On An Overgrown Path

A wonderful concert by the Hermitage Ensemble of Russian singing sacred hymns and folk songs in the beautiful little Sibton Church of St Peter in Suffolk (the ruins of a Cistercian Abbey can be seen close to the church) took me down the overg rown path of Russian sacred choral music. Two outstanding recent releases from the innovative Dutch super-budget label Brilliant Classics are highly recommended. The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Paris is famous for its tradition of Russian Orthodox chant. In 1967, under their director Evgeni Ivanovitz Evetz, they recorded an anthology of Russian Orthodox Church Music. Evetz was born in Poland of Russian parents, and his status as a Russian 'displaced person,' meant that he made his reputation as a refugee building and conducting choirs, first in Morocco and then in Paris. The anthology features composers ranging from Rachmaninov and Arensky to many lesser-known figures, and has now been released as a double CD . The sound isn't dem...

Sir Malcolm Arnold died on Saturday 23rd September 2006, age 84. In tribute, here is an article published a year ago about him. Interviewer: "Did you think as you began to write the ninth symphony that it would be the last thing you wrote?" Sir Malcolm Arnold: "I was rather hoping it would be ....(pause)... the piece is an amalgam of all my knowledge of humanity." Interviewer: "It is a huge, bleak, finale isn't it?" Sir Malcolm: (long pause) "....Yes...I wanted it to die away into infinity....." These words are taken from the discussion between the conductor Andrew Penny and the composer Sir Malcolm Arnold which is included on Naxos' superb recording of his 9th Symphony. The symphony was written in a three week blaze of creativity in August 1986 as a birthday present for the composer's close friend, and carer, Anthony Day. Its composition followed five years of mental illness, and composing silence Sir Malcolm's career started as...

I wrote, and reblogged, my research article Furtwängler and the forgotten new music to draw attention to some unknown music from what is described below as "this troubled period in music history." The following informed comments on the article therefore delighted me. Thank you Daniel in Frankfurt, and Garth in Washington DC, for making it all worthwhile Daniel Wolf wrote - The case of Max Trapp is fairly clear: he was a Nazi, and an early one. His "Appell an die Schaffenden" ("Call to Creative Artists"), in _Die Musik_,in which he identified himself as such, was published in June of 1933. The 1951 performance is simply a reminder that de-Nazification was slow. The most interesting musician on your list may well be Heinrich Kaminsky (photo left), and one whose career provides a useful contrast to Trapp. Kaminsky's father was an Old Catholic priest of Jewish background, and Kaminsky, who was Pfitzner's successor at the Prussian Academy of the Arts...

Edith Cavell was born in 1865 in the vicarage of Swardeston in rural Norfolk, a few miles from where I write these words. She was an accomplished artist, and had a flair for French. After several jobs as a governess in England she was recommended for a post in Brussels in 1890. In 1895 she returned to nurse her father through an illness, and it was this experience that led Edith to take up nursing. In 1905 she returned to Brussels and was put in charge of a pioneering training school for lay nurses on the outskirts of the city. Edith often returned to visit her mother who moved to Norwich after her husband's death. While on a visit in 1914 she heard of the German invasion of Belgium, but she returned to her hospital without hesitation. In the autumn of 1914, two stranded British soldiers found their way to Nurse Cavell's training school. Others followed and were spirited away to neutral territory in Holland. An underground lifeline was established, masterminded by Prince and P...

I started at university in 1968. In March of that year American troops killed hundreds of civilians in the My Lai massacre , and in April student protesters at Columbia University in New York City took over administration buildings and shut down the campus, and student protests spread to France, Japan, Britain, Poland, Spain, Italy and Mexico. Also in April Enoch Powell's 'rivers of blood' speech in Birmingham, England, took racism on to the streets and into the headlines, and in that black month Martin Luther King was taken by a sniper's bullet in Memphis. In May student and worker strikes and riots in Paris nearly brought down the French Government. In June 1968 Robert Kennedy was assassinated on the campaign trail, and in August Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia to end the "Prague Spring" of political liberalization, while in the same month police clashed with antiwar protesters in Chicago, Illinois outside the Democratic National Convention ...

It is funny how articles follow unplanned themes. Last week turned out to be very much French , and this week we seem to have a very welcome British theme. Lyrita was founded in 1959 as a small independent UK label specialising in British music, and many of their releases went on to become legendary. Their sessions were recorded by the Decca team during their “golden period”, and some of the early recordings used valve (tube) equipment. The LP issues delivered demonstration quality analogue sound, and the many Lyrita vinyl LPs in my collection still sound better than many of the latest CDs. Lyrita virtually disappeared from the catalogues with the demise of the LP, but the great news is that they have just become available again, with an initial release of 37 CDs being expanded to cover the full catalogue by 2009. The new availability is the result of a distribution deal with Wyastone Estate , the company that was created out of the failed Nimbus operation. There are some real riches ...

