On An Overgrown Path

I read your report on Simon Rattle and his attackers with surprise and dismay (Rattle's Berlin Philharmonic failing to thrill, says critic, May 25). Contrary to what is said by a few critics, the Berlin Philharmonic is in superlative shape. Of course it is not a carbon copy of Karajan's or Abbado's orchestra. While it has fully retained its richness in Romantic symphonies, it has opened itself up to contemporary as well as to 18th-century music in a novel way. How one likes one's Mozart remains an individual matter; there should, however, be few conductors who would want it to sound like Karajan's. Earlier this year, I had the pleasure to play seven concerts with Simon. I can only say that I have never heard any playing surpass that of the BPO in the three glorious performances of Mahler's Fourth Symphony I was able to hear. In every section of the orchestra there was the same amazing quality, refinement and commitment. The same goes, in recent years, for perfo...

"Whereas at the east end there is the altar, lectern and pulpit, each symbolizing in its own way the means of Grace, so at the west end there is a visual and aural expression of man's need to respond to that grace." These were the words of Kenneth Ryder, organist at the 15th century church of St Peter Mancroft in Norwich . He was speaking of the wonderful new organ (see photo above) built in 1984 by Peter Collins for his church. Kenneth Ryder was the driving force behind the three manual Werkprinzip instrument which is modeled faithfully on the organs of northern Germany, and is ideally suited to the works of Bach and other baroque composers. There is mechanical action throughout, and all the sections of the instrument are unenclosed. Just as the organ of St Peter Mancroft is part of the 18th century Germany musical tradition, so Kenneth Ryder (right) was a direct descendant of the Kappelmeisters of Bach’s day. He saw music as an integral part of the liturgy, was ti...

In Leni Riefenstahl's celebrated film of the 1934 Nazi Nuremberg there is a chilling sequence as Hitler and the other leading Nazis pass through the massed ranks of the Deutsche Arbeiterfront (German Labor Front). The soundtrack for this sequence captures a military band playing Deutsche Largo, a march from the same composer as Junge Marschiert ( Youth Marches ) , which was played as the combined forces of the dreaded SA and SS paraded down Wilhelmstraße in Berlin on January 30th, 1933 to celebrate Hitler's appointment as Chancellor. 'Hitler's Piano Player' is a new book that tells the remarkable story of the composer of these marches. Ernst Hanfstaengl was a German who was educated at Harvard , and lived in America through the First World War before moving to Germany where he worked closely with Hitler as head of the Nazi foreign press bureau. Then, in an extraordinary example of poacher turning gamekeeper he fled the fascist regime, eventially moving to the ...

Before the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in 1996, I was a professor of engineering at Kabul University for 21 years. They effectively closed the university. Since half the students and 60 per cent of the staff were women, there was not much university left after women were forbidden to work and study. The Taliban prohibited television, cinema, theatre, music, dance, shaving, several sports, kite flying, singing, playing instruments and other aspects of our culture, such as celebrating New Year’s Day ( Nowroze ). Even the cheeping of birds was against their laws. They banned artwork or photography that showed the faces of living things. Today, long after the Taliban were supposed to have gone, Afghanistan is moving back to that sort of government again. Nobody was punished for their crimes. Now, they are actively operating once again in the tribal areas of Pakistan – training and exporting terrorists. Yet Pakistan is receiving millions of pounds as an ally against terrorism. We exp...

Governments still fear dissenting opinion and try to shut it down. While the internet has brought freedom of information to millions, for some it has led to imprisonment by a government seeking to curtail that freedom. They have closed or censored websites and blogs; created firewalls to prevent access to information; and restricted and filtered search engines to keep information from their citizens. China is perhaps the clearest example. Its internet censorship and clampdown on dissent online is sophisticated and widespread. But Amnesty International has documented internet repression in countries as diverse as Iran, Turkmenistan, Tunisia, Israel, the Maldives and Vietnam. Another massive change since 1961 has been the rising power of multinationals, but some companies have been complicit in these abuses. So Amnesty is increasingly lobbying not just governments but powerful firms to respect the rights of ordinary people. The internet is big business, but in the search for profits so...

Great to see the official BBC TV website (above) featuring On An Overgrown Path's behind the scenes exclusive on clarinettist Mark Simpson and John Corigliano's concerto. Great for this blog, and great for contemporary music. And I bet it's the only time John Corigliano shares a platform with The Apprentice and Jeremy Clarkson ! Follow this link for the full story of Corigliano, no - Nielsen, yes and a link to a video of Mark Simpson's performance of the Nielsen concerto. Screen dump - BBC TV . Any copyrighted material on these pages is used in "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 If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Quiet celebration with friends ...

