Maconchy, Schubert, and synchroncity

Superb response to my article on the recordings of Elizabeth Maconchy's string quartets. Superb article in today's Guardian on Schubert's symphonies. Serendipitous synchronicity that Misha Donat produced the 1989 recordings and wrote the Guardian article this week.

Now read about serendipity, synchronicity and Bernstein
Fractal sample from Geodeomp.com. 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

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If you like Spem in alium try this …

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Read next week's Proms picks by Pliable here. Tuesday's late night BBC Prom by the Tallis Scholars includes a little known work by Alessandro Striggio. A search on Amazon.com for Thomas Tallis’ mighty forty part motet Spem in alium returns 43 results. But a search for Striggio’s motet for the same forces, Ecce beatam lucem , returns just 2 results . The popularity of Tallis’ masterpiece is perfectly understandable, but the neglect of its progenitor is something of a mystery. Alessandro Striggio worked in Florence and Mantua in the 1550s, and developed a luxurious and opulent style of choral writing that culminated in a Sanctus for sixty voices that has sadly been lost over the intervening centuries. The motet Ecce beatam lucem was composed in 1561 as a celebration of Catholicism. It was written to mark the visit of Cardinal Ippolito d’Este to France where he was preaching against Protestantism, and uses forty voices organised in varying groupings through the course of t...
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Sketches of Joaquin Rodrigo

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Was Joaquín Rodrigo, who died on 6 July, 1999, a composer out of step with his time? His most famous work, the tonal, tuneful and cheerful Concerto de Aranjuez , was completed in the spring of 1939 in Paris. While Rodrigo was composing German troops were approaching the Czech frontier and Moravia and Bohemia became 'protectorates' of the Third Reich. During that spring the Nazis annexed Lithuania, Arnold Schoenberg's Violin Concerto was published and Michael Tippett started work on his protest oratorio A Child Of Our Time . As Rodrigo's evocation of the glories of Spain took shape in March 1939 the Civil War in the composer's native Spain ended when Madrid surrendered after a siege lasting two and a half years and the remaining Republican territories capitulated to Franco's Nationalist forces. The total death toll in Spain was estimated to be around half a million. The rise of fascism and the spread of anti-semitism were hardly events that Rodrigo could ignore...
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Goodall showed that as a Wagner conductor he has no equal. His control of the musical architecture is absolute. The huge span of the score was shaped as if in a single phrase. At the same time the music seemed to move spontaneously, by its own inner force, and with a glowing beauty of sound, an inevitability of rise and fall and a kind of natural momentousness of expression that will remain ideal. These were the words of David Cairns writing in the Sunday Times in August 1987. The occasion was Reginald Goodall’s last ever conducting engagement, the Proms concert performance of Act 3 of Parsifal shown in the rehearsal photo above. Wagner’s saga of the holy fool somehow sums up Goodall; as David Cairns wrote he was a Wagner conductor without equal, he was also a champion of Britten’s music who conducted the first performance of Peter Grimes , yet he flirted with fascism and alienated himself from many who tried to help him during a career that lasted more than sixty-five years. Goodall...
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Master musician who experienced the pain of genius

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