An American in Berlin


Barack Obama's recent visit to Berlin reminded me of a visit to that fine city by another American politician.
Header photo is from my photo essay I am a camera - Berlin and is (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

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Why I will never stop buying CDs

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Joseph Campbell famously revealed the importance of myths in contemporary society, explaining that "Myth is much more important and true than history. History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is". Today the unreliability of journalism is conveniently ignored . But the importance of myth is also overlooked. This is puzzling because it explains, among many other things, the refusal of physical music media - CD and vinyl - to go away , and the staying power of print books .  In our digital age the dated concept of myth has been replaced by the zeitgeist friendly 'backstory' - a set of events that have occurred before the main story. The vitally important difference between physical and virtual media is that CDs, and vinyl can eloquently narrate a backstory; whereas streamed and downloaded music  is no more than a sequence of dumb binary characters.  In his famous Aspen Award acceptance speech Benjamin Britten explained "Music demands mor
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The Berlin Philharmonic's darkest hour

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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
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Never sit in the comfy chair

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Travelling round Northern France, I found myself listening to France Musique. Frank Bridge. Arnold Bax. And the incomparable performance of In a Summer Garden by Barbirolli . Presented in a way that suggested the presenter knew what he was saying.... Cf Petroc Trelawny That comment was added by a reader to a recent post . By coincidence it was awaiting moderation when I returned from driving from Cahors in the Limousin region of south-west France to the Channel port of Caen, during which drive I too found France Musique's output unusually satisfying. When I cleared the UK border control at Portsmouth and turned onto the M27 I tuned in to Martin Handley on BBC Radio 3 . In the past Martin Handley was one of the station's more erudite presenters, but I quickly switched back to the SDHC memory card in my car's audio system . Because Handley's presentation style has descended - or more probably has been forced to descend - into ' Jack and Jill radio' which treats
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Classical music is not connecting with its rewired audience

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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
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Classical music's problem nailed in one sentence

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While admiring Igor Levit as a pianist, in a Wall Street Journal review Tim Page takes exception to Levit's new book House Concert , describing it as "a dreary jumble—a succession of would-be aphorisms". Predictably Norman Lebrecht, who has turned negativity into a lucrative Olympic sport , gloats over the WSJ review. A few months ago I wrote enthusiastically about Igor Levit's double CD Tristan , so I bought and read House Concert with some interest - that's the book on my 'just read' bookshelf. Now, as Tim Page confirms, Igor Levit is a remarkable pianistic success story. One measure of the value he has added to classical music is that at a time when the artform is suffering from serial deflation , his acclaimed Beethoven Sonata cycle for Sony retails for around double the price of cycles from other legendary pianists. So I read House Concert not to have my preconceptions and prejudices confirmed or to generate some tasty clickbait, but to learn m
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Master musician who experienced the pain of genius

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