Jerry Sequenza21 recently reported that David Salvage was robbed at gunpoint in Brooklyn, and asks whether anyone else has been mugged recently. Well yes actually, and it wasn't by a gangster with a gun, it was by a new recording. I've had a lot of close encounters with The Art of Fugue over the years. They started with Karl Münchinger's full-on version with the Stuttgarter Kammerorchester (naughty, but still very nice), and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields recording of the edition prepared by Neville Marriner and Andrew Davis. Staying with strings more recent versions from the Emerson Quartet and the viol consort Phantasm have also provided new perspectives. Favourite keyboard versions have included Evgeni Koroliov on the piano (with the following endorsement from György Ligeti no less: '... but if I am allowed only one musical work on my desert island, then I should choose Koroliov's Bach, because forsaken, starving and dying of thirst, I would list...

Dear classical music blogger, critic and connoisseur, this email is meant to bring to your attention Musikethos.org , a relatively new, nonprofit initiative dedicated to the spread of classical music and to the promotion of a group of young Italian professional musicians, by offering free, legal downloads of their musical performances (licensed under CC ). We would appreciate if you would take a moment to browse through our small but varies archive and download whatever catches your eye: my hope is that some of you might find our project and website interesting enough to give it some attention on your columns, blogs, or websites. Being the initiative still young, we would also love to hear any comments, suggestions, critiques you might have. Apologizing for sending a group email, I wish you a pleasant day. Best, D. BerrettaEditor, Musikethos.org Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and ...

"Minorities matter, especially since majorities are so often wrong." "For me, knowing more has always meant understanding more, and therefore enjoying more." "That unfamiliarity was the obstacle, not complexity, became a basic tenet of my musical belief." Quotations from Tainted By Experience, A Life In The Arts by John Drummond . During his long career in the arts John Drummond (left) was Controller of BBC Radio 3 , and Director of both the Proms and Edinburgh Festival. He died yesterday aged 71, his adventurous programming and prescient musical tastes will be sorely missed. Image credit - Classic Arts Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "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 Edinburg...

East-West music fusions are currently hot properties, and the danger of these exercises in musical bridge building is that they can come over as being more about the media coverage than the music making. But one recent east-west fusion release has returned repeatedly to my CD player, and that is a good reason for sharing it with you. Catalan viol player Jordi Savall will need little introduction, and his musical roots are in the only European country to have been part of Islam for an extended period. Du temps & de l’instant (Moments in time) is a Savall family jam session with Montserrat Figueras (Mrs Savall) vocals, and the multi-talented Arianna and Ferran Savall (the Savall children) singing and contributing harp and théorbe respectively. And just to avoid charges of nepotism the incomparable Pedro Estevan adds the percussion line. This is one of those ‘it isn’t early music, it isn’t improvisation, it isn’t jazz, it isn’t World Music, and it doesn’t matter’ discs, and it...

Commenting on my recent article Britten's musical mind map Henry Holland said: What on earth is a "choreographed production"? It's hard to credit, but Von Heute auf Morgan is a comedy and should be paired with Die Gluckliche Hand and the great Ewartung (the whole evening would be less than 1 1/2 hours of music). Pliable, was the Curlew River (production shot above) filmed by chance? The director of Curlew River Frederic Wake-Walker has replied: Pliable, yes, we are in the process of producing a DVD. Exact details of how to get hold of it will be posted on our website soon. A choreographed production means getting the singers to dance. I think a whole evening of Schoenberg might scare quite a few people off. I'd like to pair one of those Schoenbergs with a one-act Rossini... Best wishes, Frederic. Image credit - Mahogany Opera: Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only...

