Dona Nobis Pacem from Venezuela to Russia


Swings and roundabouts day. Elsewhere an interesting and topical thread that leads from Hugo Chávez and Gustavo Dudamel to Vladimir Putin and Valery Gergiev. Could we be coming at the same problem from different directions? Or should Gergiev spend more time rehearsing and less time politicking? While a thoughtful comment on a related Overgrown Path takes us to a music blog that is new to me, and has some interesting things to say.

The challenges facing the new nations of the former-Soviet Union have featured here frequently, and a year ago I wrote about the music of the Latvian composer Peteris Vasks. Recently I have been very moved by a new Ondine CD of his choral music sung by the Latvian Radio Choir with the Sinfonietta Riga directed by Sigvards Klava (header image). Vasks' music has never been inaccessible; but this new release is particularly approachable, and should appeal both to contemporary music aficionados and to those whose interest is great sacred music across the centuries.

And more musical engagement with the former Soviet Union 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 removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Comments

Post a Comment

Recent popular posts

Watch Michel Petrucciani video online

Image
Back in January 2005 I wrote about legendary jazz pianist Michel Petrucciani (right), and that article remains high in my 'popular pages' listing after fifteen months. Since writing that piece Overgrown Path reader Andrew Nathan and I have been tracking down Petrucciani video footage, and just this week Andrew came up with an absolute gem that is available free on Google video. In my original article I wrote that Michel Petrucciani was a 'pianistic genius' , and it is no coincidence that he is buried in the Pierre Lachaise cemetery in Paris alongside Chopin. This 38 minute video with excellent sound (and a bonus guest appearance from the gorgeous Charlotte Rampling ) is not just essential viewing for jazz fans, it should be watched by all students of the piano - whatever their discipline. Just click here to view this important document. (The video is not hosted by On An Overgrown Path , this is a link to an external site). And to set the video into context here is m
Read more

Why cats hate Mahler symphonies

Image
My recent post ' Your cat is a music therapist ' was well appreciated judging by site traffic. So here is a codicil which raises some interesting points about synaesthesia. Reportedly Alexander Scriabin, Jean Sibelius, Olivier Messiaen, György Ligeti and Franz Liszt were among the classical composers who experienced cross-over between sensory channels. The impact of narrowing sensory bandwidth as music moves from a live to a recorded environment, and then from analogue to lossy digital formats is little understood and little researched.But it may have important implications for classical music's attempts to reach a new audience, and, topically, it may be very relevant to the post-COVID experience of Zoom concerts and live music in socially distanced auditoriums . I will discuss how what we see influences what we hear in a forthcoming post. Meanwhile here is an extract from Akif Pirinçci and Rolf Degen ’s book Cat Sense which explains the synaesthetic impact of a Ma
Read more

The Berlin Philharmonic's darkest hour

Image
Wilhelm Furtwängler was born on 25th January 1886. He was Music Director of the Berlin Philharmonic from 1923 to his death in 1954, and held this position for the twelve years that Hitler was in power. In January 1945 he was conducting in Vienna, and fled from there to Switzerland where he remained until the Battle of Berlin ended in the defeat of the Nazis. The musicians of his orchestra remained in Berlin during its darkest hour. Here is their story: On 28th March 1945 the Russian forces commanded by Marshal Georgy Zhukov were just twenty miles to the east of Berlin. A month previously Albert Speer had been replaced as Nazi armaments minister after trying to persuade Hitler that defeat was inevitable. Speer now turned his energies to preventing the musicians of his adored Berlin Philharmonic from perishing in the inevitable final battle. Reich Commisioner Dr Joseph Goebells, who was in charge of the defence of Berlin, had ordered the entire orchestra to be drafted into the Vol
Read more

