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The practice of engaged classical music

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The biomedical system, the predominant approach to illness in the West, has done an excellent job of making people believe that the most effective (and often the only) way to treat mental illness is with medications. But you don’t often hear about the horrific side effects of these medications, sometimes worse than the symptoms they are intended to treat, and the fact that drug prescribing is still essentially a guessing game. You don’t hear about the conflict of interest in having psychotropic drug research funded by pharmaceutical companies with a huge financial incentive to generate certain findings. The biomedical model, with its focus on biological causes, also tends to cut off dialogue on other conditions that can affect mental health. A number of ex-patients whom I interviewed found that medications were beneficial to them at some points in their life, but felt that there should be awareness that it may obscure the deeper, social dimensions of the problem. That is an extract fro...
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This new album demands innocent ears

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All music comes with baggage of differing shapes and sizes. Richard Wagner's distinctly overweight baggage in the form of his annexation by the Third Reich remains in view. Other baggage is less visible: Olivier Messiaen's ambiguous relationship with the fascist Vichy regime is obscured by the smoke and mirrors of his Catholicism, Joaquín Rodrigo's compliance with the despotic Franco regime is bleached out by the Spanish sunshine of his Concerto de Aranjuez , while Karlheinz Stockhausen's infamous description of the 9/11 attacks as "the greatest work of art that is possible in the whole cosmos" is conveniently obscured by the mists of time . Of course it is the music that matters and not the backstory, and, thankfully, we can listen to the music of Wagner, Messiaen, Rodrigo, Stockhausen and countless other music baggage handlers with innocent ears. But some deserving music still struggles to make itself heard over the backstory. As is the case with the ne...
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Audiences need permission to like unfamiliar music

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That photo of Sir Malcolm Arnold and Julian Bream appears on the late composer's website . Ten years ago I was literally very close to Sir Malcolm's music. He spent his final years being tended by his carer Anthony Day in Attleborough just a few miles from where I live in Norfolk. I managed Sir Malcolm's website and one of my first posts  about his music dates from that time. Following Sir Malcolm's death in 2006 I never lost my appreciation of his music, but it featured less frequently in my listening. However, recently I have returned to his symphonies, and listening to them again has raised some important questions. His nine symphonies are the product of a master craftsman. They move forward from Mahler and Shostakovich, yet should be immediately accessible to contemporary audiences saturated in the music of those two composers. But, despite this, Sir Malcolm Arnold's symphonies remain unknown outside a small circle of admirers. Why? Let me make it clear ...
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What price the BBC Proms?

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My life was changed by a Henry Wood Promenade Concert on 4th August, 1975. In the second half Sir Adrian Boult gave us Vaughan William's Fifth Symphony , and the blazing intensity of that performance remains unmatched, in my experience, in the concert hall or on record. Sir Adrian's 86 years had no relevance to his music making. Music, not age, was what mattered then. In the summer of 1975 punk was at its peak and the Vietnam War had ended after Communist forces took Saigon in the spring. Back with classical music, Pierre Boulez was in his last season as principal conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, which was at the top of its game , while William Glock's golden period as BBC controller of music and Proms administrator still informed music making in London. Your life could be changed for £1.30, which was the price of a balcony seat in the Albert Hall. All of which set me thinking, what price today's BBC Proms? In 2009 Promenade Concerts are one of few remaining...
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Classical music's biggest problem is that no one cares

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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...
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A massive hope for the future

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I am one of those boring old farts who laments the demise of the CD and its eclipse by ephemeral streaming . So it is very pleasing to report that one of the major players in the media industry has found a valid and valuable strategy for prolonging the life of the venerable CD format.  Warner Classics are remastering and reissuing CDs of classic recordings in massive 'binge boxes'. Latest release is the 79 CD box of Sir Adrian Boult's complete EMI stereo recordings . (Perversely, the box is titled 'Complete Warner Recordings', because although Warner acquired the EMI classical catalogue, competitor Universal Music owns the EMI trade mark.) The legendary team of producer Christopher Bishop and engineer Christopher Parker produced the majority of the recordings in the box, and the original mostly analogue master tapes set a benchmark in sound quality. However many of EMI's original first generation CD transfers in the 1980s compromised the reproduced sound. So ...
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Pushing the classical music envelope

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'In his short life and his art, the French Canadian composer Claude Vivier was a man diving, often recklessly, into the ultimate…. And from the edge of experience, he began to bring back, in the years leading up to his death in 1983, a new sound.' – Paul Griffiths , The New York Times I recently asked Who is pushing the classical envelope? My header photo shows a little-known figure who certainly pushed the classical music envelope and in the process created a new sound world that is ripe for rediscovery. Claude Vivier, was born to unknown parents in Montreal in 1948. After adoption his education prepare him for the priesthood until he was expelled from his seminary for "immature behaviour". But his religious training had awakened another vocation and he went on to study music, first in Montreal and then in Europe where his teachers included Karlheinz Stockhausen . In 1976 Vivier visited Japan, Bali and other Eastern countries and their musical traditions influenc...
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Is the organ baroque?

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I was in St Alban's Abbey and I was intrigued: they were building a new organ and I went up to - I suppose it must have been - the verger and I said, 'Is the organ baroque?' And he said, 'No, it's in perfectly good order.' John Tavener in The Music of Silence, A Composer's Testament (Faber ISBN 0571200885). But Music of Silence is not an original title, it is also the translation of the Spanish composer Federico Mompou's piano cycle Música Callada written between 1959 and 1967. If you don't know Mompou's beautiful music his own recording of his complete piano music on 4CDs from Brilliant Classics is a must-buy. Now read about Even more Brilliant Classics , including Carlo Maria Giulini's Missa Solemnis. 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 ot...
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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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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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