I hear on the grapevine that BBC Radio 3 are broadcasting the complete works of both Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky over five days starting February 10 2007. Other details are sketchy. You heard it first On An Overgrown Path , more details when available. Image credit Kortland-Wilkens. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "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 Recycling Shostakovich and Beethoven

'In the music critic’s equivalent of a busman’s holiday, I took a night off from reviewing the Proms on Saturday — and watched the concert on BBC TV instead. Even filtered through the tinny speakers of my low-fi telly, it was wonderful: Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony, gloriously played by the Berlin Philharmonic under Sir Simon Rattle. Wonderful, that is, except for one thing. In the entire work the cymbal player has just one moment of glory — a single, mighty clash at the climax of the sublime slow movement. To watch the player sit silently for half an hour, lift his glinting golden discs, prepare himself spiritually and physically for his thrilling entry, hurl the cymbals together with all his might, and then resume his seat and sit imperturbably for the remaining half-hour of the work — this is one of the great concert-hall experiences. Well, you can guess my complaint. The TV director gave us innumerable close-ups of conductor, strings, brass and woodwind. But the poor old cym...

A heads-up for some exciting events that are happening in September while I am in France . The media event, if not the musical event, of the autumn is almost certain to be the premiere on Thursday September 7 at English National Opera of Gaddafi: A Living Myth . The work is a collaboration between the musicians of Asian Dub Foundation , director David Freeman and designer Es Devlin . It will certainly push the envelope, but the jury is out on whether it can combine media appeal with merit. It is a co-commission with Channel 4 , the TV channel that reaches the peaks of artistic merit with programmes such as Big Brother , and whose next project is a documentary-style film in which George Bush is assassinated . A glimmer of hope comes from the director, David Freeman, who has something of a track record of rejuvenating operatic lost causes, most notably Philip Glass' The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 . But don't take my word, make up your own mind on Gaddafi: A Livin...

On June the 16, 1984, the Théatre du Chatelet had invited a series of guest Orchestras to perform. Muti (left) performed Franck's Symphony in the first half with the Philadelphia Orchestra. During the interval, a wire burned which caused some fire alarms to ring and the iron curtain to drop. The curtain was finally lifted and the intendant came to explain the situation. There was no apparent smoke and all was OK, but the doctor who was touring with the orchestra thought that the concert could not resume. (which should have been Mahler 1). History repeat itself at this year's BBC Proms . How many of the Philadelphians who were in the Orchestra in '84 are still there ? - writes contributor Antoine Leboyer , who also provides a wonderful Overgrown Path to my Reflections on the Philadelphia Orchestra Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of c...

The dramatic cancellation of last night's Philadelphia Orchestra BBC Prom due to a fire was the first Promenade Concert to be lost for twenty-six years. In 1980 the circumstances of the cancellations were far more serious and damaging, and the story is worth retelling to underline how precarious is the livelihood of our wonderful performing musicians. A financial crisis that had simmered at the BBC for several years flared up in February 1980 when a large package of economies were proposed to save £130m ($235). The proposal involved disbanding five orchestras, including the BBC Scottish , in a move aimed at saving £500,000 ($900,000) a year, or eight per cent of the BBC's music expenditure . On May 16 1980 the Musician's Union voted to strike against the BBC, and two weeks later the musicians of the BBC Symphony , and all other BBC musicians, stopped work. The dispute was not just about job losses, the musicians suspected a hidden agenda of a move away from contract o...

The BBC Proms concert due to take place tonight (Sunday Sept 3) has been cancelled after a small fire at the Royal Albert Hall. The London Fire Brigade say they were called to the incident in the artist's bar at the venue earlier. No-one was injured or trapped but part of the building was filled with smoke. The concert was due to feature works by Beethoven and Matthias Pintscher. The performance by the Philadelphia Orchestra was to be broadcast live on BBC Four and BBC Radio Three. The BBC and the venue released a joint statement shortly before the concert was due to start. "Due to loss of electrical power following a minor fire at the Royal Albert Hall, it is with great regret that the Royal Albert Hall has been forced to cancel this evening's performance by the Philadelphia Orchestra," it said. "We would like to assure you that urgent work is being carried out to repair damage and we aim to make the hall available for full use as soon as possible. "We hop...

When, in November 1943, Furtwängler returned to Berlin from a concert tour abroad, he was informed that the Philharmonie Hall had been bombed during an attack on the night of November 22-23. The facade had been badly damaged, and so had the front rooms in which the irreplaceable music library had been kept. Important letters, files, documents, orginal scores - everything had been destroyed. The concert hall itself remained intact, but the windows had been blown out, and glass, at the time, was not available. Besides, concerts could no longer be given there because high piles of rubble cut off the hall from the outside world. And before it could be cleared away, more bombs fell on the Philharmonie Hall on January 30, 1944, when the Anhalter Station, near the hall, was the target. This time the Philharmonie was completely wrecked. From Wilhelm Furtwängler a biography by Curt Riess, 1955 Following the destruction of the Philharmonie Wilhelm Furtwängler conducted the Berlin Philharmonic ...