Pliable's picks at BBC Prommers' World


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Classical music is a right-brainer

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Whichever way you look at it classical music is not in good health. Concert attendances are down, arts funding is drying up , classical venues are increasingly dark, recording release schedules get thinner and thinner, orchestras are being downsized or disbanded , and mainstream media coverage is disappearing. Yet the classical fraternity remains in denial of an irreversible cultural change that looks increasingly likely to leave the classical genre as no more than an anachronism . Why? In 1932 the German-born Swiss philosopher Jean Gebser identified that a change was taking place in Western consciousness, and that this change was impacting on science, art, literature, philosophy and other disciplines. His thesis was that human consciousness is in transition, and these transitions are abrupt but overlapping mutations, rather than smooth transitions, and these transitions involve cerebral and physical changes. Jean Geber's thesis is developed by Dr Iain McGilchrist with his theor...
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Things change but remain the same

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To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dish...
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This LP is dedicated to Richard Wagner

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Composer Klaus Schulze has said 'I still love my Richard Wagner, who influenced me heavily. The way Wagner’s music introduced me to the use of dynamics, subtlety, drama, and the possible magnitudes of music in general remains unparalleled to me. There can’t be any doubt about it'. Schulze's 1975 release Timewind seen above* carries the message 'This LP is dedicated to Richard Wagner', and the two tracks of truly Wagnerian proportions on the original vinyl release were titled Bayreuth Return and Wahnfried . So why doesn't the name Klaus Schulze mean anything to the vast majority of classical listeners? The answer is because Klaus Schulze, who also uses the the alias Richard Wahnfried, is a creative maverick who was a leading figure in the development of the kosmische musik  known popularly as Krautrock, which he then morphed into the proto-ambient Berlin School of electronica, and is today best known as the Godfather of Techno and the Pope of Electronic...
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David Munrow - more than early music

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'David Munrow and the Early Music Consort of London transformed our view of medieval music. The impact of their performances far surparssed any that had gone before: by demonstrating how medieval music could sound normal, they created a niche for it in the concert hall and on record that it has never lost' ~ From Daniel Leech-Wilkinson's notes for Music of the Gothic era May 15 2007 is the thirty-first anniversary of the death of David Munrow. His contribution to the acceptance, understanding and performance of early music almost defies summary. He was born in 1942, and learnt the bassoon and recorder as a child. Between school and university he travelled and taught in South America , and started the collection of ethnic instruments that were to give him, and the world, a new perspective on early music making. He read English at Pembroke College , Cambridge, and was encouraged by Thurston Dart to take an active role in the music-making of that most musical of cities. ...
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Is classical music asking the right questions?

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What will have more impact on the future of classical music? Roberto Alagna’s latest “squeeze”, or our ability to organise, search and access digital music files? My view tends to the latter, which is why in a comment on a recent post I said “It has long puzzled me as to why the subject of metadata about music recordings is so neglected”. Now reader Mike has responded with the following comment which justifies a post of its own: Music metadata has been a small bugbear of mine ever since I started digitising music in the 90s. In particular the metadata databases used by Apple's iTunes and Microsoft's Media Players are quite awful when you move out of pop/rock music to classical/jazz/world. I don't let either bit of software touch my collection, especially as you can't trust either to honour their metadata settings, and the penalty for them breaching the trust is the loss of hundreds of manhours of labelling. It's also sad that a great many digital downloads ...
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Soundtrack for a porn movie

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"No, you have not landed on Slipped Disc by mistake. Respected electronic music pioneer Klaus Schulze tells the story himself.  The origins of " Body Love " are quite funny. I received a call from a movie producer named Manfred Menz and I wound up becoming his principal composer for a period of time. Amongst others, I composed the "Barracuda" soundtrack for him [1978, previously unreleased on album]. This led to a friendship which lasts till today. Menz now lives in Malibu, California where I visited him a couple of years ago. Anyway, this guy calls me and asks if I would compose the score to a porn movie. I said: "Porn? Nah, I don't do that kind of thing".  As it turned out, the director of the movie, Lasse Braun, had already shot it and had used my albums " Timewind " [1975] and " Moondawn " [1976] as a kind of "working soundtrack". This was obvious because the couples in the film were moving in time to my gro...
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Outsourcing is the new normal

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In coverage of the current furore at the BBC  there is surprisingly little mention that the Panorama programme at the heart of the controversy was made by independent production company October Films . Although described on the company's website as "one of the most dynamic, imaginative and respected brands in the documentary sector" their show reel is entertainment oriented - Netflix Channel 5, etc. Similarly, another controversial BBC programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone was made by an independent production company,  Hoyo Films . Outsourcing is the new normal, not just in the broadcast sector but across the whole world of commerce : the global business process outsourcing market was valued at $261.9 billion in 2022. When I joined the BBC from university many, many years ago content was king, with the added value - in the BBC's case audience numbers - coming from content creation. A similar focus on adding value from content creation was found in t...
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Nada Brahma - Sound is God

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It may be my age, but those moments when a piece of music really hits me in the solar plexus seem to get rarer and rarer. But during my recent extended travels in India I was metaphorically punched time and time again when listening to ECM's Codona recordings on headphones. Recent posts have touched on the potential of virtual concert halls and the fact that no one mixes for speakers these days , and the Manfred Eicher produced Codona sessions from between 1978 and 1982 really demonstrate the impact of the up close and personal sound of headphones . The line up for Codona was African-American trumpeter Don Cherry, Brazilian percussionist Nana Vasconcelos, and Colin Walcott on sitar, tabla, hammered dulcimer, sanza, timpani, and voice. The band took its name from a circus trapeze act of the early 20th century called the Flying Codonas , and the three albums packaged by ECM for CD as The Codona Trilogy capture the peerless musicians-beyond-frontiers performing their creative hig...
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Give us something else, give us something new

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John McLaughlin Williams has added a comment to my post Remembering Bryden Thomson pointing out, quite rightly, that: "Thomson did many fine things, but if he is to be remembered for one great thing it should be his pioneering first recordings of the complete cycle of symphonies by Arnold Bax. The true Bax revival began with Bryden Thomson". I can only endorse John's comment, and above is one of the LPs of Bryden Thomson conducting Bax that opened my ears to the composer's music in the 1980s. Twenty years later Chandos went on to record another superb Bax symphony cycle with Vernon Handley ; it is the latter that has remained in the catalogue leaving the unfortunate Bryden Thomson as the forgotten pioneer of Bax. Today there is so much classical radio airtime to schedule, so many concerts to programme, and so much iPod memory to fill. So why we can't have a little Bax among all the Mahler is quite beyond me; particularly as the sound worlds of the two compo...
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EMI - it's a dog's life

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First the bad news. The fluctuating prospects of my EMI pension have been the subject of two previous posts . Now comes the news that Guy Hands , the new owner of ailing EMI, has removed the chairman of the company's pension fund and appointed his own nominee to the post. This is Money comments: The move was unusual since chairmen of pension fund trustees must be seen to be able to represent the interests of pensioners without fear of censure from the company financing the fund. Fortunately we still have many principled small businesses in the UK. But then there is the BBC and EMI ; not to mention HBOS, the bank that cost us, and many others, a serious amount of money . But now for the good news. The fine drawing above depicts that great conductor Sir John Barbirolli, who made many fine recordings for EMI . His masterly accounts of Elgar's First and Second Symphonies, recorded for HMV with the Philharmonia and Hallé Orchestras respectively, have been absent from their catalo...
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