Today we literally follow an overgrown path down a narrow alley in search of a remarkable woman. She was the author of, what is believed to be, the first book written by a woman in the English language, and a thinker who is now venerated alongside such great medieval mystics as Hildegard of Bingen and Hadewijch of Antwerp . After years of blight following severe war damage the area around St Julian's Alley in Norwich is once again a vibrant area. The surviving medieval houses are beautifully restored, new town houses and apartments are filling the vacant lots, entry-phones and security alarms are de rigeur , and the pavements are lined with BMWs and Range Rovers. Things were very different in the 14th century. St Julian's Alley was within the medieval city walls, and the prosperous port with its thriving wool trade with Europe was a short distance away. The prosperity which made Norwich England's second city after London was celebrated in a profusion of churches, no less...

While Rattle romps expressively on the podium, the Berlin Philharmonic musicians sometimes tend to play as inconsequentially as if they were a wife reaching to the fridge to get out a beer for her husband - Alex Bruggerman in Die Welt am Sonntag on Rattle's Cosi fan Tutte. Read how the German critics are sharpening their teeth on Sir Simon before turning on the England football team in next month's soccer World Cup in Simon Rattle's Berlin Philharmonic failing to thrill in today's Guardian. Image credit - BBC . Any copyrighted material on these pages is used in "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 If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Berlin Philharmonic's darkest hour

Within days of writing my article on the surprise sales of Cloudburst , the CD of Eric Whitacre's choral music, another very interesting new release from Hyperion arrived. It was sent by those eagle-eared folks at leading classical store Prelude Records who think Hyperion may have found a Gallic Eric Whitacre, and having listened to this new CD of Pierre Villette's choral music I believe they may be right. (Photo above shows Pierre Villette flanked by Henri Dutilleux [left] and Witold Lutoslawski [right]). Pierre Villette is not totally unknown here in the UK. His choral music was championed by Dr Donald Hunt in the 1970s when he was director of Worcester Cathedral Choir , and Villette's Hymne à la vierge , which is probably his best known work, has been performed in the annual Service of Nine Lessons and Carols at King's College , Cambridge. Choirs in the US, Japan and Germany are also familiar with Villette's compositions. But strangely he has never been wid...

17 year old clarinettist Mark Simpson (left) won the prestigous BBC Young Musician of the Year competition at the weekend. He played a blinding Nielsen concerto to win, but interestingly this was not his first choice. Marc Simpson actually asked to play John Corigliano's incredibly difficult (and rewarding) concerto in the final with the the Northern Sinfonia conducted by Yan Pascal Tortelier . But the BBC vetoed his first choice of concerto because of the required resources and challenge it presented for the orchestra. With a repertoire led by the Corigliano and Nielsen concertos there must be a very bright musical future for Mark Simpson. * See the streamed video of Mark Simpson's winning performance of the Nielsen concerto via this link Image credit - BBC: Any copyrighted material on these pages is used in "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, missin...

Life today is all about boxes. Our working life is controlled by email inboxes and outboxes, commercial success is measured at the box office, entertainment is delivered by Xboxes , and we even get our contemporary music fix from NewMusicBox. But today’s superb performance of Olivier Messiaen’s L’Ascension by Julian Thomas on the organ of Norwich Cathedral reminded me of the importance of thinking outside the box. L’Ascension is an early work by Messiaen (below) which was originally composed for orchestra as four symphonic meditations. The organ version has a different third movement to the orchestral version, and was first performed in 1936. The four movement twenty-five minute work has many of Messiaen’s signature ‘outside the box’ features including unusually slow and sustained tempi for the first and final meditations, and the use of highly chromatic harmony throughout. In the final meditation, which is inspired by verses from St John’s Gospel, the quiet, floating melody, harmo...

"In some century to come, when the school children will whistle popular tunes in quarter-tones-when the diatonic scale will be as obsolete as the pentatonic is now - perhaps then these borderland experiences may be both easily expressed and readily recognized." Charles Ives died May 19 1954 * Follow this link for the Charles Ives Society Any copyrighted material on these pages is used in "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 If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Tippett can still empty a concert hall

Litter pickers working on the summit of Britain's highest mountain, Ben Nevis , have made a startling discovery: a grand piano buried in scree below the peak. The volunteers were winkling cans and plastic bags from rock crevices when they spotted a large, finely varnished length of wood. Shifting granite boulders, they discovered first the top of the piano, then the entire frame complete with stringboard and pedals. "Our guys couldn't believe their eyes," said Nigel Hawkins, director of the John Muir Trust , which maintains the most visited stretch of the 1.3 km (4,418ft) peak near Fort William. "At first they thought it was just the wooden casing, but then they found the whole cast-iron frame complete with strings." The piano was dug out intact by 15 volunteers who were clearing an area about 200 metres from the summit. The trust is now appealing for information to unearth the piano's history - from the Guardian Now Playing - Richard Strauss' Alpi...

