If I were a dictator ...


'If I were a dictator I should make it compulsory for every member of the population between the ages of four and eighty to listen to Mozart for at least one-quarter of an hour daily in the coming years' - Sir Thomas Beecham

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If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to An equal status with the Twelve-Tone boys ...

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steve2 said…
my answer to beecham:i don't like mozart
7:34 pm
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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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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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The purpose of puffery and closed-mindedness

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Boulez - great bogeyman of 20th century music

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Henry Holland has left a new comment on the post " Boulez - Rituel In Memoriam Maderna ": Ah, one my favorite Paths of yours Pliable since I started to read OAOP two (three?) years ago. I love Rituel in Memoriam Maderna , I listened to it on my iPod a few weeks ago. I wish that there was more than one official recording of it or I could find some live versions on my usual file theft sites. I know Boulez is The Great Bogeyman of 20th Century music along with Schoenberg , and while I certainly don't like all of his pieces, there are some that are among my favorite pieces of music. I went to a performance of Pli selon Pli at the Concertgebouw when I was in Amsterdam recently and despite the excellent performance by the ASKO Ensemble and Barbara Hannigan I wasn't impressed by the piece all that much; I hadn't heard it in a while. I keep hoping that a performance of the amazing Repons will take place in the US so I can easily afford to travel to hear it but it...
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Classical music's biggest problem is that no one cares

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Are top musicians sharing the financial pain?

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How classical music became a pseudo-event

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What price the BBC Proms?

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Dare to be different

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Heard the Bach - got the T-shirt

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An article by pianist Angela Hewitt in today's Guardian prompts me to ask what is the difference between journalism and a press release? The full-page piece promotes Hewitt's forthcoming tour of twenty-five countries and uses the first person throughout. I am a huge fan of pianist Angela Hewitt and will be broadcasting a recital by her of Bach (two Toccatas) and Messiaen on Future Radio on January 27. But, for me, this uncritical Guardian piece reads as though it came from her agent . Together with the Bach world tour website , the artist website , the DVD (sponsored by her piano supplier ), CDs (above), and the official world tour T-shirts, posters and souvenir programme , not to forget her couturier . I'm certain Tatiana Nikolaeva didn't have a couturier . But there is still hope. Gentlemen, old Bach is here. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be remo...
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