Nada Brahma - Sound is God

Image
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
Read more

Classical music is not connecting with its rewired audience

Image
A typical American adult spends more than 11 hours each day interacting with media. Our brains are being rewired by this extended use of all-pervasive digital technologies, and the resulting re-synapsing of neural connections is fundamentally changing behaviour patterns and value systems. My proposition is that classical music is not adapting to these fundamental changes with the result that the artform is failing to connect with a new audience. A simple example of how quickly and easily neural connections are rewired is provided by an experiment carried out by the respected neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandaran . Test subjects viewed an image of jumbled black dots on a white background. After a short time the dots were seen to form a dog. Detailed brains scans taken during the recognition process showed that neurons in the temporal lobes became permanently altered once the dog had been recognised. That the dog was easily seen subsequently is confirmation of the new neural connections
Read more

Happy birthday to a legendary recording producer

Image
That photo shows a 1970 Kingsway Hall session for the EMI recording of Vaughan Williams' The Pilgrim's Progress . From left to right are Ursula Vaughan Williams, Christopher Bishop (producer), Sir Adrian Boult , John Noble , Ian Partridge, Gloria Jennings, Christopher Parker (balance engineer), John Alldis (chorus master), Sheila Armstrong and Marie Hayward. During his career at EMI Christopher Bishop produced legendary recordings with Sir John Barbirolli, André Previn, Sir David Willcocks , David Munrow, Carlo Maria Giulini, Sir Adrian Boult and many others. Christopher was born on April 1st 1931; he is enjoying a well-earned retirement in rural Suffolk not far from Aldeburgh, and I am sure readers will join me in wishing him a very happy birthday. It is a scandal that in an age when so many minor media celebrities receive recognition with State honours that Christopher Bishop's contribution to British and indeed global culture has never been recognised with a suit
Read more

Why I hate cool and ironic

Image
The infuriating thing is that the BBC can be both so good and so bad within a very short space of time. On Saturday's CD Review on Radio 3 Jonathan Swain reminded us just how good the BBC can be. His review of the available recordings of Ralph Vaughan Williams' Job - A Masque For Dancing was a textbook example of informed and intelligent radio. His advocacy of the work was so powerful that I listened again to Tod Handley's 1984 LP of this overlooked masterpiece as soon as the programme finished. The bad thing is that Jonathan Swain, and several other excellent presenters, have been sidelined to specialist review and overnight programmes as Radio 3 continues to trade excellence for access . Clearly BBC director general Mark Thompson never listened to Russell Brand on Radio 2 . I also suspect that Radio 3 controller Roger Wright doesn't spend enough time listening to his own station's output. Jonathan Swain's passionate case for Job was a million miles from
Read more

Classical music's biggest problem is that no one cares

Image
These photos were taken by me in 2008 at independent record retailer Prelude Records in Norwich. Jordi Savall's impromptu viol recital and signing session preceeded two performances at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival. One was a solo recital by Jordi in Peter Mancroft Church ; the other was an immensely moving performance of his visionary Jerusalem multicultural project at the Theatre Royal*. As reported here Prelude Records closed earlier this year; it was a victim of predatory online retailing, and today its premises stand empty awaiting occupation by a mobile phone or E-cigarette retailer. The Norfolk and Norwich Festival has been the victim of savage funding cuts , but continues in a more modest form due to the dedicated work of its small management team. A few days ago I wrote about a two-thirds empty Snape Maltings concert and proposed that classical music's heartland is facing a perfect storm caused by the convergence of the shifts in consumer tastes and the r
Read more

Simple gifts?

Light at the end of the tunnel? Or a train coming the other way? Something rather more chewy 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 removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Read more

The truth about those French orchestras

Image
My article reporting Claudio Abbado’s negative views on French orchestras certainly generated a lot of attention, including a response from Parisian Antoine Leboyer which corrected the myth that Abbado hadn’t actually conducted a French orchestra. Too much attention is given to British and American orchestras here On An Overgrown Path and elsewhere, and I was delighted when Antoine offered to give an inside view on the musical health of the French capital. So here is a guest blog from Paris with the truth about those French orchestras that Claudio Abbado and Daniel Harding love to hate: Let us put things in perspective with a few words on French orchestras. Abbado may not have had the best of experiences, and he may still not find it perfect today but things are improving. Paris has many orchestras (I do not know those outside Paris well, and cannot comment on them; I do have regards for the Lyon Orchestra which played some great concerts when David Robertson was their music direct
Read more