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Classical music's next big thing is Karajan 2.0

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Anybody who has been around the classical music industry for some time will be struck by the remarkable similarity between the portrait of Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla on the cover of her first release for Deutsche Grammophon and Siegfried Lauterwasser 's brooding photo of Herbert von Karajan used on Deutsche Grammophon's 1979 vinyl release of the Beethoven Symphonies seen below. I tread on very dangerous ground here as expressing anything other than effusive praise for Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla simply prompts the usual social media tongue lashing . So let me make it clear right now that this release of symphonies  by the neglected Mieczysław Weinberg is very laudable . Moreover, let me also make it clear that there has never been a single artistic or personal criticism of Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla on this blog. But what I have expressed several times are reservations about the way that classical music's next big things are marketed . That Beethoven cycle by Karajan was released f...
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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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I am not a Classic FM housewife

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Having returned from travels in a distant land I was looking forward to listening to BBC Radio 3's Proms broadcasts. But it wasn't to be, because after just two concerts I have given up. For me, even great music-making cannot survive Radio 3 presenters topping and tailing each work with endless quotes from a children's encyclopedia of classical music punctuated by smug info-commercials.  There has been much self-congratulation by Radio 3 about audience gains; however audience data shows that increase has been achieved by poaching Classic FM's listeners. Despite Radio 3's audience increase, the UK classical radio audience is not increasing. Because listeners are simply moving from Classic FM to Radio 3. In fact the total classical radio audience is decreasing . Under ex-Classic FM supremo Sam Jackson, BBC Radio 3's strategy of taking listeners from Classic FM was initially targeted at the daytime housewife audience. But that strategy has now been applied to even...
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The purpose of puffery and closed-mindedness

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Two contrasting responses from America to my post Third rate music on Naxos' American classics? Flinging merde - ' Granted some of the stuff that Naxos has packaged in that series has been less than distinguished but operating in a cultural establishment where critics treat every cow patty ever dropped by the likes of Alwyn (above) and Bax and Finzi and Michael Tippitt (sic) as if it were fois gras, Clements is hardly in a position to fling merde' - from Sequenza21 , and I'm sure Norman Lebrecht would approve of that misspelling of Tippett. The true beauty of the effort - ' Personally speaking I expect listener reaction to concert music is heavily dependent on emotional mood and cultural/historical context . The concept of "ratings" and "tiers" for composers is pretty much an over-rated specialization of critics, which serves the purpose of puffery and closed-mindedness. My father is the American composer George Frederick McKay (photo be...
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Norman Lebrecht blusters as blogs bloom

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In today’s Evening Standard and online Norman Lebrecht declares ‘until bloggers deliver hard facts … paid for newspapers will continue to set the standard as the only show in town’ and goes on to take a swipe at On An Overgrown Path’s story about the BBC King’s College broadcast . Now I don’t think for a moment Stormin’ Norman has an axe to grind even if he does write for a paid for newspaper and presents a BBC Radio 3 programme , but his blustering cannot be ignored. Among the many accusations he flings around are that I do not deliver hard facts, I trade in unchecked trivia, and I did not check my story with the BBC, so let's look at these points. Not hard facts - I reported that the BBC had announced a 1956 Argo commercial recording as a 1954 BBC broadcast. Here is a transcript from the broadcast of the presenters introduction: ' This week's broadcast of choral evensong.... Today, a stunning broadcast from 1954, a service from the chapel of King's College Ca...
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A sound is born

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The photo above shows music history being made. It was taken yesterday at the acoustic test for the new Britten Studio at Snape, and shows the new hall filled with the invited audience who were about to hear the first ever live music in the new auditorium. Leading young musicians performed a range of chamber and vocal works, including pieces by Haydn, Debussy, Vaughan Williams and Rebecca Clarke . The music was specially selected to allow acoustic experts to assess the sound of the hall with an audience in situ. The Britten Studio is at the centre of the Snape creative campus development that I previewed here in 2006 . It is a stone's throw from the legendary Snape Maltings Concert Hall , which for four decades has been the gold-standard for concert hall acoustics. When Snape Maltings was created from disused industrial buildings in 1967 the new concert hall was acclaimed for its 'radical traditionalism' as well as its superlative sound. Over the years the surface textures ...
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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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Storm clouds gather over Aldeburgh

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On An Overgrown Path’s traffic logs show that the UK and international media are actively researching the private life of Benjamin Britten. One of the many failings of the BBC in the Jimmy Savile scandal was to assume that a potentially damaging story would simply go away. So, although I would much prefer to be writing about other things, I am reluctantly returning to the subject of Britten . I am a huge admirer of Britten’s music , I have written in praise of Aldeburgh , and Snape is my local concert hall . But for some time I have had a growing discomfort about certain aspects of the composer's private life, and this means I do not share the dismissive attitude that prevails elsewhere in classical music towards its continued scrutiny. And it also means I object to being labelled as a “smut-stirrer” for believing the subject should not be off-limits . The aspects of Britten’s personal life under scrutiny are public knowledge. In his eloquent appreciation of Britten in Th...
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If it ain't Mirga don't spin it

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In his latest Spectator press release - sorry review - for John Wilson conducting the reincarnated Sinfonia of London, Richard Bratby credits the original Sinfonia with recording movie soundtracks from  The Snowman to Vertigo . But he omits to mention that the Sinfonia of London and the Allegri String Quartet under Sir John Barbirolli made what is, arguably, the greatest classical recording committed to tape  -  Elgar's Introduction & Allegro for strings and Serenade for Strings in E minor, and Vaughan William's Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis & Fantasia on Greensleeves. Just another case of the if it ain't Mirga, Wilson, CBSO, Kanneh-Mason, or film music , don't spin it syndrome.  New Overgrown Path posts are available via RSS/email by entering your email address in the right-hand sidebar. Any copyrighted material is included for critical analysis, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s).
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Master musician who experienced the pain of genius

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On that sleeve for his 1985 recording of the Goldberg Variations , Scott Ross is seen standing in the grounds of Château d'Assas in Languedoc. It was here that many of the harpsichordist's great recordings were made. Then, as today, the château dwelt in the twilight zone between grandeur and dereliction, and thirty years ago the recording sessions were regularly interrupted by the sound of rats scurrying across the floor. Scott Ross was born in Pittsburgh in 1951, and moved to France with his mother following the death of his father in 1964. He studied at the conservatoires in Nice and Paris, and first came to Château d'Assas in 1969 to give music lessons to the grandson of its owner Mme. Simone Demangel . When an early music academy was established at the Château d'Assas, Scott Ross gave masterclasses and became a frequent visitor. At first he stayed in a room in one of the towers, but from 1983 he rented a small house across the road from the château. The photos b...
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