I knew it was going to be an unusual evening when, before the start of Das Rheingold , one of the musicians handed me a portable spotlight and asked me to help light the performance. We were sitting on Persian rugs arranged down the centre of a large tent, with the narrow gap between the carpets representing the Rhine (see picture above). The Threepenny Ring Cycle was being performed at the 2006 Norfolk and Norwich Festival by the French music-theatre group Les Grooms (The Bell Boys), who are an offshoot of the Théâtre de l'Unité . The Bell Boys have taken one of the most monumental pieces in the history of music and made it their own. They have deconstructed Wagner's Ring, dissected it, carved it up, peeled away its layers, shuffled it around, tinkered with it, added some spice, condensed it, dusted it off and brought it up to date. Through this alchemy, the Bellboys have transformed and rejuvenated a piece of music that until now 99.9% of the world was allergic to. The comp...

New music can experiment, new music can reinvent, new music can engage, and new music can entertain. But the work that hits all four targets simultaneously is a very rare one indeed. Joby Talbot’s new choral cycle Path of Miracles is one of those rare works. The superb 2006 Norfolk and Norwich Festival performance by Tenebrae revealed a composition that experiments with Bunun aboriginal sounds while reinventing the Jacobean chant Dum Pater Familias . For seventy minutes the a cappella work successfully engaged and entertained a large audience in Norwich Cathedral , and produced one of the most enthusiastic responses that I have witnessed for a 21st century work. If you wanted to buy Tenebrae’s CD of Path of Miracles at the end of the concert you had to push your way through a scrum fighting for the remaining copies - now that kind of enthusiasm is very rare indeed in the world of contemporary music. Joby Talbot studied with Simon Bainbridge , Robert Saxton , Brian Elias and L...

His energy has not always endeared him to orchestras or critics, some of whom equate his jet-setting lifestyle with a shallowness of preparation. Stories are legion of Gergiev turning up hours late to rehearsals, giving interviews during concert intervals and holding up the second half, and cutting his schedules so fine that they give orchestral managers panic attacks. I have heard Gergiev give concerts where he has fallen off the musical cliff-edge he creates: a performance of Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto with Alexander Toradze that was sometimes hilariously out of kilter, as if pianist, conductor and orchestra had never met, let alone rehearsed. These are the downsides of the risks Gergiev takes; but when the magic works - as it does so much of the time - they are risks worth taking. From Tom Service's interview with Valery Gergiev in today's Guardian . Gergiev is artistic director of the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, principal conductor of the Rotterdam Ph...

Yesterday's article about Harvard Radio station WHRB 95.3 FM included a number of occurences of the words 0rgy/ies, all in a music programming context. Many large organisations run web proxy software such as WebMarshal which, to quote their website : When a user on your network requests access to a web page, the request goes through WebMarshal. WebMarshal then checks the requested web page against a set of rules that you (the employer) define (your internet access policy). WebMarshal then scans the page for its content - viruses, profanity, appropriateness, b0mb making, adult themes etc - a whole host of things.. Then if the rules allow, and the user is allowed access, and if WebMarshal deems the page is "safe", WebMarshal fetches the page and sends it to the users browser. It does all this instantly and transparently to your users - affording them a safe Internet browsing experience. Some web proxy software decided that my article Harvard Radio treads where BBC fears t...

So began my musical career, as a listener. I soon took advantage of a newly opened public library only yards down the road to join their fantastically new and extensive record library. And I eagerly ate up Beethoven, Mahler, then Sibelius, Shostakovich, Bach's amazing St Matthew Passion, the eccentricities of Berlioz, the purity of Bruckner, the invention of Nielsen. Discovering Radio 3, my encounters expanded. I heard a season of Rubbra symphonies in the early Eighties and have loved his symphonies ever since. I discovered Bartók, Walton, and strange noises, such as Xenakis. Listening to classical music is a journey, not a state, an activity, not a meditation. Music is not a background noise. It's something you bring into the foreground of your experience, by engaging with it, by doing some work. Only recently have I come to listen properly to Schumann, Haydn and, especially, Bach, and begun to get that sense of rich, deep satisfaction that I first encountered more immediately...