’s crystalline piano miniatures interspersed with his own fragmentary Bach transcriptions. Kurtag once said: 'I keep coming back to the realisation that one note is almost enough.' Jatekok are beautifully turned piano haikus , the writing is imbued with wit and undertones of his teacher Milhaud, yet the style is uncompromisingly modern. György Kurtág's musical language is unique, but his homage to Bach is a reflection of the influence of the great masters. Like Schönberg , Boulez and Tippett before him Kurtág has no problems with either ‘downtown music’ , with the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras embracing his work, or with ‘dead guys’ like Bartók , Berg , Beethoven , and Messiaen . The crucible that forged Kurtág music ranges from ...

Today's Observer trumpets a full page profile of Craigslist founder Craig Newmark (right). The profile writer Paul Harris is a big fan, and says lots of nice things like ... 'But what makes Newmark different from other dotcom success stories is not his ineptness but, rather, his different attitude to business. He has chosen not to make hundreds of millions of dollars. He keeps the adverts free (the only ones that pay are a handful in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles) and has steadfastly refused to float on the stock exchange. One study estimated Craigslist could earn $550m a year if it made the most of its huge readership and potential revenues. But Newmark refuses to take the bait.' Pity Paul Harris didn't point out that the Craigslist web site says that in August 2004 eBay acquired 25% of Craigslist from a former employee. Pliable's note - the wording of this post has been amended since original publication. See Comments below. Craig Newmark blogs here....

It is wonderful news that the Czech maestro Jiri Belohlavek (right) has been appointed Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from July 2006. But there is one small problem that the internet driven BBC may not have thought of. I wrote recently about the problem news feeds such as Topix.net's very useful Symphony News have handling accented characters. Well, as is obvious, Jiří Bělohlávek has a lot of accents in his name if you write it correctly. Now I always try to use accents as they are an integral part of language. But I have just uploaded an article about Bělohlávek and the headline Bělohlávek's orchestral rhapsody in Norwich was parsed by Topix.net as BA - which is at least appropriate! The obvious answer is to leave out the accents. This is what Bělohlávek's agents, IMG Artists , do on their web site, but puzzlingly the BBC retain the accents with the exception of ě. To avoid the problem I have compromised and republished the article without accents...

Guest blogger Alex Noel-Tod reports that on Saturday 18th February there was a rare opportunity in Norwich to sit in on the rehearsal of a Janáček orchestral work, Taras Bulba: rhapsody for orchestra (1915), under the baton of Jiří Bělohlávek (left) who will be the Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from July 2006. Maestro Bĕlohlávek was rehearsing the work with students from the University of East Anglia Symphony Orchestra and the Chamber Orchestra Anglia together with other young musicians from the area. The rehearsal was at the OPEN Norwich Youth Venue and was a joint venture between the Chamber Orchestra Anglia and the UEA School of Music . The UEA Symphony Orchestra will be performing the work as part of a concert in St Andrew's Hall, Norwich , on 1st April, when the conductor will be Sharon Choa . Janáček and Norwich have a significant connection, as the UK premiere of his Glagolitic Mass (1926) was given at the 1930 Norfolk and Norwich Triennial Festival ,...

Although as reported exclusively here today Japanese conducting sensation Maestro Krio (right) missed out on a guest slot in Baltimore he may just be a candidate for one of the top music directorships in North America that falls vacant soon. From my server logs on the Maestro Krio exclusive a few minutes ago: * Chicago Symphony Orchestra Illinois, Chicago, United States, 5 returning visits 17th February 2006 19:22:20 visited theovergrownpath.blogspot.com/2006/02/latest-avant-garde-tricks.html * Photo credit Rai.it Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to The latest avant-garde tricks ... and No such thing as an unknown Venezuelan conductor

Dmitri Shostakovich dedicated both his cello concertos to Mstislav Rostropovich . Listen, and see, Rostropovich talking about Shostakovich and the composition of Cello Concerto No 1 via these BBC Radio 3 online resources. Rostropovich on the Cello Concerto no. 1 Rostropovich on playing to Shostakovich Media clips from BBC Radi0 3 Image credit: Rostropovich from Reppublica.it Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Shostakovich and candles and Recycling Shostakovich and Beethoven.

'A multimedia event with music by Philip Glass, a huge work for amplified violin and orchestra by John Adams, a concerto for tap dance by Michael Torke, and Marin Alsop will lead the East Coast premiere of Life: Journey Through Time by Baltimore native Philip Glass, a work incorporating the projection of photography by the National Geographic's Frans Lanting.' The Baltimore Sun on the lineup for the 2006/7 Baltimore Symphony Orchestra season. 'There are many dangers which hedge round the unfortunate composer: pressure groups which demand true proletarian music, snobs who demand the latest avant-garde tricks; critics who are already trying to document today for tomorrow, to be the first to find the correct pigeon-hole definition. These people are dangerous - not because they are necessarily of any importance in themselves, but because they may make the composer, above all the young composer, self-conscious, and instead of writing his own music, music which springs n...

A week ago I wrote an article that was critical of the Wikipedia entry on David Munrow , and that also questioned whether the collaborative ethos behind Wikipedia could survive the increasingly biased entries that were appearing. The following email appeared in my inbox tonight. * From : S. de Silva To : 0vergrownpath Subject : [On An Overgrown Path] 2/16/2006 09:27:23 PM I'm grateful that you brought this problem with Wikipedia to our attention. Still, in my opinion it's too soon to give up on the Wikipedia concept. Here is a possibility that the managers of Wikipedia should consider: If a contribution appears to cross the line between analysis and prejudice, the comment could remain, but be identified as opinion, and labeled with the name of the author. Of course, there has to be a mechanism for accomplishing this. Many of the articles in encyclopedias have been highly biased in the past; if they had not been signed by an "authority", they would have been considere...